EVGA 680i SLI + Thermalright HR-05 + HR-05-SLI + Ultra-120 extreme…

Just incase anybody is trying to figure out whether or not it can be done – it can! I searched around before ordering and found several places that said it couldn’t be done. Even a Thermalright rep said it couldn’t!! It really depends on your CPU HSF. Here’s my board and HSF’s…

EVGA 122-CK-NF68-T1 680i SLI Motherboard
Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme CPU Cooler
Thermalright HR-05 Copper Heatsink (on NB)
Thermalright HR-05-SLI Copper Heatsink (on SB)
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…you’ll see the NB HSF is pretty close to the CPU HSF. These Thermalright HR-05 and HR-05-SLI HSF are basically able to rotate in any which direction and still be mounted securely. From the position in the picture, I rotated my NB HSF about 45-degrees clockwise and put a fan on it to blow the hot air to the rear of the case. I can do this only because the Ultra-120 Extreme on my CPU is significantly narrow in this orientation. If your CPU HSF is wider this way you may be forced to install the HR-05 parallel with the video card. This sucks because if you put a fan on the NB HSF, you’ll either have to have the hot blowing up into the CPU or down into the video card!

One other downside to this setup is I could not mount a fan to the bottom of the CPU HSF to push air through the HSF towards the top of the case. The NB HSF is too close the the CPU HSF to mount a fan here. So I had to mount the fan to the top of the HSF and PULL the air through it and up towards the top of the case. Fans do not pull air through a HSF nearly as well as they push air through one. I still was able to get decent cooling though even with a fairly weak fan.

The next two pics show the video card clearance (top PCIe slot)…
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The GPU shown is an EVGA 8800GTS 640Mb Superclocked so it is one of the longer ones. You’ll see it’s got a little clearance from the NB HSF but it’s fairly close (almost touching) to the SB HSF. No big deal because the point of contact here on the video card is the plastic housing over the GPU’s HSF. However, it’s a whole different story if you have a video card in the lower PCIe x16 slot…
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You'll see here with the 8800GTS in the bottom PCIe slot the SB HSF is touching the exposed PCB components. You'd definitely need to find a way to keep this from shorting the video card. Physically, it's do-able though. You can see my FSB OC results HERE...

I was looking at these ThermalRight coolers. They're pretty, but as I feared, it looks like the SB cooler would be a PITA to deal with (positioning wise) to try and get clearance for cards. My 680i A1 is packed with a 550pro PCI-E tv/fm tuner, Creative Fatal1ty X-fi, dual 320mb Superclocked gts's in SLi. while they're likely much better than the crap heatpipes that eVGA put on there, and will run cooler...I have already jammed all this, 3 HDDs, 2 opticals, a PurePower Express GPU PSU, Toughpower 750 (non-modular), and 5x120mm fans inside my Antec 900...and it needs a re-wire jobbie to clean it all up...which means dremel time. They sure are sweet looking though!

Looks nice.

Originally Posted by sabregen

I was looking at these ThermalRight coolers. They're pretty, but as I feared, it looks like the SB cooler would be a PITA to deal with (positioning wise) to try and get clearance for cards. My 680i A1 is packed with a 550pro PCI-E tv/fm tuner, Creative Fatal1ty X-fi, dual 320mb Superclocked gts's in SLi. while they're likely much better than the crap heatpipes that eVGA put on there, and will run cooler...I have already jammed all this, 3 HDDs, 2 opticals, a PurePower Express GPU PSU, Toughpower 750 (non-modular), and 5x120mm fans inside my Antec 900...and it needs a re-wire jobbie to clean it all up...which means dremel time. They sure are sweet looking though!

Did you consider my above setup but with a low profile SB cooler from another mfg? The SB doesn't get nearly as warm as the NB anyway. Plus what little heat it does put out, the 680i's heatpipe setup puts the SB heat onto the NB before dissipating. I'd seriously consider getting the NB on it's own independent cooler. Sounds like you've got one heck of a setup though...

I never thought that I'd actually say this... But that's too many heatsinks.

...I am inspired...

Seems like overkill for the south bridge, but it sure does look cool.

Do i see Tuniq Tower 120 in the back ground.

