Swiftech MCX-4000  P4 Cooler

Check this out.  Included with the MCX-4000 is a tube of Arctic Alumina thermal goop.  I almost threw this away thinking it was plain Jane white silicon paste.

Moving on to the fan system.  Swiftech is going in the direction of lots of other manufacturers these days in offering some latitude in use.  The fan is held in place by four screws running through the fan into the base beneath.  In this instance of Swiftech being more versitile, there are holes cut to accept the standard 70mm Y.S. Tech fan or an 80mm fan.

The fan blades looked more like an aircraft propeller than anything else.  I especially liked the finished look of the fan casing.  The standard 70mm fan turns 5800 RPM moving 36.8 CFM all to the tune of 39 decibels.

Ah, the famous Swiftech clipping mechanism.  Four screws are run through matching sized springs into nuts you mount into the mainboard surface.  Swiftech calls these nuts "standoffs."  Whatever you call them, they are in the pic to the right below.  The springs exert a uniform amount of pressure across the sink when you tighten the screws down.  No clipping mechanism is more secure or even.

These screws go through the four holes about the processor and mount on the other side with nylon nuts.  If you haven't seen this setup before, the answer is yes (maybe), you need to remove your motherboard.  Let me explain. 

At first, I thought crap, this mobo doesn't have the holes, then it hit me (as I read the instructions.)  By removing the plastic processor retention frame you expose your four holes through the mainboard.  When I said maybe before, I took the easy way out for the installation.  The retention tray fastens into a square plastic plate complete with nuts.  With this plate sandwiched between the motherboard tray and the motherboard, I was able to install the 'standoffs' into the nuts of the plate and get a secure fit without removing the mainboard.  On an Athlon based system with this setup, there would be no way around removing the mobo.  Here we got lucky.

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