Thermalright Socket AM2/AM2+ Bolt-Thru-Kit

The “Thermalright Socket AM2/AM2+ Bolt-Thru-Kit” as its named is also compatible with AM3 mountings and Cogage heatsinks. In this article, I unbox the accessory pack in order to mount a Cogage True Spirit Socket 1366 heatsink. The test system for the mounting is my AMD 965BE CPU, Biostar TA890FXE AM3 motherboard, and AirKing Utility Blower. Special thanks to forum member and benchmarking team captain Brolloks – he sent me this brand new CPU in the “Secret Santa” gift exchange! Forum membership and the friends you make has its rewards sometimes!

Misspent Youth

Ok, so this isn’t about my childhood exactly. In fact, it was just a week or so ago. However, hanging onto that youthful spirit and doing things which some may consider “ill-advised” lowers your cholesterol (this claim has not been evaluated by the FDA). For a few days I was first running the Cogage True Spirit with it standing atop my AMD 1090T CPU without any retention mechanism. This is used on a benchmarking rig which stays horizontal and is unbridled by the traditional confines of a typical computer case. Despite any explanations I could offer I won’t tell you that it is a “legitimately good” idea to run your system like that. In my life experience however, legitimately good ideas can be boring – play it safe, color inside the lines, do what you are told. *Yawn* So taking this “legitimately bad” idea and running with it, how’d things turn out? It was good enough to let me have some fun and get my 1090T to 4.7Ghz for a CPU-Z validation. This was just CPU-Z benchmarking to see how high I could get the CPU frequency without pushing obscene voltage on air cooling. If you have to ask about stability, you should know better… it took me a few attempts to get a CPU-Z validation. Not bad.

With Age Comes Wisdom?

As we grow older we sometimes grow wiser. I like to think I grow wiser every few days, so true to form after a few days I got around to ordering a proper hold down kit and thats the focus of this article. After trying my local Microcenter to pickup the hold down locally and coming away empty handed (they had several Intel hold down kits, but were sold out of AMD kits), I turned to CrazyPC – there are lots of places to order a simple accessory like this, but they have a banner ad on Overclockers.com and I like vendors who support our community.

After placing my order I received the package in the mail just a few days later. It was packaged within a small box, filled with packing peanuts to protect the smaller box inside with the contents I was after. Checkout the packaging and the box for the Thermalright AM2/AM2+ Bolt-Thru-Kit below.

The kit comes with a hold down bracket, a back plate, 4 spring loaded screws, and a handy wrench which helps to tighten things down. Tightening is simple. Get each screw started, then tighten each one a couple turns at a time and rotate around until they don’t turn any further – don’t apply too much muscle, the screws bottom out once fully inserted and thats good. Rotating around as you tighten each ensures pressure is applied evenly – you’d really have to screw up to damage your processor doing this, but extra caution doesn’t hurt.

To get started, the stock retention bracket and backplate must be removed.

The Thermalright backplate included in the kit is solid metal with a plastic sheet to electrically insulate the backplate from the back of the motherboard, ensuring metal to metal contact does not occur and your motherboard is not shorted. The stock backplate is entirely plastic as you can see above. The backplate fits right into place and is secured later when mounting the heatsink

The Thermalright hold down bracket is adjustable to accommodate various heatsinks and sockets, and has a peg in the center to firmly secure the heatsink.

Gratuitous shots of the CPU used in testing, thanks brolloks!

Finally a few shots of the heatsink installed, securely, with the Thermalright AM2/AM2+ Bolt-Thru-Kit:

Conclusion

I can’t even say this hold down kit works as advertised – it works beyond advertised. This hold down kit should accommodate any similar Thermalright/Cogage heatsink with the center peg design pictured here, like the Cogage True Spirit. It can be purchased at your preferred vendor, or at crazypc.com when it comes back in stock (I might have bought their last one). I leave you with this, a short video of the mounting hardware and blower in action. This setup does 190CFM of airflow on low, 310CFM on high – please pardon the audio, theres a fairly noticeable sound of whooshing air!

– Matt Bidinger (I.M.O.G.)