Welp, I got the Noctua cooler installed, now time for an image dump.

 

 

The spread was fairly well on the AIO. what you are seeing on the edges of the CPU are dust, I have had this machine for about a year, and I haven't cleaned it out yet.

I need to get to that.

 

I cleaned the heat spreader off, standard practice, nothing special.

 

This is something that I didn't know, the TR4 Noctua coolers have offset screws on the mounting bars.

This allows for more space between the PCIe slots and the cooler if desired by raising the cooler slightly.

As you can see, I set the cooler to be 6mm higher (technically lower for me since my motherboard is inverted) then the stock configuration.

Also, yes, the cooler was resting on my leg in that pic, enjoy the hair. 

 

The cooler installed, as you can see, I have about a finger's worth of space, albeit a snug fit.

My middle finger measures about 62mm in width, for those who want a more accurate approximation.

 

What it looks like fully installed, i'm going to get a couple of redux fans since the stock brown Noctua fans are rather visible since I had to move them back.

 

 

 

And now for temps.

This was the average idle temperature for the AIO.

 

And this is the average idle temperature for the Noctua cooler.

I honestly wasn't expecting such a large drop in idle temps, but I find that pretty impressive, i'm going to try overclocking next.