X-bit labs

New Super Cooler: ASUS Silent Knight Review (page 5)

Category: Coolers

by Sergey Lepilov

[ 01/12/2007 | 11:28 AM ]

So, you’ve picked up the right back-plate for your mainboard, what’s next? It’s simple, but you have to take your mainboard out of the system case. You should use the included long screws and plastic bushings to fasten the steel mounting frame to the back-plate through the mainboard’s PCB:

This universal frame is to be used with every platform supported by the cooler. You could have seen it before in our review of the ASUS Silent Square cooler. The frame stands rather high above the mainboard, so capacitors or any other elements around the CPU socket won’t get in the way.

Don’t forget to put some thermal grease on the CPU before you install the frame. You can use the included grease from ASUS – it is very thick and hard to apply, but is as efficient as Arctic Silver 5. That’s another good point about the new cooler.

After that, you only have to put the cooler down on the frame, insert the pressure clamp between the cooler’s pipes and fix the cooler on the CPU with a latch:

You can position the cooler just as you like on an Intel platform due to the symmetrical positions of the mounting holes in the mainboard. But ASUS has also provided for a proper orientation of the cooler on Socket AM2 and Socket 754/939/940 platforms. You just have to put one more plate (included with the cooler) on top of the steel universal mounting frame:

With this plate, you can choose any orientation for the cooler just as you like. A simple and effective solution.

Winding this section up, I can’t help mentioning the Silent Knight’s blue highlighting which is going to please your eyes at night.