Installation (Cont’d)
The HR-03 Plus mounting hardware includes an X-shaped, steel back brace, thermal pad, four threaded studs, the main retention bracket, and four thumb screws. The four studs are first threaded into the steel retention bracket and then the whole HR-03 Plus assembly is set into position over top the GPU. The X-brace then secures the heatsink using four thumb screws from the back side of the card.
I mounted a 92mm Panaflo fan onto the HR-03 Plus using the supplied mounting wires. Like other Thermalright heatsinks, the wires fit into holes in the fin assembly and then clip over the fan’s base flange. Just like on the original HR-03, I found the wire retention mechanism a little more difficult to use than on previous Thermalright coolers.
Here are a couple more pictures of the HR-03 Plus mounted on the 8800 GTX video card and installed into our test system.
Notice that the combination of the 8800 GTX video card and HR-03 Plus cooler take up five full slots (4+ blocked plus 1 for the fan to breath). The stock cooler combination only took up two.
