Sapphire Vapor-X CPU Cooler Review

Installation of the Sapphire Vapor-X was a reasonably simple procedure. First you had to install the backplate to the motherboard with the appropriate screws. Then the mounting bracket had to be installed to the motherboard by attaching it to the backplate through the top of the mounting screws. Finally you then place the CPU cooler on top of the processor and attach it using the screws which are pre-fitted to the cooler. One thing to note is that you must remove the fans to secure the cooler to the processor.

When you have mounted the cooler correctly the air should go into the cooler over your RAM and exit by your rear I/O. The word Vapor-X should be at the bottom left nearest to the PCI express lanes if you have mounted the heatsink the right way round. The Vapor-X cooler is a nice size and doesn’t block any RAM slots or encroach into the PCI Express area.

Here you can see RAM clearance is very close with the first RAM slot but you can still fit a high profile module in there if you so wish. The only minor issue is that they may touch, which isn’t really an issue because the fan is plastic so there will be no electrical conductivity between the two.

Motherboard heatsink clearance is generally good although if you have really high motherboard heatsinks over the VRM area you may want to double check measurements as the Vapor-X doesn’t stay entirely within the socket area. The reason for this is that the provided mounting bracket is much larger than it should be. A lot of motherboards have had trouble (particularly ASUS ones) with mounting this cooler so be very wary when purchasing it. On some motherboards it won’t fit at all, on others it will only fit the wrong way, i.e top-bottom instead of front-back and on most motherboards it does fit okay.