The base of the heatsink uses an aluminium block with copper underlying to. The copper is in direct contact with the CPU and heat pipes for more efficient heat transfer. The hole is where the pressure vault mounting bracket is inserted when installing the heatsink.


The Archon bundles triangular rubber anti-vibration pads than can be stuck to the corner of the heatsink to prevent the fan from making direct contact with the aluminium fins and thus reduce vibrations. Enough are provided for two fans to be installed. Four anti vibration strips are also provided which line up with edge of the heatsink. The latter is more ideal as it doesn’t hinder airflow but it is more of a nuisance to stick. For testing purposes, I removed the triangular pads to maximise airflow. In reality, airflow from the rotating blades would focus in the middle and hence be unaffected by pads so the precaution was only taken for good measure. During the tests, I noticed no vibrations whatsoever.


The Archon is bundled with a single fan which even when installed doesn’t detract the cooler from being one of the narrowest we have tested. The provided wire clips simply insert into the holes at the top and bottom of the heatsink and clip into the notches on the fan. The wire clips are physically flexible to make installation easier and allow both 120mm and 140mm fans to be supported. The Thermalright TY-140s use 120mm fan mounting holes in this case despite the 140mm diameter. Ideally, the Archon should be used with 140mm fans due to the vast frontal area benefitting most from fans that can blow air across all the fins. 120mm fans have the disadvantage of not being able to cover all the fins so heat cannot be dissipated as effectively.


The Archon comes with 4 wire clips so two fans can be installed for a push-pull configuration. Unfortunately, this has to be bought separately. The ability to mount 140mm fans is an advantage the Archon has over the Venomous X.


With both fans installed, the cooler is 100mm wide, still narrower than most coolers on the market.


Once installed on the motherboard, the towering height of the cooler at 170.25mm overlooks all the other components. The broader length of the cooler may cause it to come into conflict with tall motherboard chipset heatsinks or even motherboard expansion slots so check the compatibility page and cooler dimensions before purchasing.




Memory compatibility is the Archon’s key purpose. From the picture, it can be seen that the front fan doesn’t overhang the nearest DIMM slot on this X58 motherboard so all the slots can be populated. The problem is that the fan wire clips protrude further than the fan and ends up above the adjacent memory slot meaning tall memory modules will have conflicts. This is only a problem if all slots are populated but it is still a thoughtless oversight by Thermalright. This is also a problem we found with the HR-02. To fix this, Thermalright simply have to produce wire clips that notch into the inner fan mounting holes which would furthermore allow compatibility with 38mm fans. Memory clearance might be better on P67/P55 boards where the memory slots are further away from the CPU socket. The support tab on Thermalright's page illustrates this better.