A Closer Look:

    As I mentioned before, the Kingwin Big Air comes in two pieces. The fan housing is packed separate from the cooler. That's where I'm going to start. The fan is 120mm and encased in clear acrylic. Attached to the fan is a specially designed clip. This clip attaches to the fins on the heatsink, thus providing a tool-free installation of the fan. Also, a fan grille guard is included, along with 4 blue LEDs on circuit board tethers. If the person installing the fan is not paying attention, the risk of breaking off one of the LEDs is possible.

   The heatsink has a copper base with attached heat pipes, 3 to be exact. The heat pipes are sandwiched in between the copper base and the middle section of the heatsink. The middle section consists of an aluminum block with fins cut out. The last part of this triple-decker cooler includes a third section of fins that the heat pipes run through. The combination of the three components should provide great results.
 

Installation:

    The installation was simple and straight forward. No need to remove the stock bracket on the motherboard. Apply the thermal grease to the CPU and clip on the cooler, then lock it in place. NO FUSS!! NO MUSS!!!! The same goes for the 120mm fan. Let the clip grab onto the lower part of the heat sink, then pivot the fan towards the heat sink and let the clip lock onto the top part of the heat sink. Give that a DONE stamp.

Stock bracket	Lower clip	Upper clip/lever
We have contact	Heatpipes close to RAM	Cooler locking lever

Testing:

     For testing I used BurnInTest Ver4.0, running a total of three tests in a sequence of ON for 1hr 100% CPU load, then Off for a30 minute rest before lather-rinse-repeat. During each test, the peak CPU temp was reached within 3-5 minutes. The average of the results are listed below:

Conclusion:

Day

Night

    The Kingwin Big Air BA-12 is a good quality product that performs as described and beyond. The easy installation is a major plus when it comes to CPU coolers. I, like many, hate removing the motherboard from a case to remove the stock heatsink bracket just to install the product. By design Kingwin chose to have the end user keep their equipment intact and leave the stock bracket in place. Kingwin took this one step further by making the 120mm fan a tool-less install also. The K.I.S.S. method was followed to a "T" in the design of the Kingwin Big Air.