NB heatsink/fan is out of control!

djkest · Post by **djkest** » Thu Sep 13, 2007 8:04 am

Hey guys... the fan on my motherboard's northbridge is one of the loudest and definately the most high-pitched noise in my whole computer! I've got a Gigabyte Nforce 4 motherboard. the real problem is, the heatsink on it is very low profile, and it's right at the end of the PCI-E x16 slot, so i'm afraid all the passive coolers are not going to work. I'm wondering if a zalman fanmate might be able to tone it down, if I can hack into the wires. Any ideas?

nick705 · Post by **nick705** » Thu Sep 13, 2007 8:22 am

Do you mean the graphics card is sitting over the NF4 chipset fan/heatsink? The SLI version of the Thermalright HR-05 might be a possibility, although it's hard to tell without seeing the exact mobo layout.

djkest · Post by **djkest** » Thu Sep 13, 2007 9:05 am

yes that is exactly where my NB heatsink is. that thing looks pretty nice, but almost seems like overkill! oh well. I'll probably pick one of those up.

puddnhead · Post by **puddnhead** » Thu Sep 13, 2007 9:23 am

I had an nforce 3.5 gigabyte board & also wanted to get rid of northbridge fan & had a similar problem. Only difference was it was AGP not PCIE, this was a few years ago

Don't know if this helps you, but in my case the overlap was minor enough that I just broke maybe a half dozen of the fins on one corner of the NB heatsink. I figure the cooling reduction was minimal, never had a problem.

Das_Saunamies · Post by **Das_Saunamies** » Thu Sep 13, 2007 1:03 pm

If it's directly underneath the card, use the bendy Thermalright - there's no such thing as cooling overkill(power-wise), just good and bad heatsinks. If it's just below the level of the card itself you could get by with a Zalman 32K(the pins can be cut without serious loss of effectiveness). I use one on my NF4 Ultra Asus, unmodified. There's also the 47J where the pins on two edges are shorter than the middle ones.

djkest · Post by **djkest** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 11:58 am

Here's a pic that shows my exact motherboard. I've tried to outline the area where my massive Radeon x1800 XT is. I'm looking at that passive zalman that runs about $5, it says it fits any NB heatsink on an SLI board that doesn't have integrated graphics. Problem is based on the sheer size of the current setup it's hard to say where the chip actually IS. Maybe I'll just pop out my video card and pop that sucker off this weekend.

I'm going to eventually install a zalman 900 on that badboy, it's actually lighter and more efficient both. It's #2 on my hit list.

What's surprising is that on the successor to this MB they went back to a passive heatsink for the exact same layout.

[img=http://img75.imageshack.us/img75/6972/gam55slis4nj9.th.jpg][/img]

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 12:31 pm

HR-05 Sli seems to be only viable option. That cooled my old nForce4 better than the active soltion before it. So its more than capable of cooling your chipset without breaking a sweat. The Zalman I had prior HR-05 on nForce4 was burning hot. HR-05 was just warm.

Das_Saunamies · Post by **Das_Saunamies** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 1:12 pm

Low to high 30s with 32K here with NF4 Ultra. Plenty cool. HR might appear cool as the fins are separated from the base.

A8N-E also had the later revision fitted with a 'coolpipe' system which was entirely passive. The active cooling was very prone to fan failure.

I bet you could fit any heatsink if you had the VF900.

djkest · Post by **djkest** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 1:58 pm

Not that I don't like the Thermalright solution, but I have limited monitary funds, if you know what I mean.

for the video card, yeah, the Zalman 900 solution just looks fantastic, taking their proven "flower" design and adding heatpipes. I swear the stock cooler must weigh at least 1000g!

Time to dissect my motherboard and see how much space I really have over there