Installation
This is a whole new test system that we will be using for AMD specific components.
Test System:
AMD Phenom II X6 1100T
MSI 890FXA-GD65 Motherboard
Patriot G-Series 4GB DDR3 12800 1600MHz AMD RAM
Sparkle Calibre P980X+ geForce 9800GTX+ 512MB
G.Skill Phoenix Pro 40GB SSD
Samsung 750GB SATA II
Antec High Current Gamer 750W PSU
ASUS BW-12B1LT Blue Ray Burner
Thermaltake V9 BlacX Case
Zalman CNPS-9000MAX
Installing the CPU is rather easy, but of course you always want to be careful not to bend the pins when you install it. Just simply raise the silver lever, seat the CPU and lock the lever back into position.
Then you can install your RAM in seats 1 & 2 (the black ones) and remove the plastic bracket surrounding the CPU, so that you can install a non-stock CPU cooler; if you’re installing a stock CPU cooler, then leave it on and install the stock CPU cooler that comes with most processors. We installed AMD Black Edition Ready Patriot G-series DDR13 12800 RAM, a total of 4GB.
The RAM has high plastic heat spreaders on it, which became an issue when we went to install our original CPU cooler, the Thermaltake Jing. The Thermaltake Jing, even though following the proper installation procedures it still produced an improper installation, making it interfere with the first two RAM slots. The reason being is that Thermaltake didn’t include a proper installation so that the fans would blow out the rear of the case, rather blow out the top. If Thermaltake provided an installation method for a rear exhaust, then we wouldn’t have any issues here. After realizing we couldn’t get dual channel mode with the Jing we proceeded to install a Zalman CNPS-9000MAX, which provided no issues with the RAM.
