Cooling northbridge with case 120mm fan + air conduct?

[littlebigman]

Hello

I only have a single fan left, to cool the Intel 945GC northbridge chip on a compact, Atom-based Gigabyte GA-GC230D motherboard.

As an alternative to replacing the fan/heatsink with a Noctua NC-U6 or Thermalright HR-05 and run the thing fanless (if someone's done this, won't the northbridge fry without any fan on it?)... since there's a 120mm fan sitting unused on the case, I was wondering if it'd be possible to add some kind of pipe to conduct fresh air from the outside onto the northbridge and get rid of the noisy, 40mm fan it now has?

Thank you.

[ces]

Hello

I only have a single fan left, to cool the Intel 945GC northbridge chip on a compact, Atom-based Gigabyte GA-GC230D motherboard.

As an alternative to replacing the fan/heatsink with a Noctua NC-U6 or Thermalright HR-05 and run the thing fanless (if someone's done this, won't the northbridge fry without any fan on it?)... since there's a 120mm fan sitting unused on the case, I was wondering if it'd be possible to add some kind of pipe to conduct fresh air from the outside onto the northbridge and get rid of the noisy, 40mm fan it now has?

Thank you.

The Thermalright HR-05 has provision for adding a fan if necssary. Probably the Noctua does as well.

Why would you not try one? See if it works without the then. If not then add a fan.

[littlebigman]

Unfortunately, turns out the Thermalright and Noctua are too high to fit in this compact box :-/

I'll see if find another solution. Thank you.

[ces]

Unfortunately, turns out the Thermalright and Noctua are too high to fit in this compact box :-/

I'll see if find another solution. Thank you.

Xigmatec also has such a heat sink, though I don't that it will be shorter.

Thermalright has a wide variety of chip coolers, maybe you can use one of them, even though not designed for the NB.

Have you considered using the Thermalright or Noctua but bending the heat pipes to get them to fit?

[JamieG]

Unfortunately, turns out the Thermalright and Noctua are too high to fit in this compact box :-/

I'll see if find another solution. Thank you.

Have you considered one of the Zalman passive Northbridge coolers?

Ive used a ZM-NB47J on the Southbridge of a G31 board with reasonable results.

They are a lot lower profile than the Thermalright, Noctua or Xigmatek solutions, but will cool less effectively. It should be ok for an ATOM northbridge though if operating completely passively. A little bit of airflow directed down towards the heatsink would certainly help though.