sorry, that was my mistake! it is liquid cooled. i forgot that different versions of ASD didn't correspond to air or liquid cooled models.

it is liquid cooled, but i'm still stuck for the moment as far as replacing the thermal paste goes.

for now it seems like i just need to get longer torx screwdrivers... man i hope i get this working! how bad is the actual separation of that enormous heatsink and the cpus, though? i can't find any guides that show the disassembly of the heatsink/cpu unit itself. only the before and after parts.