Spire VertiCool II

As usual for Spire coolers, the packaging is fairly simple, yet effective. Inside the package you will find a small leaflet with installation instructions, a tube of thermal grease and the necessary retention brackets for installation. The VertiCool II can be mounted on both socket 754/939/940 and 775 motherboards. It comes with the socket 775 retention clips pre-installed, so you will have to replace them with the socket 754/939/940 clips in order to mount it on an Athlon CPU.

The VertiCool II is a tower style cooler with a 80mm fan installed on its side. Four heatpipes transfer the heat from the copper base to the large aluminium fins. Then, with the help of the airflow generated by the fan, the heat is dissipated. Spire is using the 80mm spider fan, which is also UV reactive. The quality and silent operation of this fan are proven to be very good. Another minor detail is that the cable has white sleeving, which is very aesthetically appealing. The copper base of the cooler is smooth and has a mirror finish.

The installation of the VertiCool II is fairly easy, but it could have been easier. First, you will have to remove the stock retention bracket and place the supplied rear retention bracket on your motherboard. Then you have to place the cooler on your CPU. Now, normally you would only need to screw the cooler down, but you will find that this is not really possible, at least from the side where the fan is. The fan restricts good access with a screwdriver, so you will probably have to remove the fan and re-install it when you have the cooler well mounted on your CPU. This is by no means hard, merely slightly annoying.