Since the H5 SF is only compatible with mITX motherboards and made for small form factor enclosures we had to grab the solid ASUS Z97 Maximus VII Impact and the Carbide 240 Air from the shelves.

But this is where the fun part ends of this article and the main reason this turned out to be just a preview article.

From the mount we wanted to install the L-shaped bracket it would just not fit as the power card which is positioned upright on the little ASUS board is equipped with a heat sink. So the only way to install the Corsair H5 on the Impact VII was to remove half of the heat sink. The L-shaped bracket aligns with three motherboard holes. Three large stand-offs will support the radiator/blower unit.

Mounting the pump unit went fast, just align the holes of the rear motherboard bracket, screw in the stand-offs and secure the unit with the four over-sized thumbscrews. Than it was time for surprise number two: we had to swivel the tubing to properly position the radiator. Now these are quite hard to move around, so take your time as mentioned on the previous page, it might be easier and maybe even better to just rotate the pump unit 180°, thus with the logo facing the other side.

Ready for surprise number three?  Since I only have high end overclocking DDR3 memory at my disposal I was not able to mount the radiator/fan unit on the stand-offs as the memory heat spreaders were too high. Okay time to look for them Dominator GTX2s and to remove the top red heat spreader fin. Six screws later I had a few mms clearance between the plastic shroud and the memory heat spreader. We are almost there :)

Last but not least we still had to encounter our biggest issue and this was to route the tubing from the pump unit to the radiator, impossible to achieve as the upright power card of the Maximus VII Impact motherboard was again on the way. I think we can conclude by the numerous installation woes we experienced that the SF5 is NOT compatible with the Impact series from ASUS. A warned man is worth two isn't it?

So we are currently awaiting another Z97 mITX motherboard from a vendor that wants to provide it to us. If it takes too long we will just conduct the temp tests with the Impact board and let the shroud just hang over the motherboard. But it would be nicer to have everything in position like prescribed.