Installation

You need not latch the fan onto the heatsink first. It may obstruct a key step later on.


Installation begins with clearing the pre-punched holes in the foam cushion of the back-plate, to suit your socket type. The corner elliptical opening of the backplate has three pre-punched holes, the farthest holes from the center are for LGA1366, middle for LGA1156, and the closest to the center for LGA775. Pull out the central detachable portion of the foam (leaving the peripheral parts, they're important), and place it on the back of the CPU socket to match the mounting holes.


Oh noes. A part of Aegir's backplate is obstructing the retention bar of the motherboard's northbridge heatsink. The foam seems quite flexible, and after the installation, we found this anomaly not to affect the balance of the back-plate.


After making sure you can see through the cooler mounting holes of the board, insert the four long screws. These are the very pillars of Aegir's installation, at this step they slide through with minimal insertion force. After inserting all four screws, flip the board while making sure the screws don't slide off. Slip in the washers over all four screws.


Fasten the screws with the threaded nuts. This step is tool-free, there's enough grip to tighten them well.


Now place the retention beams over the screws. At this step, you get to pick the orientation of the heatsink, whether you want it to blow hot air out from the rear of the case, or from the top vents of the case (if available). Place one beam over the SW (south-west of the socket) and NW (north-west) screws, and the other over SE (south-east) and NE (north-east) screws for rear-exhaust orientation, or one beam over SW and SE and the other over NW and NE screws for top-exhaust orientation.

Fasten the beams with hex nuts, use the spanner provided.


Apply the thermal interface material (TIM) provided. Xigmatek's TIM is viscous and silvery in appearance, indicating it's a silver-based thick compound, similar to Arctic Silver 5. Apply a small dab in the center, let the heatsink's pressure spread it out. Another method is to use an old plastic card to create a thin layer of TIM. Be sure to keep the layer very thin, too thick a layer, and it will actually pose as an insulator. Aegir's base is smooth and leveled enough for you to use the first method.

Props to Xigmatek for supplying the TIM in a syringe and not a sachet. Sachets tend to get messy, and after a use, tend to make the leftover TIM dry up.


Slide the aluminum retention bar with its tiny protrusions facing downwards. Those protrusions should lock into the two side holes of the CPU base, and the holes of the bar should pass through the fixed bolts of the retention beams, telling you the bar is properly placed.

Now use the remaining two hex nuts and fasten the aluminum bar to the retention beams. I suggest you insert both nuts and turn them down loosely, and later tighten them one after another, or there's chance that the bar will slip out of the bolt on the other end.


First attach all four rubber bolts to the fan frame, then latch the drum ends of the bolts through the fan-retention grooves of the heatsink.

On a scale of 10, I'd rate the ease of installation at 7. Installing the Xigmatek Aegir requires that you have access to the back of the motherboard. If the motherboard tray of your case doesn't have a hole under the CPU socket area, you will have to dissemble your system and pull out the motherboard. A cumbersome task. Rubber bolts as fan retention can also be cumbersome to install or remove, compared to metal clips.