I found the base of the cooler to be flat and it had a high polish finish. It was like two extremes between the VertiCool and DiamondCool. It would have been nice to see this type of base on the copper DiamondCool.
Installing the different mounting brackets is a simple matter of sliding the mount into the slot on top of the base and securing it with a single retaining screw. There is one little problem when it comes to mounting the VertiCool on an A64 system; the fan totally blocks the mounting screw that secures the cooler to the motherboard mount on the fan side. This is not a real critical problem... you just have to remove the fan first, install the cooler and then reinstall the fan. But depending on the direction your socket is facing, you may end up removing your video card to reinstall the fan which is just a little bit of a pain sometimes depending on your system and GPU cooling solution.
Other than the fan problem, the VertiCool installs as easy as the DiamondCool and in the same exact manner. The back plate and mounting screws and springs are of the same type. One thing to note about the base of the cooler though, when I got it installed, I noticed that the base is slightly smaller than the IHS of my A64 3000. This shouldn't hurt performance any because the core is in the center, but I just thought it a bit strange.
On with the testing...
