ASUS CROSSHAIR upside down? how to cool NB/SB?

I'm looking very seriously at the new CROSSHAIR MB but the heatpipe design for cooling the NB and SB doesn't sit well with me because I am building my new PC in a V1000B which is upsidedown...

In looking at the pictures on PC Perspective, the clearance for the mounts is extremely tight - does anyone know of some super small water blocks that would fit on this board for cooling these -OR- would leaving the heatpipe intact (with a fan blowing on the fins) be okay in an upsidedown case? Does inverting the heatpip affect it too much to keep it on?

For reference, heres the review and the pictures showing the MB: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=285&type=expert&pid=3

Does anyone think I could fit a MAZE4 on both of them with some sanding/trimming of the lexan cover to fit in the small opening for the SB?

im sorry im a lil lost, your saying your worried about removing the heat pipe system, and putting a Maze 4 on it for fear that the maze 4 is gonna interfere with the caps? or the sound card thingy....

yeah it is pretty tight, considering this is built for enthusiast, youd think they would be prepaired for watercooling, but it looks like they arnt...

leave the stock cooling solution for the NB and SB, just after you put your cpu heatsink on, try to get a fan overtop of it, blowing some air at those stock fins.

and umm, i no nothing of that case, are you talking about mounting the board upside down or are you talking about BTX?

the heatpipe is not affected by gravity, so therefore it can work in any position including upside down

lifeinchains said:

the heatpipe is not affected by gravity, so therefore it can work in any position including upside down

Click to expand...

qft. who spread that silly rumor last year anyway?

Man thats a nice looking board.

have you contacted any of the dealers that carry the maze.
A lot of them know what will fit but this board is brand new and
they might just guess.

HEAT pipes are a joke on the asus intel boards....
you can't cool that thing with joke heatpipes

just be thankful you don't have a damn intel northbridge to cool.
You would need 2 wc setups LOL

with no fans using water one good point is you have room to do things
that will help. BUT at the same time if you watercool for quiet....you are
back to fans for cooling again. and you will need air moving in good supply

sparks

upsidedown meaning that the motherboard is flipped. see http://lian-li.com/Product/Chassis/Middle_Tower/V_Cool/M_V_C_PC-V1000.htm for reference.

I was under the impression that the heatpipe design was built around the heat rising through the pipe and being dispersed at the top... which if this was a major design idea, flipping the board could potentially overheat the chips.

BUT if you guys think it doesnt really matter (I cannot seem to find any definitive info either way) then I might just leave it and attach the fan that comes with it since there will be no fan on the CPU to cool the fins.

Thanks for the comments!

i could go searchin for a buncha posts to quote but my net is painstakingly slow this week. anyhoo its not thru the proces of heat RISING, but another principle all together that makes heatpipes function. their purpose is to circulate the heat from one end of the pipe to another transported by the vacum in the pipe. basically it starts at your chipset and ends somewhere else where there are fins etc that increases the copper surface area, and usually closer to fans and thats how it gets the heat outta yer chipset and into the air wheee

I've researched this for my heat-pipe based board and this is what I've learned...

First of all, if you do a bit of research on heat pipes, they simply contain distilled water which vaporizes from the heat and the idea is that the vapor goes to the cooler area, is cooled by the fins and the CPU fan back to liquid form and then flows back down to be recycled. Hence if you invert a heat pipe board, their will be no water on the south bridge or north bridge to vaporize and it will instead pool at the mosfet end of the pipe. This is obviously not going to keep your NB/SB cool.

So while a heat pipe doesn't depend on gravity for the vapor to move (it goes to the coolest area), the cooled vapor turns into water which must use gravity to find it's way back to the hot spot, since water does not travel up-hill, inverting a heat pipe will not work.

