Alpenfohn Brocken CPU Cooler Review

With the fan installed you can see the unit gets quite chunky and as it is not an off centred design we could see compatibility issues with tall RAM.

The installation procedure for LGA 1155 requires that you affix the provided H-bar into the allotted grooves.

There is no backplate for LGA 1155 just stand offs which lock into some rivets.

These rivets have screw threads to lock the stand-offs into place. There are also insulating materials to prevent short circuiting on the motherboard.

The H-bar locks down the heatsink to the stand offs with some thumb screws.

A screw driver should be used for the installation to get it as secure as possible.

RAM clearance isn’t one of the Brocken’s strong points. It blocks the first RAM slot and obstructs by a few mm on the second (as you can see by the lean on the G.Skill Trident X module) though we can still use our system like this. The only concern is the metal fan clips touching the metal heat spreader. On smaller more compact motherboards such as micro-ATX and mini-ITX (that don’t have the 5mm socket/RAM area spacing that this motherboard has for extra caps) you will have troubles with the second RAM slot so will need an all low profile RAM kit.

The heatsink is actually pretty big so it is certainly going to stand out in your system.

The provided LEDs on the 120mm fan are UV Purple, unfortunately on my camera they would only show up as bright blue but I can assure you that they look purple in normal lighting conditions.