Those fancy black aluminum side plates you see aren't there simply to put the included sticker panels on for looks! They are actually there to prevent air from escaping out the sides of the heatsink fins. Lost air means lost cooling performance! These fins direct the air so that it makes contact with the entire heatsink before exiting out the bottom where their gentle arc directs it towards the CPU core where we ultimately want the best cooling we can achieve.

The fan that is used is a 120mm PWM controlled fan manufactured by Nexus themselves. Since they are a well known company for their extremely silent 120mm fans, this seems like a great cooler to install one of those on top of. Of course this fan mounts on four rubber fan mounts to absorb any vibrations before they reach the heatsink where they would ultimately be turned into unwanted noise. Being PWM controlled, this fan ranges from 600-1500RPM and has a noise level of around 17-21.6dBA. I was intrigued to see that the fan uses a "Hypro" bearing design to it - a name I was not yet familiar with at first. After some careful research I found out that hypro bearing design is made to last about twice as long as a traditional sleeve bearing fan, has manufacturing costs slightly lower than ball bearing fans and also has reduced heat output compared to traditional bearing designs. Although I could not find a MTBF rating for the fan on this cooler, it is covered by a three year warranty from Nexus for that extra piece of mind.

Installation:
Since the HOC-9000 is a multi-platform supporting cooler, it can be installed on both the latest Intel and AMD platforms. AMD users have the luxury of a simple retention clip and Intel users are lucky to have the four push-pin style of mounts. I was both surprised and happy to see that this cooler didn't require complete removal of the motherboard to install like most larger coolers do. I'll admit that having to disassemble my system and bolt the cooler on or take it off every time I need access to something becomes a huge inconvenience. The only minor problem I had with installation was plugging in the 4 pin +12V plug into my motherboard because it was partly underneath some of the heatsink's overhang. This wasn't really all that hard to accomplish, and the rest of the installation was very straight forward. This cooler was surprisingly light, which I didn't expect when looking at it, so that was a nice surprise. I have installed coolers that were twice as small as this one and probably felt like they weighed twice as much. The pictures show just how cool it looks when it's installed.

Testing:
Testing System:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Quad-Core, 2.40 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB, 8MB L2 Cache, 65nm
Motherboard: ASUS P5B-PLUS
Memory: 2 GB dual channel of OCZ PC2 6400 (2 X 1 GB)
HDD: 2 X Seagate Barracuda (ST3250410AS) 7200 250GB SATA2, 1 X Seagate Barracuda (ST3320620AS) 7200 320GB SATA2, 1 X Seagate Barracuda (ST3500630AS) 7200 500GB SATA2
Video: ASUS EN8500GT Silent PCI-E
Power Supply: Seasonic M12II 500W
OS: Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2

The HOC-9000 will be tested using the same method I use on all CPU coolers. The system will be subject to full load for a half hour and the maximum CPU temperature during that time will be logged. Idle temperature is recorded after booting up the computer and letting it sit for 15 minutes without doing any processing.

Test Results:
Idle: 38C
Load: 58C