[section_title title=”Installation”]
Installation
Installing such a cooler is without doubt going to place strain on your motherboard if a mounting system is not designed properly. Luckily, Thermalright are good at designing them and I usually have no issues installing the mounting system at all. This one is another shining example and it went on without a hitch. It’s simple enough if you follow the instructions, and even if you don’t, it’s easy to figure out. I’d obviously recommend that you do look at them so that there is little to no risk when installing this cooler but I will leave that down to your own and personal judgement.
First of all, as with any mounting system like this one, is to install the backplate and screws which will ultimately hold the rest of the mounting in place. Once they are in the correct position, you can continue to install the remainder of the mounting system which first begins with four screw nuts with rubber washers on the bottom. You need to make sure that you install the washers in the correct place or you can more than likely kiss your motherboard goodbye. It’s of utmost importance that you install this section correctly. After that, it’s a case of putting the plate in position and then securing it with four thumbscrews. I told you that it was simple, didn’t I?
This is where the installation becomes tricky. Allow me to explain. Due to the cooler being heavier on one side, or lopsided if you wish, it makes it incredible difficult to install with a single pair of hands. The conventional coolers usually sit in their position without much movement but as this one is much heavier on one side, it tends to fall over. The only way to efficiently install it is either with two people (not required) or by placing the cooler on the CPU, with the thermal paste in place of course, and then lining the pressure plate up with the mounting system as best as you can before proceeding to screw the one side down a little to ensure it doesn’t move. This is where the use for the hole in the cooler becomes apparent. You need to put your screw driver down the hole in order to reach the screw that would otherwise be located underneath the cooler. Once you’ve tightened both of them sufficiently, you can proceed to finish screwing the pressure plate down until both screws lock into place when they hit their final thread.
The image below shows how much clearance you will have from the DIMM slots. It’s quite apparent that no modules on the face of the earth will ever be an issue, even if they have huge heatsinks like my TridentX’s do. However, there will be an issue if you decide to use this on an X79 system that uses quad channel memory as the channels will be underneath the RAM and for that you will need to ensure that you get low profile heatsinks, or else it simply won’t fit.
There you have it… the Thermalright HR-22, a cooler that looks like it is in the process of eating my motherboard. Let’s test the beast!
