The Heatsink

This is Intel’s retail LGA-1366 heatsink:

And this the heatsink that comes with the retail Core i7 980X:

It’s much larger than the standard i7 heatsink, but not quite as large as the tower coolers from Thermaltake or Zalman. It’s fairly quiet but at full speed it does have an annoying whir to it. Thankfully other than in a no-POST situation, I never heard it at that speed.

Installing the new heatsink is both more and less pleasant than the standard LGA-1366 cooler. You stick a plastic plate to the back of your motherboard that the heatsink screws into (that’s the pleasant part):

The screws are difficult to access thanks to the size of the heatsink itself, especially if you have a motherboard with heatsinks that crowd the CPU socket (and that’s the unpleasant part).

Currently the new heatsink is exclusively for the i7 980X. The rest of the lineup gets the plain old coolers.

The Roadmap: Sandy Bridge in 2011 Extreme Edition: 2010 vs. 2008 vs. 2005
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  • Emcha_Audio - Saturday, January 8, 2011 - link

    Now that you've tested it with Sonar, might be worth it to test it with something more powerful and heavy than Sonar. I'd suggest Pro tools Le.
  • chakrivenu - Sunday, March 3, 2013 - link

    Hello, can anyone tell me what is the exact type or model of 3M tape used on the plastic plate.
    My motherboard had a problem and i removed the plastic plate. There are two strips in which one strip was spoiled while removing. Please help me..

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