A 90x90x25mm fan is attached to one side of the heatsink. The cooler’s ribs are curved downwards on the sides thus making up a blank side panel:
This helps put the airflow to maximum use and avoid losing air at the heatsink sides. Note that the pipes are tilted in the same direction as the airflow and the heatsink is shifted relative to the cooler’s central axis, but the fan makes the cooler symmetrical again.
Note also that the four heat pipes do not go through the base, but only go out of it. As a result, the heat flow is distributed to each heatsink side with two pipes rather than four as it might have been.
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These photographs show that the cooler’s heatsink is symmetrical and permits to install one more 92mm fan for exhaust, but another pair of wire clips that would help do that is not included into the box. By the way, the official cooler description mentions a special fan fastening mechanism that suppresses vibration and noise. I’m not sure what it means because the direct contact between the heatsink and the fan, which is pressed down with two clips, cannot be regarded as an anti-vibration mechanism. There are no rubber pins or soft spacers in the VertiCool IV kit as well as in the other cooler kits from Spire.
The cooler’s base is protected from scratches and other damage with a piece of polyethylene film with a warning that you should remove it prior to installation. The heat pipes are inserted into other pipes in the bottom, the middle pair of pipes being placed higher than the two outermost ones.
This resembles me the aluminum heatsinks of low-end GlacialTech coolers that have such waves at their bottom, too. It’s hard to tell what effect, if any, this thickening of the middle part of the base has on cooler performance.
The base is finished much better than the base of the above-described DiamondCool:
There is no mirror shine yet, but at least you can feel no undulation. The base is perfectly flat.
The Spire VertiCool IV is equipped with a 92mm translucent fan:
The fan’s seven blades create an airflow of 36.8 to 58.2CFM at a rotation speed of 2000 to 3500rpm (set with the included speed controller). The manufacturer declares a noise level of 19.0 to 26.0dBA but I’ll check this out in the appropriate section of the review.
To install the cooler you only have to attach an appropriate pair of fasteners to its base (Socket 754/939/940, Socket AM2 and LGA775 platforms are supported) and fasten the cooler to a back-plate through your mainboard which you have taken out of the system case beforehand. Installed on a mainboard, the Spire VertiCool IV looks like this:
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Hovering high above the mainboard’s PCB, the heatsink won’t hit against the near-socket components. The cooler itself is rather compact, by the way.
The recommended price of the Spire DiamondCool is $40.
