Latest greatest chipset cooler

T

Top Nurse

Supreme [H]ardness
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Nov 4, 2003
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SLI chipset coolers seem to be a problem especially on the DFI Lan Party board. The AC Twinplex fits the A8N-SLI series boards and I think other do as well. Lately several people have been ordering coolers in from MIPS in Germany that work, but are not asthetically pleasing to the eye. Aqua Computer just ran the flag up on the SLI chipset coolers with this beauty:

twinplex_dfi.jpg
 
Just another pretty face that I have no use for in this world.............. :D

If that AC is the greatest, I'd really hate to see the worst............ :eek:
 
Looks nice, but is it necessary?

Seems like it's a very restrictive block, especially for a northbridge cooler.
 
It's not necessary at all as long as you have good airflow in your case. It just dumps more un-needed heat into your cooling loop........... :eek:
 
any word on price? just another way to suck up money from people who think their NB is too loud :p
 
I like it a lot, finally something for all the folks who talk about there not being any blocks for their chipset that's under their vid card.

Thanks for posting, TN! When will we see it at Sharka?
 
Double Jesus said:
any word on price? just another way to suck up money from people who think their NB is too loud :p
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I take it you run with Tornado fans. ;)

Yum, good thing I've decided to use 3/8 ID. :)
 
headala said:
I like it a lot, finally something for all the folks who talk about there not being any blocks for their chipset that's under their vid card.

Thanks for posting, TN! When will we see it at Sharka?
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At the rate that sharka gets AC gear in, you might see it in a year or so................ :eek:
 
Meh...its a piece of copper with some clear plexi on top...nothing special about it.
 
Don't know how much Rpm's the DFI chipset fan does, but in my Asus SLI the chipset fan reached 8000Rpm and that was noticeable.
As for being necessary or not, well it's a matter of choice and also of having the right setup to handle the load. Some want performance, some only silence.
Hope AC launches the block, and i say this because it isn't the first time they release a CAD design and then nothing more happens.
Personally i don't like it, aesthetically speaking, and also because the way the connectors are placed, it will kill the flow.
 
Talonz said:
Looks nice, but is it necessary?

Seems like it's a very restrictive block, especially for a northbridge cooler.
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Yeah, lets watercool our CPU and GPU to remove heat and fan noise but leave a loud ass fan for the chipset. :rolleyes:

I got a 20c reduction in heat on my MIP's block and it now is silent. That I would call un-necessary......

Could it be you call it such because you can't cram a 1/2" ID tube over it?
 
Jag said:
Personally i don't like it, aesthetically speaking, and also because the way the connectors are placed, it will kill the flow.
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Flow doesn't mean much on a 8mm based system.
 
R1ckCa1n said:
Yeah, lets watercool our CPU and GPU to remove heat and fan noise but leave a loud ass fan for the chipset. :rolleyes:

I got a 20c reduction in heat on my MIP's block and it now is silent. That I would call un-necessary......

Could it be you call it such because you can't cram a 1/2" ID tube over it?
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Quoted for truth. :p
 
R1ckCa1n said:
Yeah, lets watercool our CPU and GPU to remove heat and fan noise but leave a loud ass fan for the chipset. :rolleyes:
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Where do I say that the northbridge is not a candidate for watercooling? When I ask "is it necessary?" I refer to the restriction imposed by this block.

R1ckCa1n said:
I got a 20c reduction in heat on my MIP's block and it now is silent. That I would call un-necessary......

Could it be you call it such because you can't cram a 1/2" ID tube over it?
Click to expand...

Well let me put it this way:

In any system, high flow, low flow, what is your preferred northbridge waterblock? High restriction or low restriction?

The northbridge does not generate much heat, and having a restrictive pin grid waterblock on it offers no advantages over a high flow design. You may shave a few degrees off by switching from a high flow block to this northbridge cooler, but at what cost?

If you already run a low flow setup, I guess it can't hurt too much, but for most setups, it's overkill. You would be just as well off with a high flow design even in your low flow setup.

