Last night:
I installed my mini-ninja on my new P55 motherboard with an i5-750 in January. I had to buy the $10 scythe mount that uses plastic push pins. This mounting system kinda sucks, btw. I would prefer a bolt-through with some spring tension. Well long story short, it wasn't running that great, kinda hot and the performance of the CPU didn't blow me away.
So I went in to replace the fan on the heatsink, I got a Scythe Kama-flow 92mm PWM fan, which can operate from 300-2500 rpm and has a good noise characteristic (and is also cheap!).
Pop, the Ninja popped right off of the cpu on one side. I was shocked, what's going on? So I quickly removed the opposite side and was even more shocked at what I found.
The thinly applied layer of Artic Silver 3 had only 1/2 contacted the bottom of the heatsink, due to my poor mounting last time.
This means my i5 CPU wasn't even fully contacting the bottom of my heatsink for 6 months.
And it still ran before despite that. Well anyway, I had to completely remove the motherboard to make SURE that I firmly and completely got all 4 plastic pushpins to their full tightness. When I was done I could see the MB flexing a little bit from the tension.
Now my temps are 21-28 C per core at idle, and I haven't done a hardcore stress test yet, but during a hardcore Warhammer online session the temps peaked at 36 C. I suspect
Mini-ninja, push pin mounting on Intel 1156
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I had the same experience with a Xigmatek DHT product that I replaced my Minja with. Mine had not popped off, but a slight bump while moving the case cast one of the pins out. I only noticed because I was careful and checked afterwards.
Needless to say I immediately bought a Noctua replacement and haven't looked back since. Push-pins are unreliable, not easier to install (because you have to take out the mobo to verify the pins) and in general a bad idea.
Bolts are the way to go.
Needless to say I immediately bought a Noctua replacement and haven't looked back since. Push-pins are unreliable, not easier to install (because you have to take out the mobo to verify the pins) and in general a bad idea.
Bolts are the way to go.