Damn those heatpipes look sexy, but any plans on mounting that beast of a mobo and actually running it? Plus does the NB HSF require active cooling at stock speeds?

Originally Posted by annaconda

Do i see Tuniq Tower 120 in the back ground.

Looks like it to me.

Because I don't have my 122-CK-NF68-A1 yet ...

If you put a HR-05 SLI on the NB (instead of the HR-05) would you have room to rotate the ultra-120 eXtreme by 90 deg to blow ultra-120 exhaust air to the rear of the case?

If you put a HR-05 on the SB (instead of the HR-05 SLI) it looks like there would be more room for the EVGA 8800GTS in the lower PCIe 16x slot. In this proposed configuration would you be able to use the PCI slot closest to the CPU?

Are there any issues with using "only" one graphics card in the 2nd PCIe 16x slot? (ie. no graphics card in the 1st PCIe 16x slot)

In the pictured configuration the ultra-120 eXtreme seems to be over the memory slot nearest the CPU. Do you know if there is enough clearance to put in Corsair Dominator memory in? What about with the Corsair memory cooler?

Thank you for the photos of the very cool system.

I think that this post would be useful in the evga forums too

Originally Posted by JohnleMVP

Seems like overkill for the south bridge, but it sure does look cool.

Well, because the stock HSF links the NB and the SB you have to put a new cooler on the SB if you want to add better cooling on the NB. I know I could've gone with a cheap little low profile cooler but I figured what the heck! Looks pretty sweet IMO. I do not have a fan on that SB HSF and it really doesn't even get that warm so yeah it probably is a bit overkill.

Originally Posted by annaconda

Do i see Tuniq Tower 120 in the back ground.

Nope, You see an Asus silent square! I didn't try it but it would have been a much tighter fit with the the silent square and the NB HSF. I've probably seen a 5-7C drop in OC load temps going from the silent square to the Ultra-120 eXtreme.

Originally Posted by azuldenial

Damn those heatpipes look sexy, but any plans on mounting that beast of a mobo and actually running it? Plus does the NB HSF require active cooling at stock speeds?

I ran it a couple days without a fan and actually OC'd a bit. I don't remember how high it got but I don't think it was very high. That HSF got INSANELY HOT!! I was doing some testing at 500MHz FSB when my bro was over at my house for Euchre night and I wanted him to see how hot it gets with no fan so I unplugged the fan. When I came back in a few minutes later the thing BSOD'd. It was extremely hot. With the fan I've gotten it up to 519MHZ and the HSF still feels fairly lukewarm. I'd still recommend a fan even at stock speeds though. And yes the board is in and running. I'm not a reviewer or anything, this is my only decent system. I just like taking pics and documenting this kind of stuff (retarded right? ). The board runs great! My PCMark05 CPU, memory and hard drive scores have all went up significantly since I switched from the P5B. The Graphics score in PCMark05 actually dropped from 12000 to 9000 though. Not sure why, the 3DMark06 scores went up a couple hundred points so I'm not really sweating it. Plays STALKER like a champ!

Originally Posted by jagdpanther

Because I don't have my 122-CK-NF68-A1 yet ...

(1) If you put a HR-05 SLI on the NB (instead of the HR-05) would you have room to rotate the ultra-120 eXtreme by 90 deg to blow ultra-120 exhaust air to the rear of the case?

(2) If you put a HR-05 on the SB (instead of the HR-05 SLI) it looks like there would be more room for the EVGA 8800GTS in the lower PCIe 16x slot. In this proposed configuration would you be able to use the PCI slot closest to the CPU?

(3) Are there any issues with using "only" one graphics card in the 2nd PCIe 16x slot? (ie. no graphics card in the 1st PCIe 16x slot)

(4) In the pictured configuration the ultra-120 eXtreme seems to be over the memory slot nearest the CPU. Do you know if there is enough clearance to put in Corsair Dominator memory in? What about with the Corsair memory cooler?

Thank you for the photos of the very cool system.

(1) This is actually what I did do with the regular HR-05, I put a fan on it and rotated it to push the hot air to the back of the case. I don't see why it wouldn't also work with an SLI version.

