SilverStone NT01 Pro Low Profile HTPC CPU Cooler Review

The SilverStone mounting kit was very nice in terms of mounting the CPU cooler. It provides a very firm mount yet you have the flexibility of being able to mount the heatsink facing in any direction you choose because of the symmetrical nature of the mounting system. This is great if you have a small motherboard or case and you need to have it mounted in a specific way for it to fit.

I found the fan mounting system to be awkward. You are provided with two sets of brackets, one for 70mm fans and one for 80mm fans. Attaching the fans to their respective fan brackets is easy but attaching those fan brackets to the cooler is difficult. The reason behind this is because the provided screws struggle to screw into the heatsink easily. In fact the provided screws manage about 1 rotation before locking up, it took me several tries and a lot of fiddling around before managing to successfully screw them in and mount the fans. It seems clear to me that the fan mounting mechanism should be simpler and more intuitive.

As a suggestion for improvement I believe SilverStone should provide fan clips that are tool-less and include fans. This would make everyone’s life a heck of a lot easier. It also doesn’t help that the provided Nitrogon/Heligon series manual doesn’t actually include anything about how to mount the fans onto this particular cooler, nor does it even list the parts included for the fan installation so most of the fan installation process is frustrating guess-work. Although it should be noted you can now get a correct version of the fan mounting manual here.

I would talk about RAM compatibility and heatsink compatibility but this is going to depend entirely on which way the cooler is mounted. If you were to position the brackets on the top and bottom, not right and left like in the picture, then you would be able to mount the cooler leaning over the RAM or leaning towards the rear IO. Either way I think 3 out of 4 mounting options block the first two RAM slots meaning low profile RAM only. If you have the cooler leaning towards the PCI Express lanes you will probably lose the first lane. I chose to mount the cooler facing the rear IO so I could have 100% RAM compatibility.