Our first image of the heatsink looks like many other products on the market today. A nickel coated copper base with four heatpipes going to an aluminium fin area that houses a 120mm fan.
The side of the heatsink is also similar to other products on the market. On each edge the fins stick out a little bit further than they do in the middle, this is for a fan mounting system that is made of solid wire.
The base is not exactly a mirror image; in the full screen image (click to view) you can see the machine marks where the base was cut. Most of the nickel plated heatsinks we see have a very refractive surface. It is almost as if the base was plated and then machined down.
Before mounting the fan you should install the rubber isolation strips that are included with the accessory package. The original Noctua coolers did not come with these and I never had a problem with noise by not using them, but since they are included go ahead and install them.
When you see the Noctua fan you will notice two things, the first is the thickness of the blades; many coolers come with fans that have blades that look paper thin and can bend easily. The fan also has two V-shaped cuts along its edges. Noctua calls these Vortex Control Notches and a description of their function can be found here.
Here you can see the fan mounted to the heatsink with the solid wire running along the height of the heatsink. Installing the fan is very easy outside and inside of the computer chassis.
A front view of the fan installed on the heatsink.
Here you can see two Noctua NF-P12 fans installed and also the length of the cable. The 3-pin fan connector is long enough to attach to a fan header at the bottom of a motherboard if you need to send the second one on that far of a run.
