The mounting clip comes pre-attached to the Max Orb and hooks onto the bracket on one end, then is pushed down over the threaded post at the other. With enough of the threads sticking up through the hole in the clip, the Phillips-head nut is then tightened onto the post. I found this portion of the installation frustratingly tricky to accomplish. First of all, the position of the hook under the cooler makes it impossible to see where you are trying to attach it to the bracket. Once you have managed to feel your way through this, a good amount of effort is required to hold the clip down over the post with enough threads sticking up through to get the nut started. The nut is then right up against the edge of the fins on the cooler, where it is difficult to tighten using thumb and fingers.
And unfortunately it seems Thermaltake has made the nut out of aluminum, so it does not stay on the end of a magnetic screwdriver. Thus it takes three hands to install the Max Orb, one to hold down the clip, one to hold the nut in place and one to turn the screwdriver. With some amount of trial and error I was able to hold the clip down and the nut in place with one hand while turning the screwdriver with the other. Also due to the closeness of the nut to the fins, it requires spreading them apart in order to reach it with the screwdriver.
Once completed, the Max Orb is rigidly affixed to the CPU surface and has very little freedom of movement. Despite the difficulty, I would rather deal with this in order to have the benefit of tight contact between the CPU and cooler, both for enhanced performance and peace of mind. The last Thermaltake cooler reviewed, the V1, had a poor mounting mechanism that may have contributed to higher temps and a worry that it would fall off. But no such problems here. When turned on, the Max Orb blue lighting adds a soft, subtle glow to the interior of your case, although the unevenness of the fin spacing sort of ruins the aesthetics. Now let's see how it performs.
