The Basics:
With the cooler removed from the packaging, we can give a once over. The first thing that caught my attention was the size of it. I was expecting a small cooler, so it is larger than I expected. As we can see here, the fin portion of the cooler is at a slight angle, rather than being perfectly straight.
A look at the top view of the cooler shows how the fan is attached. This should allow you to replace the fan with another model if it should fail, or should you decide to go with an LED fan. Next, if we look at the top of the base you can see four hex screws that need to be removed to attach the mounting brackets. Jing Ting has included the hex wrench for this step.
Looking at the front of the fan we can see that it is also attached to the mounting brackets using hex screws. Nothing special about the fan, it's a plain, seven bladed, 40mm unit. Usually the smaller the fan, the faster it spins, and the more noise it generates. However, this fan was nearly silent which was a pleasant surprise.
The bottom portion of the cooler that will actually touch the chip has a piece of plastic covering it which should help avoid any damage in transit. However, removing the sticker, I found there were some imperfections in the finish. You can easily see the marks left behind from being smoothed, but these marks are not deep enough to cause any issue. Also, there were a few very small nicks that you can not see in the picture. Thankfully, the area that would come into contact with the chip was perfectly smooth and did not have any flaws.
