lol, there was never any question of not sending it back
I just installed the replacement though, and it's schweet.
Regarding the original bent up K2; The condition of the cooler plus the difference in packaging suggests that it may not have been a brand new item.
Firstly, in the pics I posted you can see a couple of marks on the top of it.
There were also a couple of black marks on the cpu contact plate.
The accessories were in a bag stuffed between the towers, and from the picture it looks half opened.
The new K2 I received today had the boxed 120mm fan placed between the towers and things like the fan clips were bagged up instead of loose in a box on the last one.
The last one included a 4pin Y splitter (I haven't seen one listed in any review or in the accessory list), whereas the new one doesn't.
I'm not blaming OcUK for this. I don't know what the real deal is here, and after all, **** happens...
If anything, it looks like an RMA'd K2 accidentally made it back into the regular stock.
I've now figured out what was going on with the PWM splitter! Turns out that the cable was fine.
It's my bloody Chassis2 header being a dick. Basically, it's a 4pin header pretending to be a full on PWM header.
The Chassis2 header will control 3 or 4pin fans but lacks
actual PWM functionality. So when the splitter is connected to it, only RPM and PWM signals go in and out (as they're the only two wires on the end of the splitter's mobo connector).
Since there is no working PWM pin on that header, the fan will run at full pelt with no control using the splitter.
I swapped the CPU fans (built in splitter) to Chassis2 header and put the 3-way split case fans onto the CPU header and now have full fan control since the 2 120mm cooler fans are connected with a fully wired plug to Chassis2 which only needs 3 pins to work.
Hope that makes sense.
Turns out I was right about the Spectre Pro PWM's too. Their stupid bridged screw holes DO make it impossible to fit them to a cooler using the wire clips.
Cutting them off will require a dremel as it's not just a tube, it's integrated into the frame.
According to Bitfenix, these are:
'
perfect for high-performance CPU coolers'
'
Spectre Pro PWM is the new gold standard in performance CPU cooling fans'
Errrrrmmm, no. No they're not. Performance wise, maybe. But not if you can't attach them in the first place...
It's not a huge problem for me as they were intended as case fans, although it would've been interesting to compare them to the two Alpenfohn 120mm's on the K2. They would've looked pretty naughty on there too (especially x3).
They ain't quiet either (especially over 1300rpm), but I can live with them.
I did a quick load run using Cinebench after installation and @4.5Ghz the K2 kept the cpu temps at around 55-57c.
The stock cooler @3.3Ghz was around 70-75C.
Ambient temps differed by around 2c in each test.
Works for me
Oh, and doyll, It's about 1-2mm from the side panel lol! The others would never ever have made it
Cheers dude!
