Northbridge fan failing on my IC7...

J

jamezzz122

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jun 1, 2003
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Well at first it was making noises at 100% and I used Speedfan to lower the RPMs which cured the noise for a while but the noise would start up again eventually. And now sometimes it even stops spinning completely but starts again once I blow some compressed air on it. What can I do? I have the metallic one that is held in place by 2 retention hooks. Can I replace JUST the fan itself and not the heatsink? Can I just lube up the fan or clean it out or something? Thanks guys!
 
I had a GA-7VAXP gigabyte board that had an awful noise coming from the northbridge fan and replaced it with the nb47j posted above and it worked very well. The adjustable arms made it a snap to fit and install. There are pushpins that snap into the existing mobo holes.

Think it was $8.00 shipped.

Much better than that screeching noise that was coming from my rig.

http://www.1coolpc.com/nb47j.htm
 
Ditto to everything above. If you want to try and save it, go with the oil. Want to replace it with a silent HS, go with the Zalman ( I got mine for 4.00 before shipping LINK ).

My northbridge fan on my Biostar M7NCG mATX board was getting cranky on me and making a lot of noise on start up, I oiled it and it worked for about another 5 months, but then it started again. So I went with the Zalman solution, and it works great.
 
What's a good temperatrue for the northbridge? Without the fan, I get 60 degrees C. I will try to oil the fan before replacing. That Zalman one, how is it held in place?
 
jamezzz122 said:
What's a good temperatrue for the northbridge? Without the fan, I get 60 degrees C. I will try to oil the fan before replacing. That Zalman one, how is it held in place?
Click to expand...

If your northbridge came with a fan, it is not advisable to run it without one, unless you have something on it like the Zalman that is ment to cool it without a fan. 60C is high.

Templarknightx provided a product link in his post, which has a little install movie in flash for the Zalman.
 
In that installation video, it shows two screws to screw down. My northbridge cooler is held on my two hoops that have springs to connect. Would that work?
 
Read above someone said that hs worked on his mobo and his was the same as yours so yes it will work.

~Adam
 
I'm running a Zalman NB32J with a Zalman ALCU cpu hsf on my IC7
After 2 Abit nb hsf failures in less thn 8 months I went with the passive Zalman nb solution.
Best move I made.
Temps as I type
sys=27.5
cpy=35.5
pwm=28

I used the Zalman supplied thermal epoxy which permanently attaches the NB32J to your board effectively voiding the warranty.
Securing it with the epoxy eliminates the possibility of the retaining loops from popping out
which has been known to happen--alot.
My board is cooler, quieter, and trouble free since the Zalmans moved in, :cool:
 
My fault, I had assumed that when you said yours had a fan, I thought that meant you had the holes in the mobo.

You can simply buy a replacement, assuming that you are past your warrenty (other wise you can contact Abit and they should send you out another for free), on Abits website here: http://www.abit-usa.com/abitparts/chipset_fan.php

I took a look at Abits site to take a look at the NB fan connections, but there pics are not very helpful, so I googled it and found a real good pic on a Russian site (go figure).

Anyway, the Zalman solution will not work for your board unless you epoxy it to the chip itself. Sorry.

I took a look around the Abit forums and there weren't very many solutions, but there was a lot of people with a complaint like yours. Seems to be that Abit makes great motherboards, but is a little chinsy on the fans. Also reading through the forums, it seems that some say that your board actually requires active cooling if you are doing any overclocking at all, since there is not a auto shutdown feature for northbridge overheating. So again the passive Zalman will not work.

Anyway, I am still looking around but here are a few solutions you can think about, to go along with the option to buy or request one from Abit:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=35-109-117&depa=0 (copper)
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=35-109-116&depa=0 (aluminum)
(I have read that the difference in temps between these two is 1C-2C, so going aluminum will save you some money)
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=35-116-010&depa=0 (this one just looks so stinking cute [in a manly way] that I couldn't resist in adding it to the frey)

That is all I could find. Try contacting Abit to see if you are under warrenty and get them to send you a new one for free. If that is not an option, cause you are out of warrenty for some reason, go with the Zalman and thermal epoxy it to your chip.
 
you dont need to epoxy.. you just need to make a clip
northbridgemod.jpg

northbridgemod2.jpg
 
ryuji said:
you dont need to epoxy.. you just need to make a clip
Click to expand...

nice...what did you use to make the clip? and I guess you used AS5 under the heatsink?
 
Nice clip ryuji
The clip fabrication doesn't bother me it's using the original retention loops that I don't like.
Well I guess you can either risk popping the loops and taking out a video card which has happened or kill the warranty by the epoxy method.
To each his own.

Ps ryuji,
my father was from Abington,Ma
 
loop has poped out of the mobo before.. had it a bit too tight... caught it before the nb fell off the chip tho... fixed it now its loose enough that its not gonna rip out another one

neat, didnt think many ppl came from where i live :p
 
ryuji said:
loop has poped out of the mobo before.. had it a bit too tight... caught it before the nb fell off the chip tho... fixed it now its loose enough that its not gonna rip out another one

neat, didnt think many ppl came from where i live :p
Click to expand...

That blue Zalman one. Can it be permenantly epoxied if I don't want to fabricate some wires? Also, will it fit with my Zalman CNPS-7000 which cools my CPU? Thanks!

I'm also from Massachusetts. LOL :)
 
jamezzz122 said:
That blue Zalman one. Can it be permenantly epoxied if I don't want to fabricate some wires? Also, will it fit with my Zalman CNPS-7000 which cools my CPU? Thanks!

