As far as I can see, the cooler is installed correctly on the CPU socket.
And if the CPU is working and the cooler is not getting hot to the point were you burn fingers.
Then it is correctly installed.

Yeah, that's normal. I had an EN SFF with the same cooler.
Compaq certainly used some weird looking coolers in their machines. I had a Deskpro (I think it was one of the EP convertible models) that had a passive PII cooler which looked like a bunch of bent spikes. It was kinda scary looking actually. 🤣

Edit: Found a picture of one:
http://www.ctechinfo.net/images/motherboards/cr120.jpg

brostenen wrote:

As far as I can see, the cooler is installed correctly on the CPU socket.
And if the CPU is working and the cooler is not getting hot to the point were you burn fingers.
Then it is correctly installed.

ACTUALLY that can also mean it's INCORRECTLY installed if it's not pulling the pulling the heat off the chip but, you would have warning signs for that. a heat sins should put out heat unless it's a REALLY good one then it's normal to have no heat.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

Yeah, that's normal. I had an EN SFF with the same cooler.

Interesting. My Deskpro EN (SFF? I think so) had an arrangement where the fan was on the downstream side of the heatsink trying to pull air horizontally through the fins. That was with a 1.13GHz Tualatin. It didn't work very well, when I swapped a 1.4GHz/512KB in there I had to move the fan to the other side of the heatsink to cool better (in addition to installing a heavier heatsink).

I think we could use more info and/or pictures to see what kind of Deskpro it really is.
I have two Deskpro's myself (a 486DX2-66 and a Pentium Pro 200), and neither have a fan on the CPU. Instead, they have a sort of shroud over the CPU/heatsink, which directs airflow from the casefan on the back. The CPU and chipset are on a special expansion board. You can actually swap the two around and they work fine.
This looks like a completely different type of system though.

cdoublejj wrote:

ACTUALLY that can also mean it's INCORRECTLY installed if it's not pulling the pulling the heat off the chip but, you would have warning signs for that. a heat sins should put out heat unless it's a REALLY good one then it's normal to have no heat.

I have a Despro EN SFF P-933 with the exact same cooler. And it is getting warm, not hot. Wich is normal.
Because of the really small space. The CPU is just below the HDD in the case.
The only two things that he can do, is to clean it and adding a small amount of fresh cooling-paste.

It will get slightly warm, not hot, as the cooler is made from aluminium and is really light.

When mounted in a Socket370 tower case, it has air enough to run a bit cooler, not much though.
As the Deskpro is really tight inside.

Found this picture on the net, as my machine is packed away in a closet and I have no pictures of it.
As you can see, the fan on this one is mounted straight and level or something.
Yet it has nothing to do, with how effective the cooler is. And it can not be mounted so it will suck and not blow.
The only way to get the fan off the cooling profile, is to lift some clips on a "ring" or something.
That ring is mounted permanently on the fan it self, using some sort of plugs, that can not be removed.

EDIT:
As you can see on this picture, the only way to mount it incorrectly, is to mount it in reverse.
And as the blue clip is where it is, looking at the socket it self, I am 99% certain that it is mounted correctly.

I had a look at the cooler on the motherboard and upon closer inspection it seems correctly installed. The plastic part is just pressed on the cooler and the clips are tight. I was just asking this because I got this computer in very bad condition with missing screws and other parts.