Installed

Zaward Vapor 120 is a tall heatsink, but one that's compact-enough as to not interfere with other components on the motherboard, it is designed to make up for its compact design with a number of design innovations. The Vapor 120 should fit in most non-SFF ATX, M-ATX, or even mini-ITX cases.


The immediate benefactor of the slim tower design is the VRM area, which has a lot of breathing space. You can go ahead and install a second "pull" fan, and it won't congest the VRM area.


The GIGABYTE X58A-UD7 is a very crowded motherboard, its designers made lavish use of heatsinks to keep key components cool. The Vapor 120 maintains a safe distance from the northbridge heatsink. The detachable Hybrid Silent Pipe northbridge heatsink assembly won't in any way obstruct normal installation.


This is the key area where clearance is king. A badly designed cooler would deprive you of a memory slot, thereby making two other slots on the LGA1366 motherboard useless (if you want to properly populate every memory slot and retain a stable triple-channel configuration). The standard-thickness fan supplied with the Zaward Vapor 120 gives plenty of clearance for all six of the memory slots, including the one closest to the CPU socket. You can install a tall memory module that uses a fancy heatsink, and it won't affect the cooler. I can't imagine Corsair's Dominator AirFlow memory cooler facing any clearance issues, either.