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Mounting:

My testbed for this cooler was the excellent Asus A7V. I've only had this motherboard for a week or so but I've been very impressed so far and had a lot of fun with it. However, installing the Majesty Twins onto it was nothing short of a nightmare. Installing SocketA processors is a nervewracking experience at the best of times, what with all these reports of crunched cores on Durons and Tbirds - even slipping an easy-to-install cooler on gives me a little bit of anxiety, waiting for the dreaded crunch.

click for larger image

With the Majesty Twins, this was exacerbated by two things. Firstly, the width of the cooler across the base meant it was fouled by a large capacitor near the socket and the separate power regulator board on the A7V - you can see this in the picture above. Secondly, the clip itself is designed so that the holes on one side are partly blocked by the base of the sink itself. CoolPC obviously experienced this with the Abit KT7 also - they provide an extra sheet of instructions with their own technique for moving the clip up and mention the KT7 specitically. Here's some photos of me following their instructions:

click for larger pic	click for larger pic	click for larger pic
holes partially blocked	lever clip onto baseplate	it catches, leaving holes clear

This works fine, and the instructions are a nice inclusion from CoolPC. A few extra things to be careful of: don't scratch the part of the heatsink that's going over the chip core itself (you'll do horrible things to your heatsink's efficiency) and, don't let any of the small metal particles you scratch off get onto your motherboard or CPU (as they're conductive and could cause shorts). The 2 problems with this trick are that, when you push the clip onto the socket, it pretty often pops off prematurely and you have to start over. This is why in the pics above, the gold covering is really badly scratched off the aluminium base - I spent a frustrating 30 minutes trying to get it mounted at one point. The second problem is that eventually (in my case, after only 2 successful mounts but who knows how many unsuccessful ones) the edge of the plate wears and the clip refuses to stay on it.

This is my solution to both these problems - it looks simple but it took a LOT of frustration to get to this point:

click for larger image

Two small HDD-mounting screws will fit neatly under the plate once you've pried it up. This will hold the plate in place until you have made sure the short clip is on the three lugs properly. Then, you can use a strong, thin object (I used the metal body from inside a pen) to pop the screws out, retrieve them with pliers, let the clip pop back into place and mount the heatsink as per usual. It's important to remember, when mounting this unit, to make sure you put pressure on the CLIP and not on the heatsink itself. This will help you avoid a crushed core.

Removing the unit was similarly hassle-prone on the A7V. Again, the wide base of the heatsink hits the capacitor and voltage regulator board. I don't know if this is really the fault of the heatsink or of the A7V - having not used this unit on another motherboard I'd be tempted to just say that they are a bad combination together, but given CoolPC mention the KT7 specifically in their extra instructions, it seems more the heatsink's fault. Also, the Super Orb fits just fine on this board.

Let me just state again that mounting this unit was a major issue on the A7V. Considering the frustration factor and the risk of crushing the core or scratching traces on the motherboard, this is only forgiveable if the unit offers incredible cooling performance. Let's see if that tradeoff is made..