Installation
Getting this cooler is not all that hard, although the directions are a little hard to follow. We will be installing this cooler in our Ryzen test system, so the following installation will be for AM4. The first thing you are going to want to do is remove the mounting and backplate that comes on your motherboard.
Then go ahead and fin the included backplate with the cooler. There are two sides to this, an “a” and an “i”. Since we are installing on AMD we want the “a” facing us. Then take the mounting screws and put them through the backplate in the appropriate holes for either AM4 or AM3.
Now place the backplate on the back of your motherboard, carefully making sure the screws go through the openings in the motherboard. From here install the plastic pieces on each of the mounting screws.
The mounting bars are already pre-installed on the bottom of the cooler. By default they will be in the orientation for Intel installation. You’ll need to move them before you install the cooler. This was not really covered in the installation guide and we sort of had to figure it out on our own. It would be best to line the cooler up and see if you need to move the mounting bars. Definitely do this before you install thermal paste on the cooler.
At this point you might want to remove the fans on the cooler to make things easier. With everything lined up go ahead and apply the thermal paste and very carefully place the cooler on the CPU. Since you installed the plastic pieces on the screws this should help you screw them in to the mounting bars. In order to get a tight fit we did have to use a screwdriver on the back of our motherboard. This was a little annoying as we were installing on a test-bench and we had to pull the board completely off. If you have a case with a CPU cut-out this shouldn’t be a problem though.
Now all you have to do is re-install your fans, connect them to the included Y-connector, and plug that in to the CPU fan header on your motherboard. As you can see we have more than enough clearance for memory.
