Ladies and Gentlemen I am VERY frustrated right now.

After reading the glowing review tom's gave the Cooler Master Hyper TX2 i ordered one on newegg about a week ago with dreams of seeing my little E4300 at 3Ghz dancing in my head. And then it arrived....

At first I tried to install it without taking my mobo out of the case. Bad idea.

So after much work i finally removed the mobo and tried with it out. After much more work, frustration, and hurting fingers i finally thought i had it, but when i tried to boot up my computer it would shut off after a few seconds, and sure enough my TX2 was too blame.

So again i removed my mobo and installed it, sure i had it this time. It worked fine, but at load my E4300 @ 3Ghz (1.375 volts) would clock in at 77-80 degrees Celsius (prime95 torture tests).

For a while i just assumed that the cooler wasn't as good at cooling as tom's claimed, but today when i moved my case i heard rattling and found the dang thing loose yet again. Mad as heck, I cleaned everything off and put the good old stock cooler back on with some artic silver 5 instead of that crap that comes pre-applied when you buy a HSF and lo and behold my proc now barely hits 70 degrees at full load with the same settings.

So please, faithful posters of the tomshardware forums, stay far far away from the Cooler Master Hyper TX2. I bought it because it was supposed to be EASY to install. If intel still uses push pins with nehalem, then maybe it's time for me to go back to AMD. At least their heastsinks are easy to install..

i remember the first time i installed a heatsink. why is your voltage so high btw?

Y'know, it is possible that you simply got a defective cooler, the Mobo socket wasn't quite right or you simply installed the cooler wrong.

Heck, there's a ton of variables that could lead to your bad experience with this cooler, so you can't automatically blame the cooler itself, nor can you blame Tom's simply because they had a good experience with the product and you didn't.

Amazing.

relax, the cooler master tx2 is a great cooler don't bash it because you didn't install it properly

i have owned this cooler for over a year now

its very easy to install considering the fan/fan housing is easily removable for installation.

when installed properly this heat sink easily cools my 3.0 ghz quad core to 42C idle and full load temps don't exceed 68C, not only that but it is extremely quiet and cannot be heard over my case fans.

and for the price, $25 on newegg i couldn't imagine anyone having anything bad to say about it

You must've done something wrong, im using a shi+ old heatsink and its still better than the stock TOY they give. My oc'd cpu hits 38c with prime95 with lowest fan speed.

you must have done something wrong. run it at stock see what temp you got now. make sure you push the pins in fully.even if they clicked it dont mean its in.

Get one of these and quit messin' with the push pins;
http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/lgbowiscsp.html

I have to ask, did you use good thermal paste when you installed the cooler ?

So you get a defective unit/possible botched install and they are totally useless for everyone else? Right.....

I doubt Tom Pabst (sp?) had anything to do with your botched heatsink install. In fact, he's probably chilling in the shade sipping a Pina Colada on the beach while overclocking the f*** out of a quad to fight boredom. Who knows?

what tom looks like anyway?

anyone know where i can get those LGA775 bolt thru kit in UK?

i'm using that exact cooler right now..... and i'm not going far above 50 degrees....

While I am not very familiar with this cooler, it is absolutely possible that you did not install it properly. A heatsink should be extremely tight against the CPU. There should be absolutely no movement at all. It should feel rock solid. If it has any movement at all then you have probably done something wrong.

I know that the stock Intel C2D heatsink have push pins which can be a pain to snap in correctly. It's a very easy error to make. I have a friend who installed the HS/Fan wrong on his new CPU (you could actually wiggle it like it was on springs). It was pushing 100ºC and tripping the thermal protection circuit after 30 seconds. Once I fixed it for him, the temp dropped to the mid 40's.

Knickle, I'd tend to agree with you except in the case of the Zalman 9500-9700 line of coolers. Many end-users report that despite doing everything perfectly their coolers are still "wiggle-able" despite being screwed down as tightly as possible (end of thread). The point is that the coolers are not always rock-solid...the push-pin coolers are just no fun at all.

Thems fighten words! where is Tom to defend himself!