I hope that made sense, I think it's a little confusing the way I wrote it.

Also, where did I complain about the small tubing size? It would still be overkill to me if it used 3/8" or 1/2" tubing. People go for low restriction northbridge blocks for a reason.
 
Talonz makes a very good point. A northbridge really doesn't need the micro pins in order to be sufficiently cooled. The sharp right angle on the fittings doesn't help flow either, 45 degree connectors would have been better (if there was space, I cant tell the dimensions of the block from there and I haven't looked at my MB for a bit). A simple channel design would be more than enough to cool the NB and would offer less resistance to flow. Whether you are running a high flow or a low flow setup, you cannot argue against less resistance being better (so long as cooling is sufficient).


Also, for most people a waterblock on the northbridge really is not necessary. I have done nothing to my nb fan and I cant hear it at all inside of my P180. My case is very good at isolating noise, and it has sufficient cooling so that the NB fan never revs up to its high speed. I have heard the high speed once when I turned off my case fans, and it was quite noisy. However if you lap the NB heatsink and put some AS5 on it you will NEVER have the fan rev up to high speed. The NB fan can be very quiet so long as you keep decent airflow in your case. (Please dont tell me I dont have sensitive hearing...I am VERY finnicky about noise and have VERY acute hearing)


This doesn't mean I am saying that northbridge blocks are bad, or that AC's design is inherently bad. I am merely trying to show that it is not "uber 1337 hot sauce".
 
Erasmus354, it seems like some people don't have any idea on how to turn down loud fans and get the correct air flow inside their case, so the answer is to water cool everything to make out for poor air flow................. :eek:

Here's a little pic of the temps I get on my system with good air flow, notice the speed and temp of the chipset............ :D So why in gods green earth would anyone try and water cool something that runs that cool at the OC that I'm running. Properprior planning prevents piss poor performance.......................... :D Air flow, air flow, air flow.


3105ac.jpg
 
er a8n-sli, isn't that a amd platform? why are we talking about northbridges? this looks like its for the southbridge, since the NB is integrated into the cpu...
 
Elysian said:
er a8n-sli, isn't that a amd platform? why are we talking about northbridges? this looks like its for the southbridge, since the NB is integrated into the cpu...
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No.

Only the memory controller is integrated into the CPU. You most definitely still have a northbridge. And even though it doesn't have a memory controller on it, nVidia still managed to keep the nF4 sufficiently hot to require either active cooling, or one of those large Zalman heatsinks (which dont always fit certain boards like the DFI.
 
What Erasmus354, the chipset still has all the normal components of a chipset minus the memory controler, and it also combines basicly everything else into one...............;) By calling it a south bridge, is implying that there is more than one bridge................ :eek:

NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra-based PCs feature the latest PCI-Express™ bus technology and deliver top performance, feature-rich multimedia computing, and security protection for the most demanding PC users.

The unique single-chip, low latency architecture of the NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra MCPs offer one of the industry’s best core-logic solutions with outstanding performance and the latest technologies—PCI Express, secure high-speed networking, and high-performance storage—and ensures that your PC stays ready for the newest games, future applications, and next-generation PC specifications.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/nforce4_ultra.html

http://www.nvidia.com/page/pg_20041015990644.html
 
Bio-Hazard said:
Erasmus354, it seems like some people don't have any idea on how to turn down loud fans and get the correct air flow inside their case, so the answer is to water cool everything to make out for poor air flow.................
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Because you have a very unique case that probably wouldn't even need a fan due to it's very large size. The rest of us don't have cases the size of a large suitcase and either need to blow lots of air or watercool stuff so we don't have to use fans. Case in point (no pun intended) is when I take the sides off my computer I rarely need to have the case fans at anything but just barely turning over...
 
