Installation and Testing

 

 

Installation could require you remove the motherboard from your case, unless you have a case with a nice cut out on the back as I do. I have the NZXT Switch 810 which allows you to swap coolers easily.

The first thing I did was gather the parts I’d need and there’s quite a few of them, several screws, brackets and washers along with the back plate.

I installed the Shark on my Intel Core i7 2600K CPU on an Asus Z68 based motherboard. I have 16gb of ram, two of which use the large style heatspreaders.

The first thing you’ll need to do is install the back plate which requires the plate, four washers and four double threaded thumbscrews.

Next up is installing the two brackets which will require four screws. The brackets must be installed in  a certain way and you have to figure out the orientation of the cooler as well. I could only install the Shark one way because of the rather large chipset heatsinks around the CPU socket.

The Silent Shark is a very large cooler obviously and it actually goes over the first ram socket and almost touches the tall Kingston ram I have in the second slot. Luckily I already had the ram in the second slot so I didn’t have to move it.

 

Even installing the cooler this was it was a very tight fit, the support bracket comes very close the top most chipset heatsink.

Here’s the cooler finally installed without the fan shroud attached.