I would just like to point out that some of the pictures in the manual appear to be in the best case, out of date, and in the worst scenario outright wrong. Go with your instincts on this one guys, if the backing plate fits its probably the right one.

The Cooler

The cooler and fan removed from the packaging

The heatsink part of the tempest cooler has several features designed to aid in its cooling ability. The first of these is the large surface area, thin, aluminum fins. Having lots of thin, strip like "fins" gives a much larger surface area than if the cooler was a solid copper block allowing for a much better heat transfer rate.

The second way that OCZ has aimed to aide the Tempest in its cooling conquest is with the use of heatpipes. Heatpipe technology is usually setup with a solid copper base to the heatsink, with several "heatpipes" coming away from the core to the fins above. The heatpipes in this case are hollow and have the sides lined with a fine copper coating allowing for much faster heat transfer than if the heatpipes were made from solid copper.

The final way that other companies gear their coolers, the Tempest not being an exception, towards high end cooling is by having an extremely polished ("Lapped", to the enthusiasts among us) core block surface. By having a very well lapped cooling core (In some cases, such as the Tempest, the surface is so flat that it is mirrored) the core has a much better contact with the CPU itself, therefore heat transfer from the processor to the cooler is much more efficient.

OCZ Provide a sticker over the core to prevent smudging and scratching of the surface should the postman be a little rough with your package

As you can see, the Tempest's core is an almost perfect mirror image; a good sign indeed.