SilentiumPC Fortis 3 EVO ARGB Cooler Review
Mike Sanders / 4 years ago
Installation
Starting off with the manual, which is often a good place with any product that requires some assembly, while the information is pretty light in terms of written instructions, this is fortunately more than compensated for by the fact that the installation diagrams are nice, large, and very easy to understand.
Mounting
In terms of the actual mounting bracket to the motherboard, while the design isn’t particularly unusual (and we believe they have retained the same design from the other Fortis 3 coolers) we have to admit to not being hugely impressed with the inclusion of bolts. Yes, this isn’t an overly problematic aspect and actually, in terms of getting it roughly fixed with your hands, it’s actually quite easy.
With our testing bench though, we do have the luxury of it being pretty open plan and, as such, had plenty of room to manoeuvre that spanner. Would this be more difficult if the motherboard was already installed in a traditional chassis design? Probably! – Put simply, it’s not an overly huge criticism of the mounting design, which is largely fine, we just don’t like bolts and spanners. It’s a personal opinion, but they’re not necessary, and more often than not, they’re simply just more problematic than systems that simply require a Philips head screwdriver. Speaking of which…
Overall Thoughts
From out of the box and onto our test bench, the SilentiumPC Fortis 3 EVO ARGB took us around 10 minutes to install. Remember that V-shaped radiator though? Well, to successfully fit that to the mounting bracket, you need a pretty lengthy (at least 4-5 inches, and ideally pretty thin) screwdriver and, wouldn’t you know it, you’re not provided with one.
For me, that’s a big problem. If you’re going to have a strange design or mounting system, you simply have to provide all the tools to work with it.
Putting that aspect to one side, however, the cooler certainly looks like a very solid proposition sat on our test bench and, all going well, with that beefy radiator that should hopefully translate into some pretty nice results. Well, that’s the theory at least!
