In 2011 NZXT launched the Havik 140. While not met with incredible commercial success, it was widely regarded as a superb cooler by reviewers, receiving many awards and accolades. Because of the relatively low development cost of CPU coolers, we continued pursuing cooling products. We began working on the Havik 120 and the Havik 180, each positioned to sandwich the Havik 140 in pricing. The Havik 120, being considerably more viable for mass market consumption, was taken to market. The Havik 180 on the other hand never made it to the shelves.
The Havik 180 concept was simple, make the biggest and best tower cooler on the market. Our Havik 140 was already among the best tower cooler reviewed and water coolers at the time were more expensive and lesser performing than the best air coolers. The timing felt right for the last big hurrah in air coolers, so we dreamt big.
It was to have 3 towers, 4 fans, up to 150mm fan blades, and 7 heatpipes. It was just ludicrous. The first samples came in weighing 1.5kg with fans, more than double the maximum Intel weight and on its side was the size of an ITX motherboard. It was clear it was going to interfere with well… a lot. We revised it slightly for memory clearance and designed it with LGA2011 in mind. It was just insanely large, but incredibly cool.
Less cool however… Were the diminishing returns. The cooler was twice as large, twice as heavy, with support for twice as many fans as the Havik 140. The Delta temperatures between the two coolers were a consistently reproducible 3-4C, which in cooler development was nothing to sneeze at, but the value prospect was simply not there. The cooler was huge, impractical, expensive, and its value just wasn’t justifiable. The project’s future began to look uncertain.
We attempted to re-envision the project into something more tolerable in both price and size and re-spec’d it. We put the Havik 180 on a diet and slimmed down the finspan from 150mm to 120mm and reduced the depth so it didn’t even stray into the memory no-fly-zone. The idea was, “the first triple 120mm fan cooler”, which also would’ve allowed us the more logical name of “Havik 360”. The performance Delta was further reduced while the costs barely budged. We had a few mockups made to see if the performance could improve, but alas, the Havik 180’s future looked grim.
With the Havik 180 on its deathbed, we began to rethink our future in coolers. It was clear that the Havik 180 didn’t have a future, but the concept of a cooler larger than normal certainly did. Soon after Havik 180 development ended, we approached Asetek with the idea to make the first 140mm based liquid coolers. A concept that lended itself to water, far better than it did on air.
Rob Teller
Hi NZXT,
I stumbled upon the photo album of Mr. Rob Teller’s H440 rig and my eyes immediately got stuck on the triple tower heatsink and a quick search led me here. So I know one Havik 180 prototype unit belongs to Rob who according to his reddit has since resigned from NZXT, but is there any other Havik 180 prototype units left at NZXT that I can actually buy? I love gigantic CPU air coolers to death and really really want this heatsink!
i saw the image too and was perplexed but i dont know of any other solutions that massive.. Phanteks makes a pretty huge cooler that i personally have in my rig and it is HUGE with triple fans and a nice blue anodized look… i also think corsair and Noctua make some pretty large sized solutions as well.. maybe NZXTwill create a heatsink similar to the v8 :)
I now own a Havik 140 and I love it. It looks awesome, is quiet and is a great cooler. I was wondering why that was discontinued?