I'm also from Massachusetts. LOL :)
Click to expand...
my xp-120 fits after trimming a few fins on the zalman..... and of course it can be epoxied.. it just comes with none
 
You trimmed a few off the Zalman northbridge cooler? Or do you have a Zalman CPU cooler also?
 
jamezzz122 said:
You trimmed a few off the Zalman northbridge cooler? Or do you have a Zalman CPU cooler also?
Click to expand...
i only cut a cm off the first row of long fins... made it the same hight as the short ones... zalman was a little tall to have xp-120 fit... i REALLY suggest clipping it tho.. i need to remove my video card and zalman to install the xp-120 because it needs to tilt in the north bridge's direction
 
don't worry about it
it will run fine w/o the fan unless you are doing high FSB overclocking
Mine went out 1 year ago and no problems,
<<<<< quieter too!!! <<<<<<<<<<<
 
from someone who has this same exact board i havnt YET had the NB fan problems...but i can reccomend a awesome cooler...swiftech makes this GREAT NB cooler that i had to take off mine and put my stock cooler on because i got my Zalman 7700ALCU and it towers over the stock cooler..( but the zalman also has airflow right on the NB so i really can have the speeds low oin the fan)
the link to the cooler
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=35-108-022&depa=0

my 2 cents :)
 
Instead of clipping the Zalman NB cooler, you could always just bend it with needle nose pliers. I am getting a new motherboard for a SFF that I am building and I will be running a Thermalright SI-97 on it, so the Zalman NB cooler that I will be using will have to be either cut or bent. Seeing as how I don't want to loose any of the cooling properties (no matter how tiny of an amount it is) I am just going to bend them out of the way. That way the air still passes over and through the full amount of fins.
 
that is a great idea!... the cooling performance will not suffer as much or the appeal of the look from like cuts in the heatsink ( unless you re-paint it)

if i may ask which way are you bending it?..down? left? right? got any pictures?
 
mine is about to die :(, its spinning real slow now. i might just replace it with that Swiftech cooler. question, could i just use 2 of the loops to hook on? the 4th one on my board just kinda fell. actually, when i got the motherboard, the chipset cooler popped off.
 
Warrior said:
that is a great idea!... the cooling performance will not suffer as much or the appeal of the look from like cuts in the heatsink ( unless you re-paint it)

if i may ask which way are you bending it?..down? left? right? got any pictures?
Click to expand...

Nope sorry, no pics (no camera yet). But I just used two metal strips of scrap that I had laying around to bend them with...so I could bend all the fins in the same row at the same time. I only had to bed them slightly and I made it so it follows the curve of the SI-97 and comes close to touching but doesn't touch. I wish I had a camera but I don't.
:(

When you look at the Zalman NB cooler, you can see that one side is lower than the other, I put that lower side facing the SI-97 so I didn't have to bend as much. The tallest part of the Zalman only had to be bent a very small amount.


Bleed said:
mine is about to die , its spinning real slow now. i might just replace it with that Swiftech cooler. question, could i just use 2 of the loops to hook on? the 4th one on my board just kinda fell. actually, when i got the motherboard, the chipset cooler popped off.
Click to expand...
Yup. You can see in ryuji's post with pictures that he is only using two of the loops. He made the fastener himself, but he said it is not hard to do.
 
i wish a new more low profile/High performance NB cooler was avaliable .. i was thinking about cutting the Swiftec cooler to fit under my 7700alcu.. would the cooling performance be reduced by much?... all the other NB coolers are Huge!..i wish a thinner one was out.. ( heatpipes? ( too much of a overkill?))
 
Warrior said:
that is a great idea!... the cooling performance will not suffer as much or the appeal of the look from like cuts in the heatsink ( unless you re-paint it)

if i may ask which way are you bending it?..down? left? right? got any pictures?
Click to expand...
i dont need to worry about looks at all...nb cooling is covered by my xp-120... literaly :p
xp-120installed.jpg
 
I have a Zalman CNPS-7000 which is also rather large for a CPU cooler. The Swiftech one looks very tall and probably would not fit. I could cut some fins off a Zalman if it will not fit.

BTW, is the Zalman blue and yellow the same size? Or is the blue one a bit larger?
 
The blue one [47J] is the larger of the two.
The yellow one , the 32J is shorter and fits without any cutting with my Zalman 7000 alcu.
The 32J is more than adequate.
To each his own.
 
ryuji said:
i dont need to worry about looks at all...nb cooling is covered by my xp-120... literaly :p
Click to expand...

You have a cpu cooler that cools both your cpu and your nb??

Is that what you were saying?

~Adam
 
just get a new nb hsf for like 5 bucks. problem solved and more cost effective than replacing "just the fan"
 
CleanSlate said:
You have a cpu cooler that cools both your cpu and your nb??

Is that what you were saying?

~Adam
Click to expand...

he means that just the airflow over the NB is cooling it...which is a great way to cool too...great job
 
Warrior said:
he means that just the airflow over the NB is cooling it...which is a great way to cool too...great job
Click to expand...
AND you cannot see the nb's heat sink either... took a little jimmying to get the fan into that position.... clips are a bitch to put on when you offsetthe fan by about 2-3 cms
 
I was able to put a nb-1c cooler with 40 mm fan along with the xp120. There's still a good 10 mm of clearance between the fan and the xp120.
 
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