Thermaltake MaxOrb and V1 CPU coolers

Installation:

Quite a lot of finger work is needed to get the LGA clips on and you'd think they would just pop off as soon as you screw in the heatsink with some tension, but the forces actually act in the right direction and will push the clips in further.

The hold down itself is very large and despite looking like it could be more incompatible than usual, we tested it and found all the boards with heatpipes or heatsinks that were 35mm or less fitted fine: the vast majority of popular boards from MSI, Intel, nForce 680i SLI (LT) and Asus conform to this.

The only board that didn't fit was the Asus Striker Extreme which has heatpipes that are 38mm tall, but as long as you angle it over the memory and your memory is of standard height (not Dominator, FlexXLC, Reaper) it'll still fit.

But then again, theory isn't always as good as practice and trying to use it in an Asus P5K3 Deluxe, which still does fit, meant we had to reinstall the heatsink at least three times before we got a proper contact with the CPU. You have to make absolutely sure you fit everything right: push-pins, clip and screw.


As you can see below, installation is a bit of a pain and you actually have to forcibly separate the fins to get a screwdriver in. The fact that the fan is large and forces air downwards does mean that it cools the heatsinks or heatpipes surrounding the CPU area too, which is nice for many newer boards.


When you get installation just right, the contact with the CPU core is again very good despite our initial concerns with the clips. Incidentally, because the heatsink is lower and fatter than the V1, the clips are slightly harder to get to. However, hard to get to is nowhere near impossible, which is how we would classify the likes of the Scythe Infinity which requires you to have fingers the width of razor blades.