CPU Cooler Fit
CPU Cooler Fit
To test the amount of space surrounding the CPU socket, we mounted the Noctua NH-D15 cooler to the CPU socket. This behemoth CPU air cooler sports a dual fan construction and two huge vertical cooling towers.
While the cooler fits to the board in a front to back orientation, the heat pipes on both sides of the cooler come into direct contact with both the audio card and CPU power circuitry daughter board. The pipes did put pressure on both cards and could lead to mounting issues between the cooler's bottom plate and the CPU's heat spreader. A smaller cooler would not run into this issue.
The close-up views of the cooler mounting better illustrate the tight fit between the NH-D15 cooler and the board's to either side of the CPU socket. There is no question that the coolers heat pipes come into contact with both.
With the cooler mounted in a horizontal orientation, the space issues encountered in the vertical orientation mounting do not occur. The cooler heat pipes easily fit within the allocated space. One thing to be wary of in this orientation is fan mounting. As shown, the outer fan is mounted to the right side of the cooler so it does not impede use of the board's PCIe x16 slot. However, this type of fan mount could impede cooler fit into your case depending on how much space exists between the right side of the board and the case's top plate.
The Noctua hold down mechanism is large enough to quickly determine exactly how much space is available around the CPU socket. The Noctua mounts fits the socket area without coming into contact with any of the board's integrated components or the audio or power circuitry daughter boards to either side of the CPU socket. You may have issues if your cooler has an overly large mount cage however.
The cooler's back plate rests on the socket back plate, minimizing the risk of direct board contact. If using a cooler with a larger back plate, there is the possibility of contact with the circuitry to the lower left of the CPU socket.
I can’t understand why, in
I can’t understand why, in this day and age, when there still is available place on the back panel, they still cram 4 usb ports in that small of a place.
Doesn’t Z270 come out
Doesn’t Z270 come out tomorrow? 😛
+1
This review is a waste of
+1
This review is a waste of time. Maybe six months ago this board was interesting, but it’s replacement will be out in weeks if not days.
I don’t think motherboard
I don’t think motherboard reviews are ever completely out of date, as motherboards fail a lot more often than CPUs, so someone in the future may be looking for replacement motherboards for their still-working CPU on an older platform. Intel’s lack of progress since sandy bridge also makes staying on the absolute latest platform unnecessary – it’s not a bad idea to buy an older platform in the future if you can find a good deal on it.
You can still buy the Impact
You can still buy the Impact VII.
Your comment is a retread, though.
Any modern motherboard
Any modern motherboard without M.2 is a complete fail.
agreed…. even my Z97
agreed…. even my Z97 Maximus Formula does.
I am also pretty confident the Z170 ASUS Pro Gaming has M.2 as well.
It has m.2, which is
It has m.2, which is populated by the WiFi adapter. That can be removed, or one can get a sled for an m.2 and plug that into the u.2.
Nothing else to add your
Nothing else to add your honor.
This board was aanounced in
This board was aanounced in October 2015 so this review is far too late, unless it was a new board revision or something.
BUT! My next build should be an Maximus IX IMPACT wirh Z270 so glad this board can still show up the world ATX motherboard are so 1995. Time to at least move to microATX.
Morry,
Just an FYI that your
Morry,
Just an FYI that your OC section states you used 4 x 4gb of Corsair RAM.
Ahh, writing reviews from a
Ahh, writing reviews from a template, we see.
Thanks for pointing that out.
Thanks for pointing that out. Fixed…