NoFan CR-80EH Passive Heat Sink Review
Hardware Compatibility
One of the biggest criticisms we had of the CR-95C was that although it provided silent cooling there were more than a few caveats, not least of which was the inability to use it in conjunction with RAM sporting anything other than a snug fitting metal jacket heat sink. Sadly, even the shuttlecock design has not increased the max RAM height from the already paltry 32mm. Basically, anything higher than standard RAM just isn’t going to fit. Oh, and getting the nearest stick in and out with the cooler fitted is a total arse of a job. If our Corsair Vengeance had been painted twice it wouldn’t have gone in.
As a product of the cooler’s size and shape you will need to select your motherboard carefully, or if retro fitting to an existing build, check it will fit the motherboard you already have. Although the cooler will actually fit onto most boards on the market the placement of the CPU socket in relation to surrounding hardware both on and off board is critical as not only may the cooler foul surrounding hardware, but may in fact prevent the board being mounted in the case at all if the CPU socket is too close to the edge of the motherboard and the space between the board edge and case roof is small. In the images below you can see just how close the cooler comes to fouling the rear case fan and the PCB of the GPU. We think you’ll agree it’s all uncomfortably close. To their credit NoFan do inform you of the importance of checking this sort of thing, asking that you ensure there is nothing within a 92mm radius of the centre of your CPU. They also provide a handy dandy list of compatible Motherboards as well as CPUs.
Before you all go ape-shit on the forum, Yes we know we’ve fitted it to a small M-ATX board and that it looks ridiculous in our mighty Cooler Master Test Trooper, and yes we would still hunt you down like a rabid dog if you ever built a functioning system like this. We have manufactured this set up for a reason, and that reason is testing. It has always been our aim to provide benchamark testing using reproducible hardware results. However, in this instance, as the low TDP precludes realistic testing with the usual 2011 chip we have opted for an M-ATX board with a single GPU socket and the same AMD A8 5600 CPU we use when looking at low power systems. We have however been able to keep the same testing enclosure so as to provide at least some measure of continuity.
All in all it’s a pretty tight fit, even with the cavernous proportions presented by the Trooper case. If you’re planning on putting this into an SFF enclosure you’re going to have to get that tape measure out and check those tolerances. It’s also worth noting that NoFan highly recommend that you only place the CR-80EH into a case with a top exhaust. This is because heat naturally rises and basically all that radiant heat needs somewhere to go if it isn’t to casserole the inside of your case and all the contents therein.
