Sandybridge Air Coolers which are easy to install?

Intel push pin ones. A lot of people hate them, but I got fed up of taking my motherboard out each time I needed as I have no cut out in my case.

Actually I recommend the Akasa Venom Nano, its cheap but its quite brilliant. Its a lot smaller than my old Titan Fenrir Evo but cools as well if not better.
 
I wouldn't say the push pin cooler are easy to install unless you take the motherboard out of the case or there's access at the rear to support the motherboard while you fit the cooler.

It can take some force to fit the push pins and without support the motherboard could be damaged.
 
So I'm guessing not many air coolers are easy to install?

Am I right in thinking if you want ease, go with the Antec or Corsair watercooled setups?
 
Just take the mobo out of the case and install a push pin cooler. Easiest thing ever.

Whatever you get, unless you have a large motherboard hole the board should really come out before you try to put a cooler on.

I don't know what you mean by a difficult cooler to install, are we talking huge air bricks that overhang everything or what? But the watercooling kits are fairly straight forward.

The H50 I have needed a backplate which was no problem to put on, then the frontplate had to be tightened down from the front to clamp the pump/waterblock onto the cpu. No hassle.
 
I always hear horror stories of it taking ages to fit a cooler. Basically I want an air cooler which doesn't require a tonne of force to get it to fit properly.

Do most air coolers nowadays come with a back plate and screws you just use a screwdriver to fit into place?
 
IDo most air coolers nowadays come with a back plate and screws you just use a screwdriver to fit into place?

Quite a lot do but unless you have a case which has a cutout with access to the rear of the motherboard you'd still have to remove the motherboard from the case.
 
Meh, I'm one of the worst procrastinators alive today, I'll get a heatsink then spend a week thinking about doing it trying to work out how will be quickest, running out of time and putting it off another day. When you finally get down to it, you're down from cables out, computer out from under desk and mobo out of case in a few minutes, 5 mins to install with thermal paste cleaning/re-applying, then another 5 minutes before I'm turning computer back on.

Having put on a stock intel heatsink for the first time in years outside of the case I wouldn't like to push that hard down on the mobo in a case where it can flex a lot as you push down.

I am getting more behind the whole sealed watercooling unit heatsink thing, not really for performance but because its finally a sane design in terms of space around the socket not being taken up. Decent performance, easier mounting than most tower heatsinks due to low profile and the heat sink/fans being in the way. The daft clips on Thermalright heatsinks do my head in, trying to clip a fan onto one of their big heatsinks, with their crap clips, which just rocks and twists the heatsink around and generally flexing everything.

Antec 620 water jobby coming in at under £40, supposedly very quiet, the bigger brother is very badly priced in the UK though I finally saw a sub £70 price recently, at £60 or just under, like its priced in the US, it would actually be well worth the extra fan control/fan/thicker radiator.
 
Anything with bolts and screws that aren't blocked by a huge heatsink is easy. Namely the many self-enclosed water kits. It's easy to fit blocks on any custom WC system but space constraints and tube routing are harder than off the shelf.

That said, once you install a heatsink it's done, shouldn't need to worry about it for awhile unless you are a nutjob and change CPUs every couple weeks (I've grown out of this).
 
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