P5N-E SLI motherboard cooling

frenchie · Post by **frenchie** » Fri Jul 11, 2008 8:06 am

Hi everybody,
my first post here

Been reading you guys (and girls) for quite some time and thank's to your posts I've just built my first "quiet PC".

I have the asus P5N-E SLI motherboard (very nice btw) and a friend gave me a E7200 Intel CPU with a samurai-z cooler to go with it. I like the fact that this is a "blow down" kind of cooler because of the heatsink attached to the motherboard (northbridge cooling I suppose).

My case is an Antec solo (very nice too

).
It has 2 noctua 92mm fans in the front : the very bottom one undervolted to 7V to cool the 2 hard disks sitting right in front of it and one controlled by the motherboard)
And I put one noctua 120mm fan in the back also controlled by the motherboard.
Fans linked to the motherboard are controled by speedfan and are VERY quiet (I love noctua fans). In fact, I can't hear them.

My graphic card (nvidia 8600 GT) is cooled by a fanless Zalman VNF100 cooler (looks really cool). According to Speedfan temps are 50Â°C idle and 60Â°C max when gamming for an hour (far cry, all settings to max)

So my question is : can I get rid of the airflow from the CPU cooler so I can get a Mini Ninja CPU cooler to run fanless ?
What worries me is that since they put such a big heatsink on the Northbridge, I'm guessing the airflow from the CPU is supposed to cool the heatsink too. And since I'll run the ninja fanless (it will be really close to the back exhaust fan and really really close to the PSU fan), I'll loose the airflow from the CPU cooler.
I think the airflow is pretty good through the case right now but I don't know much about that (only what I've read around the forum)...

What do you think ?

Thank you for your advice.

frenchie · Post by **frenchie** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 1:10 am

Posting my own extra comment :
I just replaced the big stock northbridge cooler with the noctua chipset cooler (NC-U6). I don't quite know what temperature sensor I'm supposed to be looking at but I like the fact that it stands higher on the motherboard and it's now right in the middle of my airflow. So i guess it can't hurt. And the heatsink feels warm to the touch so it must do it's job.
I'll just add that the Noctua heatsink was very easy to intall with the pushpins (one screw and you're done). The only thing is you have to remove the motherboard to get the stock heatsink out.

If anybody has that motherboard, do you know what sensor I'm supposed to be looking at in speedfan to check the northbridge temperature ?

Has anyone mounted a fanless heatsing on the CPU on that motherboard ? If yes, which one and how are the temps with it ? Thanks for your advice.

mentawl · Post by **mentawl** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 5:42 am

Personally, I'd keep the blow-down Samurai cooler. That extra cooling for the mobo not only keeps the northbridge cooler, it also cools the PWM circuitry and other things near the CPU. Just my 0.02 though =)