Installation
We will be installing the Dark Rock Pro 3 in our X79 system, which uses Intel’s LGA2011 socket. What’s great about this socket is that you do not need to install a backplate, so most coolers can be installed without having to remove your motherboard from the case.
The first thing you are going to want to do is install the four mounting screws around the CPU socket as shown in the photo below. These go in pretty easily and be quiet! does include a wrench to tighten them.
Next grab the cooler and install the Intel mounting brackets. These are installed be securing two small screws on each side. If you were going to be doing the AMD installation there are specific AMD brackets.
Now you will need to carefully place the cooler on top of your CPU lining up the holes in the mounting brackets with the tops of the mounting screws. Once you have everything lined up you will need to secure the cooler with four nuts. Here is where the issue comes in and where I’ve constantly complained about this mounting method. First the size of the cooler makes it quite hard to get these nuts installed. You actually have to reach under the heatsink itself. This means it is impossible to get this cooler installed while you have your motherboard installed in your case. We use a Cooler Master Cosmos II for our CPU cooler reviews and it is not often that we have to remove the motherboard to install a cooler. Even with the motherboard taken out of the case it is quite hard to get the nuts installed. Not only do you have to get them on, but then you have to use the little wrench to tighten them. This has to be one of the harder CPU coolers to install. You will have to remove your motherboard from the case as well as your memory.
Talking about memory if you have memory with larger heatspreaders it is likely that it will not fit with this cooler. The front fan overhangs our memory slots, luckily we use memory with normal-sized heatspreaders.
Getting the motherboard back inside of the case you can see just how large the cooler really is. It is also likely to block the first PCI slot on your motherboard, usually a PCI-Express x1 slot used for say an audio card.
