One hurdle many Ivy Bridge owners have to deal with is the proximity of the DIMM slots to the CPU socket as many high end coolers impinge on the space which high DIMMs occupy.  This has lead to the adoption of low profile DIMMs or even users removing heatspreaders from their DIMMs in order to have them fit with an installed cooler. Thermaltake is addressing this issue with their new line of NiC heatsinks which do allow the use of full sized DIMMs.  This does lead to a taller heatsink, the NiC F4 that ProClockers reviewed is 155 x 140 x 50mm so you should make sure your case is wide enough to accommodate the cooler.  The design does not seem to have effected the cooling efficiency of the design, in tests it proved to match the performance of other mid-range coolers.

"Thermaltake’s newest CPU cooler consist of four cooler models for now and the line-up is called the NiC or Non-Interference Cooler series. The reason behind the name is that the coolers allow for the builder or end user to fill all of their motherboard DIMM slots. This is something that is often not possible with most coolers because of their massive size. With that in mind, you can be at ease to know the series allows for maximum ram slot usage. It’s great that we didn't need to fill all the memory slots but it is another issue if we have to sacrifice performance. Well, you don’t have to worry because each of the coolers on this series is rated to a certain wattage level. The Thermaltake NiC F4 model we will be looking at today is rated up to 180 watts of TDP. The other three models are the F3, C4 and C5 and are rated at 160W, 200W and 230W respectively."

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