Prolimatech Megahalems CPU Cooler Review

Installation

Thinking back on the installation of this massive piece of engineering marvel we are of two minds. On the one hand we literally took the mounting brackets out of the bag and got a big ol’ goofy grin just looking and holding them. We now literally have a new definition of “overkill” when it comes to mounting something as simple as a CPU cooling solution. Massive. Chunks. Of. Metal. Is what those insane engineers over at Prolimatech used….and good bless ‘em for it!

This is the upside to this installation. The down side is the engineers went for very tight tolerances when boring the holes for the 775/i7 combo brackets. OK, where getting ahead of ourselves here, let’s step back and start from the beginning and then let you decide if this is a deal breaker or not…..We don’t think it is but before you buy you should be aware of a potentially mildly frustrating issue.

To start the installation procedure you first remove your motherboard from its case. This is one of the few exceptions in that even if you OWN a HAF 932/ATCS 840/etc which has a backplate cut-out….don’t bother with it, it will just slow you down. To properly install this cooler you need all the elbow room you can get.


Once this is done, simply place the backplate in position and using the short end of the thumb screw's bolts, screw through the motherboard and into the backplate. When all four are done you can lay the motherboard back down. We found having the motherboard tilted up on one end with the backplate held in one hand while the other screwed in the screws worked the best.


Now we come to the point when the issue began. In a perfect world your two large 775 / i7 combo brackets will then gently lay across the double sided screws and allow you to tighten them into place with the four small nuts. This is how it went for the 775 installation, sure the holes were a little tight but they did fit with a bit of effort. The i7 screw holes on the other hand were too damn small! The 775s were approximately 9/64" in size whereas the i7 holes were only 1/8th of an inch. All kidding aside,the bottom line is the holes were too small and while 1/64" of an inch doesn’t sound like much, trust us it IS.


The simple fix for this was to bore out the holes and continue on. As we said earlier there is a heck of a lot of metal to work with and over-boring the holes to 5/32", or even 4mm would not change this equation. Since we like things to go smoothly and since the 775 holes were tight we took the precaution and re-bored the i7 holes to 5/32nd and called it a day. Needless to say they slipped into place perfectly and we then continued on with the installation procedure.

Please note that after talking to Prolimatech, customers of this cooler and other reviewers (15 people in total) we have determined that our unit was the only one with this issue. As such, we can say that there is a very good chance that the issue we had was a very rare occurrence.


With the now fixed brackets in place and secured, we then applied our thermal compound and inserted the third bracket through the top of the base. This bracket has two small “fingers” which line up with two small indents in the top of the base allowing the bracket to freeze the cooler in place. The fact it has two of these fingers instead of the usual one also means this heatsnk won’t twist on you like a certain TRUEly big cooer does. With the bracket in place we simply lowered the cooler into position and used the two spring loaded screws to lock the hole thing together.


While the Megahalems is a big cooler, its two towers are high enough to ensure maximum compatibility with as many motherboards as possible. Neither our slightly above standard height ram nor our motherboard's components ever came into actual contact with it; no matter which way we oriented the cooler itself.

Even though they do not include a fan, Prolimatech does include a pair of wires for mounting a lone fan. We wish they had included four of these wires and not two as this cooler really cries out for double fan goodness. Also lacking was any vibration dampening material to go between said fan and the cooler. This was puzzling but in the grand scheme of things those little rubber strips don’t do that much. For these tests we rummaged through our Ye Olde Parts Bin and modified a set of Noctua wires to work with this cooler, so YES we will be including double as well as single fan performance numbers.


Even just by looking at this mounting setup, you know its going to give good results. By way of good engineering, Prolimatech has for all intents and purposes frozen their new cooler to the motherboard which means the optimum amount of pressure will be applied to the base plate.

All in all we wish the little mounting hole issue with this cooler had never happened as it is the only really negative part of the whole experience. Yes, you could argue only including one set of clips is a bit on the cheap side of things but other than that, we were extremely impressed with the ease with which the Megahalems can be installed.