Review on Silverstone Tek Argon Series CPU Cooler - 120mm Cooling Fan, Socket LGA775/1155/1156/1366/2011, AM2/AM3/FM1/FM2, White AR01 by Neil Bodell

First of all, this is a low-profile, silent cooler that performs better than the stock (Intel) cooler. This lowered the temperature by at least 5 degrees Celsius, although I didn't test this in detail. I bought it because the stock cooler didn't work in my Silverstone FT03 mini as space inside is very limited. Assembly is easy and it comes with thermal grease, which is a nice touch. The reason for the mediocre rating is that it only comes with a set of rubber washers that are supposed to protect the motherboard from metal parts and according to the instructions are on the back of the board. You should also include some insulating washers for the top of the board, otherwise it will be a metal to board contact which on a compact ITX like mine was too close to visible marks to not protect the board. I used some tape as the screws weren't long enough to use something too thick. It would be an easy fix if they just added a few extra shims for the top of the board. I also encountered a gap issue on the PCI-E side of the cooler (see image), it's not the board's fault. harder, but something to think about. Heat pipes were blocking the USB3.0 port on my GIGABYTE G1 Gaming GA-Z170N Gaming 5 ITX board. This problem can be solved with a $10 low profile USB 3.0 adapter cable. However, there were no problems releasing RAM, and I chose to use the USB 2.0 ports on my board for the onboard ports.