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Installation (Intel) |
Initially I would have thought that the installation of the heatsink
on an Intel system would prove itself to be a much quicker and easier
process. For one thing, you don’t have to remove your motherboard;
there’s also the added bonus that there’s no screws or
mounting brackets that need to be tightened into place. The theory
is that all one has to do is “unhook” their stock heatsink,
clean and prep the surface of the chipset with some new thermal grease,
ensure the neoprene pads are attached to all four corners to prevent
crushing of the core, and then simply hook in the MCX-159 and fan
and you’re done. Unfortunately, there was an obstacle or two
that had to be cleared, albeit minor issues that weren’t related
to the Swiftech itself but rather a result of my CPU heatsink choice.
As you can see below in the first picture, the stock
heatsink is sitting there smug, content in his daily duties; not
for long. Lightly pressing down on each corner, you simply pop out
the loops that hold the unit in place. Once out, you can see that
the core of the i875 chipset is indeed different than what you’d
be accustomed to, looking something more like an old P3 core.
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The first order of business is to remove the existing thermal grease
from the core and attach our neoprene pads around the core. The pads,
similar to what you’d find on a pre-64bit AMD chip, are there
to ensure that there is no rocking of the attached heatsink due to
there being such a small area of actual contact. If rocking were to
occur and go on for a period of time unchecked, it could easily damage
or destroy the core. And yes, that’s a bad thing to happen.
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Here’s where we come to the two issues I had with the installation.
The first issue is that the mounting wires used to restrain the fan
to the Thermalright SP-94 heatsink protrude out to far, interfering
with the placement of the rather tall MCX-159. Fortunately, this didn’t
cause much cause for concern as I was able to simply slide the wire
up the fan a tad and secure it via another indention on the fan. If
I wanted to go further, I could have drilled the hole out, but as
it sits, I still couldn’t rock the fan loose. Issue two was
simply lack of preparation on my part. As you can see in the second
picture, I placed the neoprene pads at the edges of each corner of
the chip. Unfortunately since the chip itself is turned at a 45o angle
and the fact that the heatsink will only mount vertically and not
angled, I had to reposition the pads so as to ensure that the core
would be protected.
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With that bump in the road out of the way, the rest of the installation
proceeds without a hitch. First I line up the thermal probe to ensure
that it’s not going to interfere or offset the corner of the
heatsink. Once that’s confirmed, simply apply a small amount
of your favorite thermal paste, position the heatsink and clip it
into place.
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