MSI i7-build, when does the Mobo draw the most power?

All about them.

Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee

Post Reply
ATWindsor
Posts: 285
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 11:53 pm

MSI i7-build, when does the Mobo draw the most power?

Post by ATWindsor » Mon Jun 01, 2009 12:57 am

I am planning in a i7-build, and i want it to be quiet, quiet in the sense that i can't here that its on. However som people have reported problems with overheating the NB on z58-boards, and on MSI in particular, since a quiet build won't have a very large aiirflow i am a bit concerned about this. Anyone on the forum running a similar build? And under what loads does the NB use the most power? I will be buying a 920, no overclocking, and no SLI, does this help, or is it other factors that mainly affects the power draw?

AtW

ATWindsor
Posts: 285
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 11:53 pm

Post by ATWindsor » Mon Jun 01, 2009 5:46 am

A solution could be to add additional cooling, but is that even possible with todays mobos? Most of them have a heatpipe-based setup, so i would think modding them would be difficult?

AtW

lodestar
Posts: 1683
Joined: Fri Aug 05, 2005 3:29 am
Location: UK

Post by lodestar » Mon Jun 01, 2009 8:21 am

The northbridge on the X58 motherboards is adjacent to the CPU socket, and on most boards not only has its own substantial heatsink but is often connected by a heatpipe to another hefty heatsink.

This is the case with the motherboard I used for the only i7 system that I have built so far, the Asus P6T SE.

It seems to me that this particular setup should work fairly well, provided that as expected (if the stock cooler is fitted) there is a reasonable downwards flow of air to the CPU and the surrounding motherboard components.

In my case I replaced the stock cooler with a Noctua NH-C12P and furthermore replaced the Noctua fan with a PWM fan. When in desktop mode fan rpm is around 350, which is inaudible. If used for gaming the fan automatically ramps up to 1200-1500 rpm, which results in a substantial airflow over the motherboard.

There is no sign of overheating or instability, but clearly I am not able to say that I had used a TRUE, Xigmatek etc that results would have been any different. And there are other ways of getting airflow to the motherboard. But I do think it is a potential issue given the reports of high northbridge temperatures and instability being reported by some X58 users.

ATWindsor
Posts: 285
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 11:53 pm

Post by ATWindsor » Thu Jun 04, 2009 1:08 pm

Here is a picture of the mobo

http://nvision.pl/img/200904/msi_x58_pro-e_02.jpg

Would it be a possibility to just just thermal adhesive and glue a cooler like the thermalright hr05 or similar to the smaller part of the heat-pipe-setup? Even the smaller of the to coolers is pretty irregular though, si one probably won't get the best contact. Could on cut the heatpipe, and just change the bottom, smaller cooler? The smaller cooler is cooling the NB i guess, what is the larger one cooling? (connected to the smaller with the heatpipe)

AtW

Post Reply