Atomic MPC has been suggesting for a while that the best heatsink/fan for a HTPC build was the Scythe Big Shuriken. I’d seen one in April back in Osaka, but was not quite in the right brainspace to purchase it. So, I placed an order with PCCasegear http://pccasegear.com/ (whose excellent next day delivery to rural Vic arrived promptly at our PO box) as the smaller profile should fit.

Yes, it should.

Sadly, it doesn’t and the final configuration doesn’t allow for my 12GB of RAM. All the mucking around also meant that I had to clean off the thermal goop from the CPU.

Defeated, I’ve installed the stock Intel heatsink/fan.