Having said that, although I don't have a link to it, I came across someone who has my board (simple NF4 NB only) and simply attached a water block to the flat surface of the heat pipe over top of the NF4 chip and was successful in cooling it that way... although this was still defeating the heat-pipe it was sufficient to cool his NB. This won't work with this board since it has both NB/SB and the NB is not a flat surface upon which you could simply mount a water block.

So, you will need to put water blocks on the NB/SB and remove the heat pipe. You can ignore the mosfets or put passive ram sinks on them if you are really concerned about heat there but since the heat pipe was actually transferring heat from the NB/SB to the mosfet area, I can't imagine they are affected much by high temperatures.

In fact on most heat pipe boards, only one bank of mosfets is covered by any kind of heat sink, the ones on the other side are left bare. Someone reported that feeling the mosfets under load indcated they were not that hot. At any rate, for my system, I'm going to put passive heat sinks on them just for the hell of it.

The Swiftech MCW30 may be a good choice for a NB/SB water block.

Good luck.

I always thought it was like



Where when you turn the heatpipe upside down, the fluid travels to the other side, and it starts to evaporate except from the other side, the way it's supposed to be.

Correct me if I'm wrong?

Yeah I don't ever recall anyone saying that it was just distilled water in a heatpipe. You it would take 100C to vaporize, if you will remember back to your elementary school days. So my NB, SB and CPU all have to hit 100C before this works. I think not! If I recall right, heat pipes also have wicking material inside of them that moves the hot fluid from one end to the other.

To quote wikipedia.org.
"A typical heat pipe consists of a sealed hollow tube. A thermoconductive metal such as copper or aluminium is used to make the tube. The pipe contains a relatively small quantity of a "working fluid" or coolant (such as water, ethanol or mercury) with the remainder of the pipe being filled with vapour phase of the working fluid, all other gases being excluded.

On the internal side of the tube's side-walls a wick structure exerts a capillary force on the liquid phase of the working fluid. This is typically a sintered metal powder or a series of grooves parallel to the tube axis, but it may in principle be any material capable of soaking up the coolant.

The materials and coolant chosen depends on the temperature conditions in which the heat pipe must operate, with coolants ranging from liquid helium for extremely low temperature applications to mercury for high temperature conditions. However, the vast majority of heat pipes uses either ammonia or water as working fluid.

The advantage of heat pipes is their great efficiency in transferring heat. They are actually a better heat conductor than an equivalent cross-section of solid copper."

Well folks there you have it. It's NOT just water, and there is wicking material.

man this stuff is confusing -- from what I have seen from Asus, they seem to indicate that -none- of their motherboard heatpipes will work inverted.

I'll keep doing some research - i really like this board and want to find some way to use it

liquid in heatpipes are in a vacuum; it doesn't have to hit 100C to evap.

dude, im serious, you can use this mobo.

1. if you take the amount of folks with lian li v series cases (lots n lots, not ot mention other kinds)
2. if you take the amount of folks with the nforce 4 premium asus board + the a8n32 or whatever board.

then look at it, you would have a GREAT many people with non functioning stock cooling and that is simply not the case. it works. it works. it works. i agree you should do your own research and all, but in this thread already, im not the only one who said it works.

another opinion from: http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1029869048&postcount=20

w1retap said:

As far as the heatpipe 'upside down' issue, who keeps spewing this BS? Where is everyone hearing it from? It does not matter what orientation the motherboard is in for the heatpipes to work. They work through conduction, which gravity has no effect on. The heat travels from the chipsets through the heapipes via conduction, then it reaches the fins where the air cools it. The only issue people might have with different orientations is having the air flowing through the fins at the end of the heat pipes. In my lian-li, I have good airflow over them, and I'm also using the extra asus heatpipe cooler fan.

Click to expand...

^-- yup. thats my post.

