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nForce4 motherboards with stock passive northbridge cooling

Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 2:52 pm
by matt_garman
I was "window shopping" at newegg, and found some nforce4 motherboards that come stock with passive northbridge heatsinks. So I thought I'd go ahead and start a "roundup" thread.

Obviously, there's the heatpipe cooled offerings from Abit and Asus (already mentioned around here). But I haven't seen the following mentioned:
Matt

Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2005 10:24 am
by nici
The Gigabyte and Tyan looks like they will burn, the Abit is supposed to work pretty well.

Theres also the Abit AN8 SLI wich has Q-OTES.

Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2005 10:55 am
by Sizzle
I have the Abit An8-Ultra. My first AMD system. It's a good board though there is a bit of a mess with the latest nForce4 drivers and the BIOS, I think this is an issue all the way around with nForce4. The Asus Ultra board has to have the latest driver update before the BIOS flash as well.

The other thing I don't like about the ABIT board is that there is no access to Q-fan in the BIOS, so if you have a cpu fan that spins below 1200, the alarm goes off until you get uGuru loaded in Windows and change it.

Other than that, it's a great board, pretty much no add on third-party hardware outside of the nForce4 Ultra reference (something I am anal about).

It does have a bright red LED on it though, but it does not bother me, just adds to my Phantom's blue light.

Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2005 11:14 am
by matt_garman
nici wrote:The Gigabyte and Tyan looks like they will burn, the Abit is supposed to work pretty well.

Theres also the Abit AN8 SLI wich has Q-OTES.
Do you mean "burn" as in get too hot?

Or "burn" as in just be really fast?

Or something else all together? :)

Thanks!
Matt

Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2005 11:19 am
by mongobilly
Burn as in getting too hot. Reports are of 80 to 90° C for the Gigabyte. Besides, I personally think Gigabyte boards are total crap ;). If you want to spare yourself some trouble, build a system around VIA K8T890, it's not quite as capable a southbridge but the chipset runs much cooler.

Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2005 2:14 pm
by nici
If i was to buy a new mobo now, id go for the AN8 Ultra. I was actually going to buy one, but no one has them in stock... Or the places that do are expensive. Nothing wrong with the current DFI mobo in particular, works great, but im a bit annoyed that i have to use the lower slot for the graphics card in order to make room for the zm80d-hp and nb47j.. Having the card in the lower slot also means the vga duct in the p180 is useless, so i might make one of my own. The UV reactive plastic parts on the mobo are also very nice :lol: Btw, 120mm nexus fans glow in UV light because of the orange color. I have to get a night shot of the inside at some point...

Before i would have bought the AN8 Ultra, i was about to buy the Asus A8V-E SE but no one had them in stock either :lol: So now im sticking with my "old" DFI board.

Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2005 6:28 pm
by Ackelind
I have the Asus A8N-SLI premium, and I am totally happy with it. Passive heatpipe cooling for the northbridge, and no bios-issues as with the AN8 Ultra. I haven't had any issues with it at all, besides one attempt at running my memory at 2-2-2-8 which they of course couldn't be run at =)

Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2005 6:42 pm
by Sizzle
Ackelind wrote:I have the Asus A8N-SLI premium, and I am totally happy with it. Passive heatpipe cooling for the northbridge, and no bios-issues as with the AN8 Ultra. I haven't had any issues with it at all, besides one attempt at running my memory at 2-2-2-8 which they of course couldn't be run at =)
Not true. The issue is with the nForce 6.66 drivers, not the actual BIOS. Here is the download page that describes it at Asus. It's common across nForce4 boards.

linky

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 10:50 pm
by LH
Sizzle wrote:I have the Abit An8-Ultra. My first AMD system. It's a good board though there is a bit of a mess with the latest nForce4 drivers and the BIOS, I think this is an issue all the way around with nForce4. The Asus Ultra board has to have the latest driver update before the BIOS flash as well.

The other thing I don't like about the ABIT board is that there is no access to Q-fan in the BIOS, so if you have a cpu fan that spins below 1200, the alarm goes off until you get uGuru loaded in Windows and change it.

Other than that, it's a great board, pretty much no add on third-party hardware outside of the nForce4 Ultra reference (something I am anal about).

It does have a bright red LED on it though, but it does not bother me, just adds to my Phantom's blue light.
I use an AN8 Ultra board as well. Actually, there's an option in the BIOS to disable the CPU fan alarm and/or lower the threshold. I think it's under the "Fan Speed Monitoring" menu. After hearing the blaring alarm (I think it was after I enabled Cool 'n' Quiet), I went into the BIOS and lowered the CPU fan limit to its minimum.

The only thing I don't like about the AN8 Ultra is that it isn't supported by SpeedFan at the moment, so I'm stuck with using uGuru. I can only get my exhaust and intake fans down to 6V using the OTES fan headers.

Also, I'm not sure how accurate the temp monitoring is either. Here are the highest temps I've gotten so far (during Defrag, CPUBurn, etc.): HD 28C, CPU 39C, SYS 30C, PWM 38C. During idle, the CPU often sits around 20C, which seems rather low.

But overall, I really like this board. I've had no problems with it at all.