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Eight Low-Profile CPU Coolers For Your Compact PC, Reviewed
A recent look at ASRock's M8 compact barebones PC saw us undervolting our CPU in order to run stably, overclocked. This forced us to ask the question: how much cooling can we fit inside a slim enclosure? Eight heat sink vendors helped us find the answer.
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T-nuts are placed into support plate mounting holes that correspond to a motherboard’s mounting pattern, and are held in place with plastic retainers. These are barely long enough to reach the top of the board using Intel’s original socket support plate as a spacer.
Shoulder screws secure top brackets to the under-motherboard T-nuts. The CNPS8900 Quiet is too large to allow vertical access to the #2 Phillips heads of these screws, and we found that a #1 screwdriver could more easily be angled into place.
Like the traditional flower-style cooler that’s also in today’s comparison, the CNPS8900 Quiet is small enough to clear nearly any motherboard component and angled in a way that complicates precise clearance measurements.
