Assembly and Installation

It is easy to install the cooler on the mainboard but there are a few things you should take care of. First, you have to take the mainboard out of the system case. It’s not convenient but the Amanda TEC is fastened through the mainboard’s PCB. It seems simple: you take the back-plate, apply some thermal grease, and fasten the cooler with screws and nuts.

Make sure that you won’t damage any mainboard elements and tighten the screws. However, it is my rule to check out the contact between the cooler and the CPU heat-spreader before each test, so I took the cooler off to see the following:

The problem was that the barrels of the cooler’s fastening plate would press against the mainboard before a tight contact between the cooler’s base and the CPU heat-spreader could be achieved.

The installation guide told me those barrels were supposed to be inserted into the mainboard’s holes, but they were obviously too large to fit. So, I found the following solution: I put spacers under the fastening plate to lift it higher above the mainboard surface. I had to unfasten the screws that were sealed with some glue:

Then I put three spacers, like those you can find included with mainboards, under the screws: