Deepcool Gamer Storm Assassin Heatsink Review

The Assassin is an extremely large heatsink and comes with a good number of individual components.  Each of the two fans comes individually packaged with the mounting hardware enjoying a box of their own.  

As with any installation you must first start with the included hardware.  We'll be using the X79 LGA2011 system for our tests so some of the hardware such as the backplate and spacers will not be used.  For specific installation instructions for your platform please consult the included users' guide.

The first step will be to locate the threaded risers and install them into the heatsink mounting holes around the CPU socket.  These are 4mm threaded holes so be sure to match up the proper end.

Next you'll install the mounting plates and be sure to place them so they look to be bowing out from the CPU socket.  Turning them around will prevent your heastink from installing correctly.  Each of the mounting plates is held in place with a thumb nut and secured either with finger pressure or Phillips screwdriver.

How you install the mounting plates will determine the orientation of your heatsink.  Installing them as pictured will have the tower parallel to the long length of the motherboard and memory modules and on X79 this is the only orientation that works.   

Once the mounting plates have been installed you can apply some thermal paste and secure the heatsink.  We prefer the 5-dot method with dabs in the illustrated configuration.

To secure the heatsink line up the mounting screws with the posts on the mounting plates.  Loosely tighten each side evenly until the screws stop.  When you are done, plug in the fans and you are ready to go.  The fans attach using some strangely configured wire clips.  It took us a few tries to get the orientation correct so take your time with this step.

As you can see from the following photos the Assassin does a great job at clearing the memory slots by raising the radiator up and over the memory modules.  The outer fan just glides over our Kingston memory modules, had we used Corsair Dominators this would have been a single fan install.