Corsair h80i hard to fasten to s1155

Everyone tells me that these things are awesome, and even the install-videos say the same thing. Hassle-free water cooling with great performance and no issues, at all. It sounded too good to be true, and in a way it was.

First of all, I'd like to say that I've been owning and building PC's since the days of the 8086, I am by no meaning of the word a "newbie" in adding/removing/upgrading components, I always build my own rigs to my own preferences and never care about those Alienware-things. I do my own cable-mods, shrink-socks, and I've installed hundreds and hundreds of heatsinks and fans, both properly and guerrilla style with "what's available".

So I figured installing the h80i would be a complete walk in the park, and boy oh boy it wasn't.

First thing first, if you ever get one of these things, DO NOT follow the step-by-step instructions, they are the biggest lie you'll ever be told and doing so will completely hamper your progress. For whatever reason, I did follow it this time. It's my first water cooled system, so I figured there'd be stuff I'd be new at, so at page 1 it said to mount my radiator + 2 fans at the back of the case. Said and done, right? No, because the radiator screw mounts are flimsy as *beep* on this thing, the screw threads on one of them actually broke when I was hand-screwing the thing to the side, I wasn't being violent, I was just following the instructions... (famous last words). Also, they forgot to ship the 8 screw spacers, so I had to improvise my own.

Since I'm able to improvise solutions I finally got the radiator and fans in place, and turned to page 2 to get to step two, which was to mount the back plate to the motherboard. Sweet! Now I just have to remove the motherboa... wait, to do that, I have to remove the radiator. OK, this is where I realized I should've read the whole step by step progress before actually starting it (and at this time I was really frustrated, because I thought my chassis had a removable back plate for the mobo, but that was a previous computer).

So I remove the radiator, attach the flimsy plastic back plate Corsair sent and screwed in the distances. Reattached the radiator and fans, and then everything should be fine.

So I progress to the part where I'm supposed to attach the unit to the back plate, via a clamp (using four screws). But at this point I look at the copper bottom and see one of these standard grey heatpads that I've ALWAYS removed, so I take some proper solvent and remove that thing, clean my CPU, and apply a thin layer of AS5. At this point I figure this attachment should be no more or less difficult than screwing on a regular CPU heatsink with a fan, so I do my old "cross trick", and attach the thing screwing on the thumb screws with opposing corners to get the thing balanced properly on the core.

Done and done? Right.

Wrong.

I attach the cables to the fans, and the power supply to the pump and the USB connector, and boot the thing up. Everything starts up just fine. Except the CPU temperature at idle is at 80 degrees Celsius. Radiator temp is at 19C, so it can't be that so I conclude that the "heatsink" itself must be poorly attached. It has happened once or twice before that I forgot to attach the screws properly, so I quickly shut the thing down and start screwing it together, using a screwdriver this time to make sure.

So I boot the thing up again, and the temperature is about the same, 80C in idle, "WTF?". So dismount the heatsink, look at the copper edge and I see about three small dabs of AS5 on the copper plate, which means little or no contact at all between the "heatsink" and the CPU, the only and obvious explanation of course. I start by checking the distances, and these things are so flimsy (attached to a plastic back plate, come on) it's not even funny. In spite of being screwed down tight, you can push them and they'll wiggle a little. I screw them down a bit more, clean the copper and cpu surfaces, reapply AS5, press the "heatsink" down make sure the "heatsink" is centered dead on the CPU and screws, attach the thing again. And go for attempt #3 at booting the damn thing up.

Idle temp: 60 degrees C.

(At this point I'm getting pissed off)

I take the thing apart and look at the copper plate, about 1/3:rd of it has AS5 on it, so I quickly start using a trial-and-error method of wiping it, screwing it down, removing it and checking the backplate for AS5 "goo". After about 4 attempts and pushing the "heatsink" so it is misaligned horizontally, I get about 80% contact surface, between the CPU and the copper plate, and decide to go with that (this is literaly hours from starting to attach this thing, and by this time I'm sweating, annoyed and frustrated). So once again I boot up the computer.

Idle temp 30 degrees Celsius, Radiator temp 19 degrees.

OK, that's a whole lot better. But I am still annoyed about the fact that I didn't get full coverage, but I just CBA to wiggle that ***ing thing anymore, so I start doing a load test. Full CPU load for 30 minutes, CPU temperature rises to about 70 degrees Celsius. And the radiator never gets above 24 degrees.

My impression thus far of the h80i is "Meh". I don't know if it's an issue with the one I got, or just the fact that no one tells you how ***ing poorly the attachment is designed. Heatsink manufacturers have done this right for years, but apparently if you're Corsair a plastic back plate and some flimsy distances that wiggle and are completely unreliable is "the next gen of cooling attachment". Hell my stock cooler had a better system, Basically all I had to do was to push four different buttons that pressed and attached the thing to the motherboard, 100% connection between the core and the "heatsink", never an issue.

So now I'm debating whether to keep this thing or just buy a new and proper heatsink and fans and never look Corsairs way again.

I don't think it's the thickness of the motherboard, that seems standard (It's an ASUS P8P67 LE REV B3). Personally I think it's the fault of the backplate, because even with the screws attached, they still wiggle.

Well dude, to get the most surface to surface contact I had to push the heatsink from being centered (you know, centered as in where the thumbscrews are in relation to the hole in the fins of the metal bracket mount. The whole thing can "slide" over the CPU (if you know what I mean) when it's not fastened. When I had the heatsink pushed horizontally toward the radiator it got the most contact. But about 20% was still "in the air" so to speak. I couldn't push it further because of the risers (the screws that attach the metal bracket mount with the thumb screw). The whole mount feels like a design flaw to me, the fact that the thing won't lay (almost) flat on the CPU without pushing it to the edge shouldn't be able to happen.