Installation

Installing the Cougar Forza 85 on Socket AM4 proves to be simple but still a bit of a pain. You will need to remove the AMD plastic brackets to start. Then you will need to place spacers over the nubs of the AMD backplate. If your motherboard is already installed, you are in for a bit of fun or, rather, the opposite of that. The trick is to keep the backplate firmly in place and to keep the spacers from falling off. Then place the screws into the AMD mounting bracket, slide them through the spacers and then secure the mounting bracket to the backplate. This process would be far easier with threaded standoffs. Something so few vendors utilize on AMD, which at this point absolutely blows my mind.


Once you're done wrangling the backplate, spacers, screws, and mounting bracket into place, you can apply thermal paste. With that taken care of, you can then secure the heatsink, alternating between the two captive screws to apply even mounting pressure. Once done, attach the fan.


With everything now in place, plug the fan into the CPU fan header, and you're good to go.

While the AMD installation was a bit of a headache due to the mounting hardware design, on the Intel side of things, the installation was a bit easier. While you will need to assemble the backplate, the fact the screws are secured to the backplate means it will stay on the board easier when in a vertical orientation. On top of that, the extra length means getting the spacers in place, and the mounting bracket as well, is far easier. Overall the mounting hardware is acceptable on Intel LGA115x / LGA1200 and LGA1700 mainstream sockets. AMD side Cougar needs to refine the process further.