(2) If you want to do this and put the 8800 in the second slot only, than yeah you'd probably have more room. With an HR-05 on the SB though, you will not be able to put an 8800 in the top slot (wether you add another 8800 or you decide to switch slots). This also has to do with your next question...

(3) If I hadn't cleaned everything up, shut the case, and set it back in it's spot I'd try this for you. You need to find someoine who has (or can) benchmark the same card in both slots. Here's why...



I won't pretend to know a whole lot about the chipset architecture and all that, but from this I know that the top PCIe is controlled through the NB and the second and third slots are controlled through the SB so I would assume that there wold be some performance difference. Wether it would be noticeable or not is another story as well. You be best to find somebody with the same setup and much more time to test it in both slots.

Well, I did actually install a Dominator in the first slot and it was more than fine. Now I have the Ballistix Tracers in and I also bought THIS OCZ RAM COOLER and mounted it on as well. I don't believe the coolers sits centered on the RAM though. I believe I had to shift it a bit away from the CPU HSF to get it in. It's still close enough to the first slot to provide decent cooling though. I don't know 100% but I think you'd be able to do it if you can off-center the RAM cooler.

Dew itt right:

Thanks for the information. I think I'll try to fit an HR-05-SLI on the NB so I can push air through the Ultra-120 extreme. The challenge will be getting a 8800 GTS in the upper PCIe x16 slot at the same time.

Originally Posted by jagdpanther

Dew itt right:

Thanks for the information. I think I'll try to fit an HR-05-SLI on the NB so I can push air through the Ultra-120 extreme. The challenge will be getting a 8800 GTS in the upper PCIe x16 slot at the same time.

Seems you should be able to do this with the non-SLI cooler as well. If you use the SLI one it will be closer to the CPU HSF and you may not have enough room to mount a fan on that side of the CPU HSF. You could still mount the fan to the other side so either way should really work.

Originally Posted by Dew itt right

The SB doesn't get nearly as warm as the NB anyway. Plus what little heat it does put out, the 680i's heatpipe setup puts the SB heat onto the NB before dissipating.

Absolutely incorrect... the MCP is the southbridge. Check under BIOS and you'll find out that it DOES get blazing hot.

Also your 680i southbridge HR-05 mounts different than I had mine. I had two HR-05 SLIs on my 680i, and fit SLI 8800GTX also. Just couldn't fit an XFI along with them.

Originally Posted by buffbiff21

Absolutely incorrect... the MCP is the southbridge. Check under BIOS and you'll find out that it DOES get blazing hot.

I haven't checked these temps in the BIOS nor am I saying that the SB doesn't generate heat. All I know is my NB is warmer with a fan on full speed than my SB is with no fan at all. In fact if I shut off the NB fan it gets too hot to even leave your hand on for more than a few seconds. Last time I shut the fan off it lasted maybe a couple minutes (idling) and shut off...

Originally Posted by Dew itt right

I haven't checked these temps in the BIOS nor am I saying that the SB doesn't generate heat. All I know is my NB is warmer with a fan on full speed than my SB is with no fan at all. In fact if I shut off the NB fan it gets too hot to even leave your hand on for more than a few seconds. Last time I shut the fan off it lasted maybe a couple minutes (idling) and shut off...

Yes, the northbridge runs hot of course, but the MCP has got to be just as hot. 50c with stock heatpipe, 70c with EVGA sb fan, and I think I got mine down to 40c with an HR05.

For this reason ALONE (well, and higher FSB on Intel chipset ) I switched back to P965; SLI is not worth that heat/noise/inconvenience.

Looking at that got me wondering. It looks like if you put the HR-05 SLI on the NB that you could turn the Ultra-120 to blow air out the back of the case?

Originally Posted by WintersFury

Looking at that got me wondering. It looks like if you put the HR-05 SLI on the NB that you could turn the Ultra-120 to blow air out the back of the case?

My bad, I just realized jagdpanther asked that same question and I completely misunderstood it! That'd be one heck of a close fit but it may actually work. I wish I hadn't put everything back in my case or I'd give it a shot.

BTW, one piece of advice on these HR-05's, if you can I'd recommend getting screws, nuts, and non-metallic washers to securely attach these to the mobo. They use spring-loaded pins that don't hold down very tightly. A slight bump of the HSF is enough to tip it up off the chip.