Installation

Installation of the 055 cooler is fairly straight forward when it comes to AMD based computers. The cooler uses the cradle that comes with the motherboard, so there's no need to take the board out of the case. However, when it comes to an Intel based computer, the removal of the motherboard is a necessary evil. For mounting the cooler on an Intel based board, the cradle must be removed, and the cooler's retention clips will use the mounting holes for the cradle.


Mounting the cooler on an AMD system is a simple task of using one mounting clip and lining the clip up with the grooves on the top of the cooler's base. For Intel systems, two mounts have to be attached to the cooler via two screws. Once the the cradle has been removed from the mainboard, it's just a matter of lining the cooler up, and pushing the clips into the mounting holes on the motherboard, then tightening the clips.


I found it a little awkward to install the cooler on an AMD system. Where the clip was separate from the cooler, you had to line it up, while lining the cooler up and trying to get the clip on the cradle. With the mainboard outside of the case, it was fairly easy to accomplish, but when I was working inside of a case, it got a little more trickier.


With the 055 cooler mounted on a 939 system, you can see it's a tight fit. The base of the cooler is like a parallelogram shape, and the heatpipes have a similar way of lining up. The forward heatpipe is almost resting on the cradle, while the rear pipe has decent clearance.


The cooler comes quite close to the RAM modules, but is fine. I also mounted the cooler on another LanParty board, and it is pretty much the same story.


To give you a perspective of the size of the cooler, here are two shots of it mounted on a DFI RDX200 board.