You know what ticks me off? Active chipset coolers!

G

gmohr

Weaksauce
Joined
Apr 7, 2005
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Yeah I know they usually give more overclocking potential, but the fans on most mb's are cheap and sound like a turbine, and that's BEFORE a year of sucking dust off my grimy floor lol.

So, does anyone know of a good nForce4 board that uses a passive cooler? If not, how hard is it to fit a passive cooler to say an Asus A8N-E?

Thanks!
 
Get a quieter fan.

Most that have active cooling need active cooling.
The only one i have seen that might work is the huge Zalman sink.
 
my active cooling on my nb is the quietest fan in my whole case,other fans are stock a64 which inaudible due to the noisy nvidia 6800gt fan and lian li case fans,and a 120mm blue storm fan
 
So maybe the fan on my A8N-E is just bad. It sounds pretty loud.

Can anyone suggest a good replacement for this fan? I've never attempted this kind of fan swap.

Thanks!
 
interesting. i actually put a small 40mm fan on what was a passively cooled chipset. ran a little hot for my tastes (dfi nf3-ut)


and afaik, the nf4 chipset puts off too much heat to be passibely cooled without a good heatsink. do you think there's a noisy fan on there just in spite? ;)
i'd look into swiftech's chipset heatsinks. they're nice, plus you can probably get a small and quiet 40mm fan at the same time... though i don't know if they fit without interefering with the video card.
 
replace your chipset coolers with passive heatsinks and just place case fans or arrange airflow to blow over them somehow
 
The Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra-SLI employs a passive thermal solution on the nF4 SLI chip. Here's what PCStats had to say (http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1742):


Also, the passive heatsink on the nForce4-SLI chipset gets extremely hot during operation. I couldn't even leave my finger on the heatsink for a few seconds without the risk of burning myself, and that's too hot for comfort. You'd better have good case cooling if you plan to use the GA-K8N Ultra-SLI!
Click to expand...

I would shoot for a high-end air-cooled thermal solution, such as the Thermalright NB-1C or the Swiftech MCX159-R (it fits, right?).
 
The NF4 chipset is just a bare die, and it is REALLY easy to chip, even easier than the old Thunderbirds were!

Messing with the heatsink, hell, even moving the stock one around, has great potential to destroy your chipset. Mine was toast when I got the board.

I hate the noisy fan too. Just be careful. If you check out silentpcreview.com they have a thread on replacing the active heatsink with a passive one (even with the NV silencers!).

Good luck.
 
You could get a passive cooler and a Zalman FB123 92mm Fan w/ Adjustable Bracket and just aim that at your passively cooled NB.
 
gmohr said:
So maybe the fan on my A8N-E is just bad. It sounds pretty loud.

Can anyone suggest a good replacement for this fan? I've never attempted this kind of fan swap.

Thanks!
Click to expand...


The fans on the A8N boards are notorious for becoming very noisy, even in the first couple months of usage. The fans are crap.

I replaced mine today, with the big coolermaster one they sell at compusa for 9 bucks.
It's as big as the Zalman.

The airflow in my case is pretty good, but I can't seem to run the FSB as high now. I had 243MHz before, but now windows won't boot at that speed. I'm running at 235 now.
MB temp seems to be higher than before too... it's actually a couple degrees higher than the CPU. So I might have to rig up some sort of fan on top of it.


My A8N-SLI did have a spacer installed on the NF4 chip, which really helps to avoid chipping it when you're replacing the heatsink.
 
So who makes the best (low noise but cools properly) 'active' fan for the northbridge? It's not something that gets reviewed a whole lot. (or maybe I'm not paying attention :rolleyes: ).

Thanks
 
Thud said:
The fans on the A8N boards are notorious for becoming very noisy, even in the first couple months of usage. The fans are crap.

I replaced mine today, with the big coolermaster one they sell at compusa for 9 bucks.
It's as big as the Zalman.

The airflow in my case is pretty good, but I can't seem to run the FSB as high now. I had 243MHz before, but now windows won't boot at that speed. I'm running at 235 now.
MB temp seems to be higher than before too... it's actually a couple degrees higher than the CPU. So I might have to rig up some sort of fan on top of it.


My A8N-SLI did have a spacer installed on the NF4 chip, which really helps to avoid chipping it when you're replacing the heatsink.
Click to expand...

Mine had the spacer as well. My chipset fan died in about a months time. I went with a CoolerMaster Passive unit and it's working great.
 
Thud said:
The fans on the A8N boards are notorious for becoming very noisy, even in the first couple months of usage. The fans are crap.

I replaced mine today, with the big coolermaster one they sell at compusa for 9 bucks.
It's as big as the Zalman.

The airflow in my case is pretty good, but I can't seem to run the FSB as high now. I had 243MHz before, but now windows won't boot at that speed. I'm running at 235 now.
MB temp seems to be higher than before too... it's actually a couple degrees higher than the CPU. So I might have to rig up some sort of fan on top of it.


My A8N-SLI did have a spacer installed on the NF4 chip, which really helps to avoid chipping it when you're replacing the heatsink.
Click to expand...

So the MB sensor in ASUS Probe is measuring the chipset? I was wondering about this because my mobo temp is a few degrees higher than my CPU (both are watercooled). I did not see this on my A8V mobo.
 
I am not sure how your fan compares to that on the DFI NF4 board that I just recieved, but noise is not what bugs me so much about this one. I have the SLI board, and when I put a card in the top PCI-E slot, the end of the board actually touches the center of the fan, causing it to not rotate or rotate very slowly and in turn then making a bunch of noise. This is the stock fan, how the hell could they not figure out it was too tall? What I want to see is a sweet heatpipe design that allows you to take the fan and stick it somewhere else thats not in the way of the video cards or whatever else is in the way. Anyone know of such a heatsink?

PS: These things definatly run HOT. I had an MSI and had accidently got a wire caught in the fan so it wouldn't spin. It did not take long before I could smell something burning. It did not fry the thing but it was definatly way too hot to touch. A few more minutes and I probably would have lost the board.
 
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