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I noticed the Northbridge heatsink on my Gigabyte GA-965G-DS3 was pretty hot (I'm not overclocking) so I replaced it with the Zalman ZM-NBF 47 'flower' heatsink. Now when I touch the new heatsink, it is just warm, not hot.
Here's a picture:
[URL=http://img411.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ga965gds3wzmnbf47zu5.jpg]
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When I removed the stock heatsink (easy) I noticed it had a square foam pad around the actual Northbridge chip stuck on the heatsink to prevent it shorting the tiny chip capacitors around the Northbridge chip. I thought about reusing this but ended up leaving it off. The Zalman heatsink apparently doesn't short these capacitors because the Northbridge chip is just tall enough so the bottom surface of the heatsink clears them.
I ended up scratching up the bottom of the heatsink slightly with all the moving around and adjusting the little arms to get the pushpins to line up with the motherboard holes. I would recommend putting a piece of tape or something over the heatsink or Northbridge chip while the adjustments are being made, then remove it and clean well. Maybe a piece of post-it note would be ideal since the adhesive doesn't leave much contamination. I used the Zalman-supplied white thermal grease spread out into a thin uniform layer but with all the sliding around as the pushpins were inserted I'm not sure how uniform a layer I ended up with. But it's on there pretty good now so I'll leave it alone.
To get the heatsink to fit on my motherboard, I had to flip the little arms over so they curved inward instead of outward as shown in the instructions. I read in the comments on newegg that one guy gave up because it wouldn't fit, but I wonder if he tried this trick. Obviously, the long dimension of the heatsink is supposed to be oriented parallel to the video card, not at right angles to it.
Here's a picture:
[URL=http://img411.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ga965gds3wzmnbf47zu5.jpg]
[/URL]When I removed the stock heatsink (easy) I noticed it had a square foam pad around the actual Northbridge chip stuck on the heatsink to prevent it shorting the tiny chip capacitors around the Northbridge chip. I thought about reusing this but ended up leaving it off. The Zalman heatsink apparently doesn't short these capacitors because the Northbridge chip is just tall enough so the bottom surface of the heatsink clears them.
I ended up scratching up the bottom of the heatsink slightly with all the moving around and adjusting the little arms to get the pushpins to line up with the motherboard holes. I would recommend putting a piece of tape or something over the heatsink or Northbridge chip while the adjustments are being made, then remove it and clean well. Maybe a piece of post-it note would be ideal since the adhesive doesn't leave much contamination. I used the Zalman-supplied white thermal grease spread out into a thin uniform layer but with all the sliding around as the pushpins were inserted I'm not sure how uniform a layer I ended up with. But it's on there pretty good now so I'll leave it alone.
To get the heatsink to fit on my motherboard, I had to flip the little arms over so they curved inward instead of outward as shown in the instructions. I read in the comments on newegg that one guy gave up because it wouldn't fit, but I wonder if he tried this trick. Obviously, the long dimension of the heatsink is supposed to be oriented parallel to the video card, not at right angles to it.