Contents

We opened the box and found that Spire was kind enough to include a tube of thermal paste with the cooler. It wasn't exactly Artic Silver 5, but still, it was a very nice touch on their part. You can never have too much thermal paste.

Here's a look at what's inside the box - you can just see
the included support plate under the power cable,
and the thermal compound to the left.

Spire also sleeved the power cable of the fan : that's another nice touch.

Now, you may notice something a little curious at the corner of the cooler (top left in the picture above). Where the power cable comes out, there is a little black nub on the power cable that almost blends in with the cooler. That is the thermal sensor for the fan, albeit in a curious position. We'll take a closer look at that later in this review.

Here's a look at the contents of the box.

This is what Spire supplies with this cooler.

In the picture above, we can see (from left to right) the tube of thermal paste, the support plate that fits under the motherboard, two screws to fasten the support plate to the retention mechanism (which is itself under the cooler) and the cooler.

It might not be obvious in the picture, but the plastic packaging around the tube of thermal paste looked a lot like what Arctic Cooling puts around their tubes of thermal paste. Come to think of it, the tube of paste looks a lot like an Arctic Cooling thermal paste tube! Hmm...

Specifications

The two features of this heatsink that distinguish it from base-end units are the skived fin technology used to manufacture the unit, and the thermal-controlled fan. We will take a look at each feature in detail.