Northbridge fanless cooler burning hot to the touch...okay?

HedgeHocker · Post by **HedgeHocker** » Thu Nov 29, 2007 11:26 am

Are fanless northbridge coolers (aftermarket) expected to get VERY hot?

I added a Zalman to an ASUS nForce 4 mainboard I have and it gets hot enough to hurt you ..nearly burn you. Because of this I have pulled the board and taken the sink off for now until I find out. I have a MicroCool cooler but it's such a pain in the ass to install it's just not worth it...

Chocolinx · Post by **Chocolinx** » Thu Nov 29, 2007 11:28 am

Well hot is a good sign of it working. If it gets too hot you might want to consider getting some airflow going around it.

LuckyNV · Post by **LuckyNV** » Thu Nov 29, 2007 1:09 pm

passive heatsinks usually always get hot or at least very warm to the touch

if its cold or cool then either the heatsource is low temp, heatsink is very good or bad contact.
if its warm then its working fine
if its burning hot then the heatsink is not powerful enough, ambient temp is too hot or not enough residual case airflow to assist cooling.

but referring to the NF4 chipset in particular those get very hot, mine was fine until about 55C, after that it would cause problems with stability.

try a Thermalright HR-05 SLI (or the IFX HR-05), they are quite big.

amjedm · Post by **amjedm** » Thu Nov 29, 2007 1:44 pm

An 80mm fan on 5v or 7v seems to cool my fanless northbridge cooler quite well (thank God).

I have an A8N SLi Premium, reapplied paste to the heatpipe cooler but temp was still hitting 40C so I mounted an 80mm fan which seems to have done the trick. Now at 32C.

I also pointed a fan at a Zalman cooler in another build as it was getting too hot. Seemed to reduce the temp IIRC (thank God).

aaroncgi · Post by **aaroncgi** » Thu Nov 29, 2007 1:44 pm

I'm using a Zalman ZM-NB47J on my DFI Infinity NF UltraII-M2. With no fan, I was seeing up to 67C, but didn't have any stability problems. The Zalman was hot, but not enough to burn you. The BIOS seems to think the NF4 chip is safe up to 90C. Still, I decided to add a case fan blowing up at the Zalman, which also happens to be right under my passively cooled 8600GT. Now temps are staying about 50-60C, which seems fine. My case temperatures are 15-25C.

Firetech · Post by **Firetech** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 6:18 pm

If you have got some case airflow the Thermalright HR-05 (SLI) may be the way to go.
Mine gets warm but not too hot to touch unlike the std cooler @ ~70C...

HedgeHocker · Post by **HedgeHocker** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 11:09 pm

Thermalright is always top choice, I know ..unless youre concerned about wieght. I didnt want to spent 20.00 on an aftermarket Northbridge cooler for my old Athlon 64 system though. I need to work with my MicroCool cooler I guess..... the thing is really noisy albiet effective.