Finished Looks

The Silver Arrow ITX from Thermalright definitely looks good on the test system's MSI motherboard as the two share a red and black theme. However, sitting at a slight angle, the cooler does not sit completely flush on the motherboard. Only a few degrees off, it still came as a surprise. The issue also remained after multiple re-mounting attempts. If at all possible, I would like to see that slight tilt corrected.


I had no issues with the motherboard's heatsinks touching or interfering with the Silver Arrow ITX during installation. Overall, a solid design that looks good, but suffers slightly due to the slight angle, which, once noticed, is hard to forget or miss.


Clearance around the cooler is pretty decent. Users should have no issues with it blocking access to the 8-pin EPS connector.


In terms of memory clearance, the Silver Arrow ITX again proves to be somewhat accommodating. Installed onto most motherboards, three out of four DIMM slots can be populated by memory of any height, though it will depend more on socket and board design. If the cooler did not have that 5° angle, it may have offered perfect memory clearance instead. The cooler itself is billed as Mini-ITX friendly; however, it is only compatible with certain boards of which none of MSI's Mini-ITX boards will accept the cooler in its default configuration. The Silver Arrow ITX can have its orientation changed, but doing so may block off memory slots. However, standard-height memory will still fit in that situation. The other issue, as can be seen, is the fact that it blocks the top expansion slot. In all honesty, the problems encountered are par the course for a regular cooler of such a size, but there are also a few other potential pitfalls to keep in mind for Mini-ITX systems. The biggest of these are memory and VGA compatibility. As both are dependent upon the motherboard, you can find the full list of supported motherboards on Thermalright's website.