To make it even more clear, the heat pipe wicks the heat from hot to cold. In our case, the fins are the cold side. It does not matter the orientation because heat travels from hot to cold. You guys are confusing heat in the form of air temperature. Yes, hot air rises in that case. But, heat pipes don't work that way. Heat pipes work through conduction, and fluid travel. I'm unsure which form of heat pipe Asus uses, if there is indeed fluid such as ammonia, acetone, or distilled water in them. They feel solid to me when I tap on them though. Heat pipes are used in places you don't think.. including SPACE CRAFTS and SATELLITES, where there is ZERO GRAVITY. In the case of fluid in the heat pipes, gravity still doesn't matter. The fluid travels from high pressure side (hot) to low pressure side (cold), and then back again. It just keeps going back and forth wicking the heat away. In case of a solid heat pipe, it works nearly the same way. The heat wicks to the cooler end where the air is flowing over the fins. In the older days before they were great at engineering these, some heat pipes were orientation specific. They got around this issue by actually adding a candle wick type "rope" inside the heat pipe for the fluid to travel on.

For more info, read up on it before spreading rumors.
http://www.cheresources.com/htpipes.shtml

wow, thanks for all the info guys

I wonder if all of the people reporting issues with inverted heatpipes causing MB failure are in fact experiencing a separate issue with air flow and general case cooling.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc maybe?

Anywho, thanks again - I will cross this off my list of "issues to look into" and see if the egg will be generous enough to put this board on sale for me ]

tbonem91 said:

wow, thanks for all the info guys

I wonder if all of the people reporting issues with inverted heatpipes causing MB failure are in fact experiencing a separate issue with air flow and general case cooling.

Click to expand...

dude, my guess would be that was a lotta hearsay and rumor back when the first a8n heatpipe thing came out. now with everyone EXCEPT dfi doing it.... you dont hear it as much.

Geeze people Stop spewing the garbage about heatpipes not working upside down.....


Heatpipes have "wicks" in the which allows the fluid to travel to both ends, heatpipes aren't just a tube filled with water.


They use heatpipes in cars, electronics, and a ton of other things... do you see your car having to sit on it's side otherwise it wont coole efficiently? lol... what about if it drives up a long hill or down? lol


Anyways, it's fine if it's inverted, upside down, on it's side, or right side up.. .don't matter. The only thing that is going to matter is the airflow for the heatsinks...


If you guys want to argue, look at heatsinks such as the ninja and the cnps9500... they don't have thier pipes pointing upwards... they are laying on thier side... .look at AMD servers with the heapipes already in them, they are actually facing downwards in some cases.

w1retap said:

For more info, read up on it before spreading rumors.

Click to expand...

Ockie said:

Geeze people Stop spewing the garbage about heatpipes not working upside down.....

Click to expand...

I was just asking a simple question based on a fairly important and obviously confusing topic for some people - as is evident here, many people are interested in it. All of the posts in this thread except for one are either asking if this 'myth' is true, or offering explanations why it isn't... and the one post saying that it is true does hold some reasonable logic.

nobody is spreading rumors and nobody is spewing garbage, just asking for clarification from people 'in the know'

I will say it again, "Thank you" for posting information on the subject and clarifying my doubts.

you are welcome for the help.

but, people ARE spreading rumors and spewing garbage. That does not mean you. It means people in general. I have seen plenty of posts where people say "zomg it does not werk!!!". Just do a simple forum search or google search on "asus heatpipe" or "upside down heatpipe". (do it just for kicks because its funny to read what bs people write in forums)

I just wanted to help inform people before more rumors were being spread. I tried to make it pretty clear where you quoted me by the context I used and providing a link, but I guess it was misinterpreted.

Heat flows from hot to cold. Same with heatpipes. It should work inverted.

Well, Asus specifically states that they do not recommend running their heatpipe configured mobos in an inverted enclosure. I would assume they know what they are talking about as they designed the thing. Will the heatpipe still conduct heat mounted upside down? Of course, you have metal and lots of it to conduct the heat from the chipset and disperse it to the ambient air. Will it work as advertised or in any way efficiently when mounted upside down? No, of course it won't as gravity is part of the engineered design for the heatpipe. So, if you don't mind having passive heatsinks on your chipsets then you should be fine but the heatpipe will not be working at it's design specs. and your chipset temps will be higher.

