Time To Fit – Results
First, we'll present the winners - counting down from fifth place. After that, we'll show the full results and then comment on the lower-placed coolers.5th place – Scythe Miné – 184 seconds
Surprisingly, the Scythe Mine grabbed fifth place. Without the additional fitting work required, its simple push-pin plate system would likely have earned it an even higher position. A commendably solid effort from this newcomer.4th place – OCZ Vindicator – 92 seconds
As with the Scythe Mine, the OCZ Vindicator uses the standard Intel push-pin system for mounting to the motherboard. The reason for the Vindicator's speedy fitment time is that the cooler comes ready for LGA 775 straight out of the box and also has its fan ready-mounted.It might have been possible to install the cooler in even less time than we took but we had some issues trying to get it secured in place without damaging the fins around the bottom.
3rd place – Thermaltake Big Typhoon VX – 89 seconds
The biggest surprise in this category is definitely the Big Typhoon VX. It's the heaviest cooler to earn a top-five slot, tipping the scales at 827g - nearly double the recommended limit.More surprising still, it uses push-pin mounts – and uses them successfully. The speed of install was also greatly helped by the abundance of space available under the heat-sink.
2nd place – Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro – 85 seconds
There was something inevitable about the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro doing so well, having been the most popular third-party cooler to date for the Intel LGA775 platform. Part of that will be down to the fact that it costs so little - it's the cheapest cooler here apart from the Intel. Nonetheless, we'd like to think that ease-of-installation has played its part, too.Of course, the Freezer 7 Pro uses that simple push-pin system to make fitting nice and easy and things are made easier still – first time around, at any rate - by Arctic's decision to pre-apply thermal paste to the base of the cooler.
1st place – Intel stock cooler – 63 seconds
What was utterly inevitable – a foregone conclusion, in fact – was the Intel stock cooler's No.1 position. It has the mounting system that others try to copy and it lacks the bulky heat-sinks and oversized fans that cause so much delay on other coolers. With installation taking only a fraction longer than a minute – just 63 seconds – the Intel is the clear winner in our Time to Fit category.Now, let's look at how the top-five and all the rest compare in terms of Time to Fit:
As was expected, the more complicated the mounting, the longer the cooler took to fit. In addition, where fans were not an integral part of a cooler design, installation tended to be very time consuming. As an example, the work involved in adding the fan to a Scythe Infinity tripled the fitment time compared to the passive configuration.
And some assembly jobs seemed to take for ever, most notably that of the Noctua NH-U12F - in excess of 20 minutes. Consequently it trailed home long after anything else. The main problem was the fact that you have to attach a back-plate to the motherboard while mounting two individual brackets around the other side, all the while struggling to hold in place fiddly little screws and cardboard washers.
Of all the mounting systems, this was by far the hardest to put together, so it's just as well that the Noctua NH-U12F didn't also come last in the performance stakes.
