The base of this cooler comes protected with a plastic part, as you can see on Figure 6.

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Figure 6: The base comes protected with a plastic part.

Sphere’s copper base is very smooth, as you can see on Figure 7.

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Figure 7: Copper base.

The only thing we didn’t like about CM Sphere is that it doesn’t provide any speed control for its fan, so it is always running at its maximum speed (and thus producing its maximum noise level). It uses the traditional 3-pin connector, meaning that the fan speed isn’t automatically controlled according to the CPU usage, as it happens on fans using four wires.

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Figure 8: Sphere uses the traditional 3-pin connector, not providing speed control.

This cooler is compatible with both AMD and Intel CPUs and it comes with all necessary retention mechanisms plus one tube of thermal grease.

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Figure 9: Clips, plates, nuts, screws, rings and thermal grease that comes with CM Sphere.