Bio-Hazard said:
What Erasmus354, the chipset still has all the normal components of a chipset minus the memory controler, and it also combines basicly everything else into one...............;) By calling it a south bridge, is implying that there is more than one bridge................ :eek:
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"Traditionally" all a NorthBridge did was handle the multiplexing between the CPU to memory, and then on to whatever data bus (PCI, etc) to access the peripherals. More modern Northbridge chipsets integrated a fair whack of the basic peripheral logic into them (mouse, keyboard, etc). The SouthBridges just sat on that same data bus and handled some of the more complex peripheral IO, or occasionally there was a seperate dedicated IO bus between the NB and SB, and the SB does the lot.

With the AMD64 architecture the functionality of the northbridge has pretty much shifted to the CPU, which now has the memory controller and the peripheral bus (HyperTransport) integrated, and the "SouthBridge" is still doing what it always did, but handles some of the extra peripheral load that Northbridges used to do.

In essense, the chipsets that are on AMD64 boards are still "SouthBridges", just that the Northbridge is sucked up into the CPU.
 
As for cooling chipsets, I've always had complete success with the passive Zalman heatsink devices. Never had a computer even given me grief with them, even when overclocking and over-volting the chipset.
 
Cathar said:
As for cooling chipsets, I've always had complete success with the passive Zalman heatsink devices. Never had a computer even given me grief with them, even when overclocking and over-volting the chipset.
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Different strokes for different folks. ;) BTW, will you be making that GPU cooler design soon? And would they be suitable for use on a chipset as well?
 
Top Nurse said:
, but are not asthetically pleasing to the eye. Aqua Computer just ran the flag up on the SLI chipset coolers with this beauty:
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I fail to see what is the look going to do w/ performance. However, if it support the ATI X1800 series, I'll look at it. But I seriously doubt it's the greatest, surely doesn't deserve two threads on the same subject.

As a GPU cooler from Cathar, I second that idea.
 
Top Nurse said:
Different strokes for different folks. ;)
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I guess. Doesn't get more silent than a hunk of metal just sitting there though. Cheap too.

BTW, will you be making that GPU cooler design soon? And would they be suitable for use on a chipset as well?
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Not a huge priority for me. Next up is to get a final price on these G7's. Various bits and pieces required to do a run of them are slowly falling into place. Firmly finalised the design now along with necessary machining tweaks after the prototypes were done. Am looking into sourcing a suitable piece of nickel for your individual request

Looking beyond that, the low-cost 5.25" bay-based TEC chiller has next priority. Internal design for that is ready for a final proof-of-concept prototype. Success of that may see me making a GPU block, but as above it's not a high priority. Plenty of other decent GPU blocks out there anyway.
 
Cathar said:
Looking beyond that, the low-cost 5.25" bay-based TEC chiller has next priority. Internal design for that is ready for a final proof-of-concept test.
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A TEC chiller for H20 or alcohol? Would it need copper lines? How quiet?
 
Top Nurse said:
A TEC chiller for H20 or alcohol? Would it need copper lines? How quiet?
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Water. Could be used for alcohol if you wanted to. No need for copper lines.

How quiet? Literally noiseless. Need an extra pump and extra tubing to use it. Plug it into a PSU molex connector on a power rail which no other component is on, and it'll knock between 5-15C off your water temps depending on what you're doing and what voltage you run it at.
 
Top Nurse said:
Because you have a very unique case that probably wouldn't even need a fan due to it's very large size. The rest of us don't have cases the size of a large suitcase and either need to blow lots of air or watercool stuff so we don't have to use fans. Case in point (no pun intended) is when I take the sides off my computer I rarely need to have the case fans at anything but just barely turning over...
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You don't need to have a huge case to have good air flow........................ :eek: Before I got the UFO I was doinf the same OC's and temps in my little 6X Lian-Li with my external water box.........There was never a reason in the world for me to run any case with the side panel off. The same thing goes for my test rig with the Swifty kit in it, it uses a Abit AV8 with a passive HS on the chipset and it also OC's without issues and it's in a tiny Cooler Master Centurion 5 case.................. :D

Passive chip-set on AV8............... :eek:

dsc000998qr.jpg


Stock cooling on NF7-S............. ;) Along with a smalll OC on a 2500 Barton.

dsc0086211zg.jpg


cpuz2403pw.jpg
 
Cathar said:
"Traditionally" all a NorthBridge did was handle the multiplexing between the CPU to memory, and then on to whatever data bus (PCI, etc) to access the peripherals. More modern Northbridge chipsets integrated a fair whack of the basic peripheral logic into them (mouse, keyboard, etc). The SouthBridges just sat on that same data bus and handled some of the more complex peripheral IO, or occasionally there was a seperate dedicated IO bus between the NB and SB, and the SB does the lot.

