Mangling a ZM-NB47J

[Korwen]

Some lessons are learned the hard way, like remembering to get a passivley cooled motherboard. Anyways, this left me with a problem, putting a passive heatsink on my motherboard.

Strike 2, the northbridge chip is right underneath the VGA card, making just swapping the heatsink out unmodded, impossible. So here goes my take on modding this heatsink.


[img=http://img137.exs.cx/img137/368/before6gb.th.jpg]

This is NB cooler in question. Damn that little bastard fan is loud! Well, here's how it stacked up sizewise against the ZM-NB

[img=http://img137.exs.cx/img137/332/comp11rs.th.jpg]



This is how they compared afterwards. I put the zalman in a vice, and took a hacksaw to it, to trim it. I approximated how much room I had at the bottom of the VGA cooler to fit. Apparently I cut a little too much, but it hasn't made a problem yet.

[img=http://img137.exs.cx/img137/4849/comp21gr.th.jpg]


And after installing it, and put back on the BFG 6800GT and Arctic Silencer NV5, this is what I had.

[img=http://img239.exs.cx/img239/5428/after0te.th.jpg]


So far, after much gaming, the heatsink isn't even hot. I say this was a success, because my computer is much more quiet. This was pretty easy, and all in all only took 20-30 minutes. Hope this helps some of you, remember clearance can be countered, but more importantly, remember to buy the right motherboard first!

Edit: I can get the thumbnails to work, whoops. The pictures work though.

[freak_in_cage]

hmmmm, a bit dodgy but if its not hot then i see no harm in it, its prob not hot due to air being drawn right past it by the graphics silencer!

i may be wrong, but im sure thats the position of the south bridge (another reason why the HS isn;t hot) ! i could be getting confused with A64 etc though

[tay]

Apparently I cut a little too much, but it hasn't made a problem yet.

ROFL!!! You went ballistic on the poor thing. Glad to see it still works.

Freakinacage : that is the location of the A64 north/south bridge (single chip these days). All nforce3/4 boards i've seen use that location (not an exhaustive list by any means).

[Tzupy]

How could you do this to the poor NB47J ?!? LOL
It looks like a nForce3 939, and you are probably not overclocking it.
The airflow from the Silencer definitely helps, you cut a lot of the NB47J...
This proves that the chipset heatsink concept that I posted a few days ago is going to work.

[Mats]

Here's a review of Chaintech VNF4 Ultra VE.


It's one of the less expensive nForce 4 mobos with a good placement of the passively cooled chipset.

Highs:

*Low price;
*Excellent networking capabilities, including ActiveArmor and NVIDIA Firewall 2.0;
*Four Serial ATA and two Parallel ATA channels with support of RAID 0, 1 and 0+1;
*Eight-channel sound;
*Supports Cool’n’Quiet.

Lows:

*The chipset doesn’t have active cooling; Do we need that? Newer models got a better heatsink. These newer mobos are blue.
*The BIOS needs improvement; Done. Newer BIOS reaches over 300 FSB.
*Minor flaws in the PCB design; Well the power connectors could be better placed, doesn't bother me though. You can use either 24 pin or 20 + 4 pin.
*Scanty accessories;
*No FireWire.

The problem for me is that they're not any cheaper than others in Sweden. I guess I'll wait and see...

[nick705]

So far, after much gaming, the heatsink isn't even hot...

That's not necessarily a good sign... it might mean there's something amiss with the heatsink seating or TIM application, and the heat is staying in the chipset rather than being drawn into the heatsink as it's supposed to. Still, if you're system's still stable after giving it a good thrashing, I guess it's probably OK...

@Mats: not much point in waiting... they've switched to active cooling for that particular mobo now...

[Mats]

@Mats: not much point in waiting... they've switched to active cooling for that particular mobo now...

Ok, thanks! Where did you hear about that? I already have a Zalman NB cooler so it doesn't bother me.

