Installation

Installing the Dark Rock Elite is fairly quick and easy. To start, remove the AMD motherboard's plastic brackets and then secure the mounting arms to the backplate via the requisite screws and plastic spacers. With the mounting arms secure make sure to apply thermal paste and do a better job with the application than I did for the third photo.


With the top plate and middle fan removed, position the heatsink on the CPU and then screw the captive bolts into the mounting arms. Once done, slide the fan and top cover back in place and connect the fans together, then plug everything into the appropriate motherboard header.

Overall, the mounting hardware is super simple and easy enough to work with; however, on AMD systems, I would still prefer threaded standoffs rather than plastic spacers that require holding a screw, spacer, and mounting arm together before securing it to the motherboard backplate.

The installation on Intel is even easier: simply place the backplate screws in the correct spot on said backplate and use the rubber o-rings to secure the screws. After that, the process is similar to AMD, except the spacers screw down onto the motherboard, thus holding the backplate in place after which its the same song and dance.