First Impressions

Upon seeing the heatsink in its packaging the first thing that came to mind was “That thing is huge!”. Seeing the size of the heatsink made me expect a weight reflective of the size, however I was pleasantly surprised as the heatsink was in fact a decent weight. Opening up the packaging I was glad to see some extra thermal paste included (though many of you will probably want to use a silver based conductive compound instead). Seeing the mounting bolts and plates, I was excited and confused as to how this heatsink was to be mounted but that would have to wait until the installation.

Installation

Now unlike the architecture specific heatsinks, use of the four hole mounting system requires work on both sides of the board and therefore complete disassembly of the system is required. For some of you with nice open cases and toolless access, this may be a simple matter, however if you don’t this may turn out to be a harrowing experience. Searching the packaged materials I searched for an instruction manual, and try as I might, I couldn’t find one. A simple message to the ThermalTake contact reassured that all production products would come with an instruction manual. Feeling reassured I went to the Thermaltake website to see if they had published online documentation for installation as they did with many other products in their line-up and discouragingly enough I didn’t find any (though I am certain that ThermalTake will remedy this in the near future).

Examining the 4 bolts and 12 nuts, and associated plates, I realized that installation wouldn’t be that difficult as the pieces seemed to only fit one way. Starting with the back pane, the foam padding is placed along the back, safely moulding around the protruding pins and sandwiched to the board with a metal plate. From topside, the felt washers and small nuts secure the bolts in place and provide the basic framework to hold the heatsink in place.

Sliding a second metal plate awkwardly between the heatpipes and into the bracket the heatsink slides fits snugly on the processor and secured on the bolts protruding through the second plate.

Oddly enough, once mounted, I noticed that the intake fan was located towards the rear of the motherboard and hovering precariously above the rear facing ports of the motherboard. The orientation, pushing air towards the front, runs counter to the orientation of case fans situated in most cases where intake is located on the bottom of the front and exhaust situated along the rear. In addition, on some motherboards (such as the tested Asus A7V333, the rear facing fan may have problems fitting in cases with mounted rear exhaust fans. Realignment of the fan was a simple matter consisting of unscrewing the four screws and placing the fan on the alternate side.

Ensuring that the nuts were tight and the heatsink was secure (while not crushing) and flat against the processor, I placed the motherboard back in the case. While being huge, the heatsink does not interfere with the panels and there is a good clearance between the top of the heatsink and the side panel in the Antec SX-1030 case that was used. The only thing that bothered me was the fact that the center of mass was so far away from the motherboard and cpu therefore causing more pull / tilting than a standard cpu. Although perhaps not a serious problem, this could result in insufficient surface contact or motherboard damage if incorrectly mounted.