[ElDani]

Hey guys,

I recently bought a couple of components to get my computer back up to speed again: Phenom II x4 940, Gigabyte MA770-UD3 and of course a Mugen 2 that has been recommended to me in another forum. A word of information: the Mugen fits nicely without any issues at all. You'll need to remove the fan though in order to change the RAM because the first two slots are directly below it (and there's not enough space in my case to get to the other two).

Well, judging from the immense size of it compared to coolers from a few years past and from the benchmarks I was able to gather surfing the net, the Mugen 2 looks to be top of the line for an affordable prize. Here's my deal though:

My PII 940 runs with CnQ at 4x800MHz with 1.0 volt and currently has a temperature of 37-41°C at 90%+ idle with room temperature of 23.5°C. I haven't really tried a long stress test yet, but from what I saw, temperatures were up to 55-59°C from 100% load on 1 core (single core game). I'm a bit worried about that, since most PII's had a max temp of 39-40°C on a ComputerBase review (with some Noctua cooler). So where do the additional 20°C come from? I may not have the largest case and there's no air intake (only one 120mm fan at the back that disposes of hot air from the CPU), but this should not make such a huge difference.

Well, I suspect that this problem may be connected with a peculiarity about the cooler on my mainboard (GA-MA770-UD3) but I'm no expert on this.

In the past, coolers needed to be mounted and fastened to the board so there was considerable pressure on the CPU and the cooler couldn't move at all. Not so with the Mugen 2.

As soon as I removed the standard platform and the board's backplate I saw those four huge holes and then looked over to the tiny narrow screws I was to use for them - how could they ever be enough?. After having finished the assembly of the Mugen and after the board has been installed into the case, the cooler has some leeway of 1-2mm in any horizontal direction (assuming board=horizont) and I don't even need much pressure for it to happen.

I suppose that this issue exists because there was no way to mount Mugen's backplate to the board prior to installing the cooler. Maybe it's also the fault of such tiny screws, since they have some leeway in their holes and there is so little pressure on the cooler that allows for a moving cooler + backplate.

Now, long story short: is that normal? I did exactly as the installation guide told me, but the four screws (number 7 on the guide) don't help this problem. Not only are they very narrow compared to the holes in the board but the ridge goes only halfway up the screw and thus I can't even apply additional pressure on the CPU + board. Since they're the only way the cooler is mounted on the board with per my instructions, there's certainly nothing I could have done wrong, right?

Well, help me out please, cause this is incredibly frustrating for me.
Daniel