[tay]

Xbitlabs says :

When we dropped the HyperTransport multiplier to x3, we managed to increase the clock-generator frequency to 305MHz. After that we encountered a new problem, this time a fatal one. As I have mentioned above, the chipset on Chaintech VNF4 Ultra VE mainboard is cooled by a passive needle-shaped heatsink of a medium size, and our supposition that this heatsink wouldn’t handle the chipset during overclocking came true at 305MHz clock generator frequency. When the mainboard was tested for stability in this mode, its nForce4 Ultra chip got overheated and burned out beyond repair. So, basing on our tragic experience, we have to claim now that nForce4 series chipsets require active cooling, at least the two top models of the series do.

So chaintech switched to active cooling. Just so 300FSBwould work. Sucks how they have to pander to overclockers.

Tzupy : what was your chipset cooling idea?

[Mats]

So chaintech switched to active cooling. Just so 300FSBwould work. Sucks how they have to pander to overclockers.

Still not sure, most overclockers have had success with just applying AS5. Here's a pic of the newer HS:



I still haven't seen one with NB fan.

[Tzupy]

I still believe that the airflow from the Silencer helps cool the mutilated NB47J. But to be sure that it makes good contact, Korwen should use a thermal probe to check the temperature of the chipset.
Tay: I wrote about my concept in the wrong section - Fans & Control - part of a post called 'How to mount a fan inside case'. If you know how a Zalman 6000 looks, then try to imagine a mangled one, with thickness reduced from ~60 mm to ~20 mm, and having contact to the 40x40 mm base on just half of it. It could be flipped (180 degrees) depending on the chipset postion on the mobo.

[Korwen]

I also think the airflow from the silencer helps cool it, which works well to my advantage I haven't had any problems with cooling the last week or so, but I would love a probe to find out how hot my NB is, any reccomendations on programs?

It's made my computer much much quieter

THe motherboard is a Giga-byte K8NS Ultra-939 using the Nforce 3 Ultra chipset, and yes, that is the NB. In retrospect I would have liked to have bought a VIA based board, but oh well, it works real nice

Yes, it was quite disheartening to mangle the ZM, but the sound difference is worth it

[Tzupy]

Korwen, I am using a TT Hardcano fan controller with thermal probe, keeping it on the bottom of the NB32J which replaced the stock chipset HSF of the Abit NF7-S v2. There may be better ones...
But since your NB47J is cooled by the airflow going to the AC Silencer, a thermal probe may get sucked into it, damaging both. A secure mounting / glueing of the probe to the bottom of the NB47J is required.
I hope to get my heatsink concept built next week, if I'll succeed I'll try to post some pictures of it.

[nick705]

I still haven't seen one with NB fan.

Well, I read it at the same site (I gave the link earlier), but if they've changed their minds again and made passive cooling work OK with a better heatsink that's good news indeed.

I guess we shouldn't really begrudge them for trying to cater to overclockers... their needs are just as valid as ours I suppose, and at least if you know something's tested to destruction in this way there should be a big safety margin for normal (quiet) use to play with. I'm sure they'd also rather use passive cooling if it's possible anyway, if only from a reliability perspective.

[Mats]

Ahh, how could miss that!? Sorry about that Nick!
Well I have realized that I won't buy a new system until april maybe, so by then there might be some reports about A64E and more ATI mobos. The ATI reference board "Bullhead" looked good. The chipset is placed right where it should be like in the good old days! Many people will like the integrated DX9 and DVI output as well.

[mathias]

I guess we shouldn't really begrudge them for trying to cater to overclockers... their needs are just as valid as ours I suppose

I disagree, for overclockers one problem does not ruin the whole system as much, and it's easier to add a fan than to replace a heatsink. The ideal solution would be to have a mounting point on top of a passive heatsink for a 40mm fan, or in this case, a more unusual one for a ~6cm fan blowing at it from the side (towards the bottom/front).

[Tiamat]

oooooh, wow, what did that poor zalman do to deserve that!

I have a NF7-S and the south bridge was getting hot, so I modded a black aluminum pentium slot heatsink (cut it to 10mm height, 9cm²) and used frag tape and it has been pretty nice since.