Installation

The first thing to do is to stick on the supplied vibration killing pads that simply stick to the edges of where the fan makes contact with the fins. Now it’s a good idea to put the fan wire clips on, but leave the fan off.

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Installation was pretty easy, although you’ll require the stock AMD bracket which is normally missing if you have installed a separate after-market cooler. Of course this is only if you wish to use the AMD bracket. For Intel you don’t even have to have your backing plate as one is supplied for you.

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However, once the backing plate is installed, attaching the cooler to your motherboard couldn’t be easier. With AMD you simply have to slot in the cooler mounting bracket and then use the shorter spring screws. Five minutes and you’ll have the job done.

For Intel users, you have to get the backing plate into place, which will mean motherboard removal. Once this is done, you simply slot in the X-shaped mounting bracket and use the longer spring screws and the jobs a good ‘un. Ten minutes later you’ll have the 790g heatsink strapped to your CPU.

Once you’ve decided on the appropriate 120mm to use, you simply have to slot it into place and make sure that the elbow bends of the wire clips are in the mounting holes. This is a little fiddly, but five minutes and its done.

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Pictured is a Thermaltake TT-1225 fan, but in the end I decided to go for the same one that’s supplied with the Coolink Silentator to see which heatsink performs better.

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Unfortunately, the motherboard that I am using (abit’s AN-M2HD) has its RAM slots a little too close to the CPU socket meaning that the multitude of heatpipes interacts with the two closest RAM slots. Moving over the two sticks of Super Talent 4GB RAM to the other two slots wasn’t a problem, but for users who have four sticks of RAM this could be a major pain. In the pictures, you can see I'm using a Asus M2N-E which didn't have a problem with the RAM.

The height of the cooler might be an issue to anyone with a slim-line case as it’ll poke out the side. In fact, even with a Lian Li PC-B20 case, the cooler only just fits in. Make sure that your case can accommodate this cooler and look out for side panel mounted fans as they’ll definitely stop you having your case side on.