Is there a trick with wire fan clips?

[Angilion]

If I sat down to think of a worse way of securing a fan to a heatsink than those clips, I'd have a job doing so.

I've actually failed to be able to get the fan attached to a True Spirit 140 Power. You can't put the fan on until after the cooler is attached to the motherboard (a screw is under the fan) and I can't get the bottom end of one of the clips in. I can't see a thing because it's near the motherboard and obscured.

I decided to take a break from it when I was starting to consider drilling holes in the heatsink and bolting the damned fan on

I've always found them a problem. Am I missing something obvious?

I'm referring to this sort of thing:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/prolimatech-genesis-140mm-x-25mm-fan-clips-hs-043-pl.html

The shape's slightly different for the True Spirit 140 Power, but the basic horrible idea is the same.

 

[Angilion]

Well, I went back to it when I wasn't irritated by it, removed the memory for a bit more space, repeatedly moved the fan by a few micrometers in different directions to try to get it exactly centred so the tiny bloody fan holes were equidistant from each clip (there isn't even a positioning mark of any kind), swore at it a bit...and then it slipped in easily like it wasn't a problem at all and why had I spent ages on it?

I haven't got an OS on this new build so I can't test under load, but it certainly ticks the boxes in idle. I can hear a very faint ticking if I take the panels off and put my head in the case. That's it. Genuinely inaudible otherwise. I wasn't sure it was working until the BIOS screen appeared. CPU fan is at 580rpm. Slow enough to be able to see the label on it as a label and not just a blur! The CPU (4790K currently at stock) is idling at 4.4GHz and 3.5C above ambient. System temp (no idea where the thermosensor is, must be on the board somewhere) is 7C above ambient. I think I'll add a second case fan, since an intake fan would be good for cooling the drives and I have another fan rated at 21dB max. I also think I'll keep this PC for myself.

I'd recommend the cooler...to anyone who has a very wide case (it's very tall - 172mm) and someone else to put the fan on

Come to think of it, the cooler itself has a pretty poor mounting system. You plop it on the CPU and screw a plate over the cooler base to hold it to the mounting bracket. With 2 screws and no springs, so have a guess at how much force to use to tighten them and good luck trying to avoid having the cooler twist around on the CPU while you're screwing the plate down.

It seems like they spent 99.9% of the development time and money on the cooler and fan and then did a caffeinated all-nighter when they realised they had to slap together a way to fit them together and on a PC by 0900 the next day using bits they happened to have lying around.