Initial Thoughts
Everything seems ok at first, the box is a sufficient size and doesn’t go overboard on extra room, which is fine for most heatsinks out there. There’s not a whole lot of extra stuffing to protect the product beyond aplastic mold to fill the empty space. Again, this isn’t really a bad thing.
The instructions are…quite frankly a bit skimped on compared to most others I’ve seen. Surprisingly I’m not too bothered by that either. It’s pretty straightforward and just relies on the customer to follow along with the diagrams, and they are for the most part sufficient.
But that’s only the surface of what I’m sad to say is a sub-par experience.
Closer Look
If you didn’t notice from the picture of the accessories, I’ll make it absolutely clear: there are too many of them. Maybe not way too many, but enough to make installation more frustrating than it needs to be. So where to begin? Ok well the backplate is a little gimmicky in design, but I guess it’s nice that it has both types of arms for Intel and AMD sockets. However there’s a glaring problem: the hexagonal bolts that hold the backplate in place are so small you need a magnifying glass to see them which isn’t exactly helpful when the instructions say they can only be fastened in a certain direction.
Now as far as the actual heatsink is concerned, it’s not too terribly hard but again, there are four tiny screws you need to attach the proper socket brackets; followed by four springbolts that are needed to attach the heatsink to the nuts. So, if you like a lot of extra work and parts to install, then I’m sure you’ll enjoy the Venti. This heatsink comes with grease instead of paste, so you should know that it doesn’t take much pressure to squeeze a lot out, and it obviously won’t get you the same amount of heat transferrance as a good ceramic compound or something similar, but I suppose it’s alright.
My favorite part though is the fan. It comes with metal clips instead of needing rubber pegs which I like because as I’ve mentioned in my previous review, pegs are a bit of a hassle and can bend the fins. There’s only one problem: normally when a fan comes with metal clips it will actually have its own special set of pegs that are specifically designed to hold the clips in place. But apparently they didn’t realize that because this fan does’t have any, and I checked the box thoroughly and found none. It doesn’t matter anyway because the design of the fan doesn’t even allow for that type of peg, and that’s a major problem because, without some support, the clips can easily fall out while you’re trying to attach the fan to the heatsink. Not to mention, they’re taller than both the fan and heatsink. I honestly don’t know why.
