Installation
Being such a large cooler I was a little bit worried about installation, but it turned out to be quite easy. We will be installing this cooler on our X79 system so installation should be pretty straightforward. First screw in the double-screw bolts to the CPU socket.
Next you will need to install the intel mounting brackets on each side of the CPU socket. In the orientation we have it in the fans will exhaust out of the back of our system.
Remove the center fan from the CPU cooler and place the retention plate in the center, it will fit in perfectly with the grooves. Once you have done this be sure to apply the included thermal paste.
Now carefully place the cooler on your CPU lining up the holes in the mounting brackets with the screws on the retention plate. Tighten the screws to secure the cooler.
When you are done just reinstall the center fan and attach the fans to either your motherboard or the included fan hub. This cooler was installed while our motherboard was in a case, but I did remove the graphics card to make it easier to reattach the center fan.
The cooler is quite large, as you can see the front fan hangs over the memory slots, so if you have memory with larger heatspreaders you could run into clearance issues.
