Compatibility and Installation Tips

XILENCE Black Hawk COPPER is compatible with all contemporary platforms, including the LGA1366 mainboards. The cooler is installed through the mainboard PCB in all cases that is why you will have to remove the board from the system case before installation. The installation procedure is extremely similar to that for Thermaltake Big Typhoon and is identical for AMD and Intel LGA775 processors: you stick the universal backplate to the bottom of the PCB and insert the retention spindles into the holes from the front side of it. After that you use screwed caps to tighten the front retention plate holding the cooler in place. We have already discussed all this many times, so let’s not dwell on it again.

As far as installation onto LGA1366 mainboards is concerned, the procedure is a little different here than what we have just described above. Since mainboards for Core i7 processors already have a default backplate pre-installed, XILENCE engineers had to give up a universal backplate for LGA1366 platforms. Instead you have to stick special plastic washers with built-in threaded bush to the bottom of the PCB:

Then the plastic retention brackets are screwed on to them:

And after that you use four thumb-screws to tighten the retention plate pressing the 1.2 kg copper cooler against the CPU heat-spreader very securely:

The heatpipes coming out of the cooler base do not interfere with any electronic components around the processor socket. Moreover, the heatsink’s beveled plates won’t hit against tall memory heat-spreaders either:

Since the LGA1366 retention holes are symmetrical, the cooler can be installed facing any of the four directions (the same is true for LGA775 platforms). However, this time we didn’t experiment to determine how XILENCE Black Hawk COPPER cooling efficiency depends on the cooler positioning. We simply installed the cooler with the heatpipes ends facing up:

We were pleasantly surprised to see beautiful red LED highlighting that made the whole system case look really unique:

It is really hard to show how extremely stylish and pleasing this lighting is on a photograph, but trust me, you won’t be disappointed.