Finished Looks

Much like the Noctua NH-D15 and be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4, the Silentium PC Grandis 2 XE1436 is large and takes up nearly the entire top half of the motherboard. However, once you get past its size, the cooler's appearance is not bad at all. While be quiet! walks away with a win in terms of appearance, the Grandis 2 isn't ugly by any stretch of the imagination. The black top plates and heat pipe caps keep things looking clean and functional. Meanwhile, the extra fan clips for a third fan are included for those wanting the cooler to look more symmetrical on top of adding the possibility of squeezing out a tiny bit of extra performance.


Memory clearance is rather abysmal. The front fan covers three DIMM slots entirely and encroaches on the fourth. In terms of memory heatsinks, you will want to stick with standard-height options to avoid problems. In regards to GPU clearance, there are no real problems to report. The Grandis 2 XE1436 cleared the GPU when it was placed in the first expansion slot. Moving it down to the proper PCIe x16 slot results in an even larger gap. Thus, clearance is not a problem in regards to the GPU in my testing.