Passive Cooling Heatsinks and the Heatlane Zen - Installing a Passive Cooler

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When you install a passive cooler in your system, you will need to remove your existing motherboard clip support or backplate. Passive coolers for the most part are extremely top heavy, so reinforcement is needed to prevent the cooler from falling off. Reinforcement also prevents the motherboard from breaking around the CPU area.

Here you can see a thick metal plate that is used to reinforce the CPU area to prevent the heatsink from warping the motherboard due to extreme weight of the heatsink.

Most passive coolers that come with a thick backplate; most also provide long mounting bolts that go from the base of the heatsink all the way to the motherboard backplate to ensure the heatsink has adequate pressure over the CPU and this also distributes the weight of the heatsink over the back of the CPU area on the opposite side of the motherboard, preventing warping from the increase in weight.

The backplate has bolts that go thru the motherboard and attach to the base of the heatsink. This ensures the heatsink makes perfect contact with the processor.

Make sure you follow all instructions and suggestions provided by your coolers manufacturers users guide when installing a passive cooler. Some coolers require additional steps to be taken during installation, so be sure to follow all instructions.

Next: Testing and Results >>
 

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Comments On: Passive Cooling Heatsinks and the Heatlane Zen

· Very impressive heatsink. That thing is massive. I've always liked passive cooling...    · Would this heatsink be enough to keep my AMD 1.47G processor cool?    · It would have no problems cooling your AMD processor. the only thing is that it...   >>> Post your comment now!

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