When I opened the package and box, and saw it, I swear, my jaw almost dis-located!
Too big to fit in my bigger than usual Micro ITX/ATX, and although it fit my mother board, it obstructed the PCI-E slot :-( , but none-the-less, although I didn't actually get a chance to use it, this is truly an epic CPU heatsink/cooler.
Although my miss-fortune with my intended motherboard use, I was able to mount it onto an old but fairly good (only about 2 years old) AMD motherboard, now, although I didn't bother testing temperature differences, I can honestly say, it cools the CPU brilliantly!, even after moderately high CPU load, not even the heatsink itself got hot! felling the heatsink I only noticed a slight warmf about 3 minutes of high load!, and with average computer use it's even cooler!
As for loudness, I couldn't really say, as the speed sensor/limiter on my motherboard is somehow broken, so the fan is always on max speed, which is a little loud, but I'm sure with a working speed limiter it wont be too loud.
A very convenient genius mounting system too! (those of you struggling with mounting on an AMD or Intel, why don't you try actually READING the manual instead of getting into a hissy fit wondering why it won't mount properly. there IS a special way to mount it, which is not obvious at first sight.
(if you actually read the very few lines needed to read on the manual, you'll find, as I found, it is very easy to fit and doesn't seem to cause any damage to anything.)
When I was testing fitting with my case, I was very careful, but the copper base scratches very easily, as it did for me, which will disrupt cooling, even with the thermal compound, so learn from my mistake, when testing fitting, protect the copper base with some thick tissue or something.
The fan attachment to the heatsink looks a little weak but
Overall, I would recommend this heatsink, and would get it again in the future.
