great comments, Just a further update for anyone with a similar issue though.
1. the instructions for the heat sink fan are really good and really bad, the tech writer deserves a rap on the knuckles. I considered taking it apart and putting up a youtube vid to show the installation as a couple of the directions are ambiguous.
2. I was mostly lucky having the case that I have as the bottom panel of the case allows access to the motherboard and I was *just* able to squeeze the nuts into place on the retaining bolts. I say *just* because the one was a bit of a squeeze, and the other that was close to the panel bezel was about a micro-millimeter from not being able to tighten at all. It did tighten, but it also slipped a couple of times stripping the bolt edges ever so slightly. If I have to take this thing off I'm certainly going to need to pull the entire mobo out though. Still, it was much easier than taking the hole assembly apart.
final note, the unloaded temp right now is around 35 degrees celcius, and the loaded temperature running BF3 and having the i5 overclocked using ROG to it's highest end was about 43 degrees... amazing cooling solution... I'm a fan... please excuse the pun.