I have a asrock z77e itx motherboard and I am wondering how big of a cooler I can fit without it interfering with my motherboard. I never realized hot close the socket was to the pcie slot and I want to keep access to the slot available for a graphics card. The two heatsinks I have had my eyes on are the samuel 17 and axp140. I know both will fit but I want to know which will cause less problems. The axp140 has a bad reputation with interefearing with this motherboard because the pipes get less than a mm from the back of the graphics card, the heatsink touches a vrm heatsink, and can touch capacitors and make the board not boot unless every contact point is insolated. So what I am really interested is the samuel 17's closeness to the pcie slot, and if it will clear the vrm heatsink. I have seen someone with the samuel 17 on my board, but I could not tell if it was as close as the axp140 would be. Any other suggestions for heatsinks are appreciated although dont tell me a closed loop watercooler because I already understand that would fix the problem but I just dont want to go down that road unless I absolutely have to. Thanks people! p.s (We should start an AsRock Z77E Itx owners club.)