I mounted an A8N32 in a Lian Li PC V1000A case and waterecool both the chipsets. I use the Swiftech MCW30 on the NB (chip closest to the CPU) and it is fairly easy as it sits below the vid cards. The SB, the one betwen the vid cards is the bear. I ended up usig a very low profile cooler for that chip.

You can run the board upside down and except the extra heat or find another way to cool those chipsets. I chose to watercool.

Merc said:

Well, Asus specifically states that they do not recommend running their heatpipe configured mobos in an inverted enclosure. I would assume they know what they are talking about as they designed the thing. Will the heatpipe still conduct heat mounted upside down? Of course, you have metal and lots of it to conduct the heat from the chipset and disperse it to the ambient air. Will it work as advertised or in any way efficiently when mounted upside down? No, of course it won't as gravity is part of the engineered design for the heatpipe. So, if you don't mind having passive heatsinks on your chipsets then you should be fine but the heatpipe will not be working at it's design specs. and your chipset temps will be higher.

I mounted an A8N32 in a Lian Li PC V1000A case and waterecool both the chipsets. I use the Swiftech MCW30 on the NB (chip closest to the CPU) and it is fairly easy as it sits below the vid cards. The SB, the one betwen the vid cards is the bear. I ended up usig a very low profile cooler for that chip.

You can run the board upside down and except the extra heat or find another way to cool those chipsets. I chose to watercool.

Click to expand...

Yes, running it upside down without the required airflow does create issues... this is simple in any case where you have heatsinks below components and you create a hot spot.


Please, asus also tells you to use a static wrist strap and let a certified technician install it... do you do those two things? What about using one of their approved memory vendors?

You guys all assume that ASUS designed a heat pipe for this board that uses capillary action. That is not a given and in fact, given what we know about margins in this business... very likely NOT the case.

They may simply be relying on the fluid to drip back down or perhaps they went as far as using a grooved tube to help gravity - hence their recommendation about not inverting the board.

Remember this is a $200 motherboard, not a $20B satellite.

More info here... (see the part about vertical orientation)
http://www.heatsink-guide.com/content.php?content=heatpipes.shtml

A quote...
"However, there have been PC coolers where it seems that the usage of a heat pipe was more of a marketing argument than a technical necessity. Heat pipes used in PC CPU coolers are usually inexpensive units with low capillary action."

Ockie said:

Yes, running it upside down without the required airflow does create issues... this is simple in any case where you have heatsinks below components and you create a hot spot.


Please, asus also tells you to use a static wrist strap and let a certified technician install it... do you do those two things? What about using one of their approved memory vendors?

Click to expand...

GET 'HIM! i mean, after all the posts they still talkin about it not working? and what about hte intepreation of "inverted"? does it mean the mobo is upside down? so like the cards would be hanging from their slots etc? i dunno, but all of page 1 gives examples and decent enough evidence and reason that it works. heh

Merc said:

Well, Asus specifically states that they do not recommend running their heatpipe configured mobos in an inverted enclosure.

Click to expand...

Link please. Nowhere in my manual for my M2N32-SLI does it say this. I read it front to back.

el rolio said:

GET 'HIM! i mean, after all the posts they still talkin about it not working? and what about hte intepreation of "inverted"? does it mean the mobo is upside down? so like the cards would be hanging from their slots etc? i dunno, but all of page 1 gives examples and decent enough evidence and reason that it works. heh

Click to expand...

no... not hanging flat, upside down with the cards pointing towards the floor. Inverted, as in the link to the case I posted earlier, where the board is still vertical, but the slots are in the top portion, the CPU near the bottom, etc.

all heat pipes aside that is one sweet ass looking motherboard