Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme 1366 RT CPU Cooler Review

Installation

Installing the Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme has always been sort of the benchmark for motherboards because it is of the largest heat sinks that spend time on a processor. It isn't the largest in total size but the wing span is amongst the widest. Couple this with the well planned mounting design to allow for multiple orientation mounts, and you have the perfect tool for testing a motherboard for CPU cooling compatibility. In fact, we recently featured the TRUE in the installation section of our EVGA X58 SLI review because there was so much discussion about that motherboard and the Ultra-120 eXtreme. We were hoping to have another motherboard or two on hand to test fit for this review but currently that is all we have access to, so we will simply be revisiting the photos from the X58 SLI review as they are quite exhaustive.

It is a tale of two cities, on the left above we have the north/south orientation, and on the right is the east/west orientation. Both have their advantages, and both have certain limitations. Every setup is going to vary so both orientations have their merit and we will take a closer look at each of them.

When setup north/south on this motherboard, the PWM heat sink tries to get in on the snuggling action while the north bridge heat sink stays well clear. We can see in the photos above that the fan can be easily positioned on either side of the heat sink but in both setups, the fan assembly does make contact with the PWM heat sink. This really is just a case of EVGA taking their PWM cooling setup to the complete edge of compatibility. I mean, how dare they not test this setup with the Ultra-120 eXtreme when designing that cooling solution. The fact of the matter is that they likely did, but were not expecting this fancy new fan holder which does leave a slightly larger foot print than the wire clips. Needless to say, it is tight but 100% do-able for this configuration...as long as you don't have six sticks of Corsair Dominator memory.

In this north/south orientation, the first DIMM slot is of no use with memory of a substantial stature, which is too say, above normal memory DIMM height. The Corsair Dominator heat sink is one of those modules that just won't work with the Ultra-120 eXtreme in the first slot of the EVGA X58 SLI in this orientation. Standard size memory, however, has no problem nestling into the first DIMM slot; even with the heat sink already installed. Again, this isn't so much a design flaw with Thermalright because after all, they were here first. It simply comes down to the nature of motherboards, especially the X58 platform. With a huge LGA1366 CPU socket, hot as funk PWM needing a large heat sink, fancy memory module heat sinks for marketing purposes, and six DIMM slots, something has to give. The good news is that this orientation isn't the only way to mount the TRUE.

It is again a bit of a tight fit with the PWM heat sink but there is plenty of room with a little effort and as the last photo above shows, everything fits nicely together with the TRUE and the DIMM slots are open and free to roam as they please. The one catch, which can actually be seen better in the second photo of this section at the top, is that the heat sink over hangs the top edge of the motherboard. For those users with cases that don't allow this, you will be forced into the other orientation with the EVGA X58 SLI. So really, the large footprint that gives the TRUE all of its cooling power isn't a huge problem but in certain setups, with certain hardware configurations, there will be limitations to its versatility.

We apologize for not being able to provide a number of motherboard test fits but the EVGA X58 SLI is all we have access to right now. You can find a brief test fit of the TRUE with our ASUS Rampage Extreme II review from a month ago. You can bet that in future motherboard reviews we will be featuring the Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme in the installation sections so keep your eyes peeled for them.