Anand's Home Theater PC - Part I: The First Builds

A Huge Heatsink

Wes sent along a Scythe Andy Samurai Master with a 120mm fan for my CPU, this thing is absolutely huge:

Unfortunately it's a pain to deal with from an installation perspective, while it'll install fine on a bare motherboard, when in a case it's nearly impossible to reach the clips that mount to the motherboard. While it's nice that you don't need to install any additional support on the backside of the motherboard, it's very tough to install in a case.

Andy. Installed. Note how it's basically impossible to get to the clip behind the heatsink near the top of the picture.

If you install the heatsink first and then try and put the whole contraption in your case, it makes installing the rest of your components (and even screwing in the motherboard) unbelievably difficult. There's just no good solution here.

I lucked out because I was using an AMD platform, and the retention mechanism is far easier to operate than the pushpins on an Intel setup.

The installation hassle was completely worth it though, the Andy Samurai Master with its 120mm fan is virtually silent in the CW03.