New CPU cooler!

I've been starting to overclock some recently, and was able to get my Intel Core 2 Quad (here's what it looks like by the way):

 up to a little under 3GHz, but with the stock cooler the temperatures were really higher than reasonable. During intensive rendering it would get to about 90 degrees Celsius, which is really just unacceptable. I looked around some, read a few reviews, went to the local Micro Center, and decided on the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus. The Intel Core 2 Quad has a LGA 775 socket, and this was listed to fit that socket (which helps ;) After unboxing I had some worries about it fitting into my case, it's much taller than the stock cooler, but it actually fit with room to spare, about an inch of clearance. Here's a photo of the stock cooler:

As you can see, it's pretty reasonable, but really unsuited for overclocking. Here's a photo of the current cooler:

Much bigger, better airflow, better cooling fins... But I'll get to that later.

First off, I had to remove the entire motherboard from the case. This pretty much involved unplugging just about everything. PCI-E cards, SATA drives, power cables, the whole lot. Once I had it out I noticed something unusual about the motherboard I hadn't remembered from when I installed it:

Yes, there are heatsinks on the back as well as the front, and yes, that heatsink is exactly where the CPU cooler mounting bracket goes. There's more though. I can't just take the big one off and let the improved CPU cooler take care of the excess heat, it's not quite that simple. Look below;

I don't remember if that heatsink is mounted on the northbridge or southbridge, for now I think let's say northbridge. Anyway, the heatsink on the back is what holds the heatsink on top down. Hm. Now it gets more complicated. I need to take the heatsink on the back off, because the large section is right where the CPU cooler bracket needs to go, but I can't remove the thing, because then the (northbridge?) would overheat. Some people would return the cooler. I decided to solve the problem myself. I have half of a heatsink that needs to be mounted, and half that needs to come off. The solution is obvious!

Yes, I really did, and yes, that was the heatsink on the back of my motherboard.

Above, the two halves.

It worked wonderfully! I mounted the small part, kept the large section for parts, and quickly and easily attached my new CPU cooler! I installed all parts, connected everything back up, and it worked, and well!

Here's what my computer now looks like inside:

That was a little more excitement than I had planned for just installing a CPU cooler, but lots of fun! (Hey, don't you wish at times that you could take a saw to your computer?) 

Currently:

Temps have only gotten above 60 C once so far (high of 61!) and it usually idles a little under 50 C. Temperatures usually vary less than 5 degrees from core to core, whereas before it might be as much as 10 degrees C. I'm very happy with it, it's working well, and not only is the cooling good, it's very quiet; it took me several days to get used to walking into the room and not being able to hear my computer when it was on!