With the AMD64 architecture the functionality of the northbridge has pretty much shifted to the CPU, which now has the memory controller and the peripheral bus (HyperTransport) integrated, and the "SouthBridge" is still doing what it always did, but handles some of the extra peripheral load that Northbridges used to do.

In essense, the chipsets that are on AMD64 boards are still "SouthBridges", just that the Northbridge is sucked up into the CPU.
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Whatever you like to call it, it's still a single-chip solution. So lets call it what it is, The Chip-Set, neither the north or south bridge.................... :D
 
Bio-Hazard said:
Whatever you like to call it, it's still a single-chip solution. So lets call it what it is, The Chip-Set, neither the north or south bridge.................... :D
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It's most definitely a South-Bridge by all classic definitions of the term, but whatever you want to call it if it makes you happy... ;)
 
Bio-Hazard said:
Erasmus354, it seems like some people don't have any idea on how to turn down loud fans and get the correct air flow inside their case, so the answer is to water cool everything to make out for poor air flow................. :eek:
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Or the flip side that with no heat in the case you don't need airflow? I am sitting next to my case (only takes one case to cool my stuff) and I can't even hear the fans...... Loudest thing is my Raptors.

Sorry that your opinions don't match others on this forum, but you dont' need to troll every thread related to AC do you?
 
Bio-Hazard said:
cpuz2403pw.jpg
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LOL... are you trying to call 240 fsb impressive? i'd bet you had a memory divider too.....

show me some 300fsb and then we will talk.
 
My DFI w/2 7800GTX's would benefit from a good chipset cooler, especially since one of the GTX's dumps heat directly into the NB fan!. Theres no way to go passive and water would be the only solution, so I welcome this new chipset block and hope to see one in my loop soon.
 
Slammin said:
My DFI w/2 7800GTX's would benefit from a good chipset cooler, especially since one of the GTX's dumps heat directly into the NB fan!. Theres no way to go passive and water would be the only solution, so I welcome this new chipset block and hope to see one in my loop soon.
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You are correct that passive will not work with SLI boards, hence this new block. But hey, who's checking to see what the block is actually for? :)
 
Bio-Hazard said:
It's not necessary at all as long as you have good airflow in your case........
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what about those who cool for noise abatment as much/more then OCing? "good airflow" has a different meaning for those folks ;)


Bio-Hazard said:
It just dumps more un-needed heat into your cooling loop........... :eek:
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well WTF is your bad assed WC system for, if not to absorb and remove un-needed heat from the case. :rolleyes:

so you're saying that the heat put out by a chipset cooler is going to scew the temps in a WCing system? I call bullshit :eek:
 
R1ckCa1n said:
Or the flip side that with no heat in the case you don't need airflow? I am sitting next to my case (only takes one case to cool my stuff) and I can't even hear the fans...... Loudest thing is my Raptors.

Sorry that your opinions don't match others on this forum, but you dont' need to troll every thread related to AC do you?
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Yes, when they give out incorrect info................;) And certain AC people do the same to non AC threads, what goes around, comes around.
 
R1ckCa1n said:
LOL... are you trying to call 240 fsb impressive? i'd bet you had a memory divider too.....

show me some 300fsb and then we will talk.
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That's on a XP system 1:1.................. :D

How about 310 ....... :eek:

3105ac.jpg


And here's one with my new ram I just got, got it to 275 @ 1:1............... :D

oc8zj.jpg
 
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