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Passive cooling the NorthBridge chip and ATI Radeon 8500 AIW

Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2002 4:44 pm
by Zyzzyx
I'm currently working on trying to quiet down my parent's system (and I'll be attacking mine as soon as I get home). Started off by removing the intake fan on the PSU, the side intake fan, and the secondary exhaust fan. This has left me with the exhaust fan for the PSU, the intake fan, and the CPU cooler fan, all of which are 80mm temperature controlled Enermax fans.

I've also mounted the Seagate Barracuda IV hard disk with grommets, to try for a little isolation.

Next on the hit list are the two small fans, for the Northbridge chip and the video card. I'm looking at replacing the miniature heatsink and fan on the NB chip with the Zalman NB heatsink. Considering that its about 5 times taller than the current one, I don't think that'll be a problem.

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However, the video card is an ATI 8500 Radeon All-in-Wonder. And the current heatsink/fan combo on that is even smaller than what is on the NorthBridge chip!! I'm contemplating using the same Zalman NB cooler on the video card, passively. This computer doesn't see any gaming or other high intensity video work. The most that it MIGHT see in the future is some minor DVD encoding/viewing. Or if'n my mom decides to take the old VHS tapes to DVD.

Is that Zalman going to be enough of a heatsink for the video card? I'd like to run the long and flat copper plate Zalman passive cooler, but with the TV tuner part of the card, I don't have the width available for it.

Should I look at remounting the side intake fan down aways where it'll blow directly on the card? I'd rather not, as we're trying to minimize overall fan usage.


Zyzzyx

Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2002 5:44 pm
by Rusty075
I'd be willing to bet that the chip on the Radeon is bigger than the Zalman heatsink. Your best bet is probably the Zalman ZM17CU Copper VGA Heatsink. (the big flat copper one you mentioned)

I'd double check to see if it'd fit. An easy way to do that would be to cut a piece of cardboard to the size of the heatsink; 52mm by 125mm (2" by 5") and hold it next to the VGA card to see if it hits the tuner or not.


If the ZM17CU won't fit I'd try a big heatsink like this:

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Which you can buy for a whopping $1.25 from All Electronics

That's the HS I've got on my Geforce2 Ti, which is overclocked and running at a much higher speed than the Radeon, so it should work fine for you.

Although that HS may not fit if you've got a PCI card next to the VGA card. If you can't rearrange them to make space AllElectronics also has a shorter HS of similar size:

allelectronics.com

Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2002 6:10 pm
by Zyzzyx
I've measured the space available and its JUST at 50mm space from the tuner to the AGP slot when the card is inserted. Not enough. :?

The Zalman NB cooler is 37mm square, so I'll double check that to the size of the Radeon chip. Going by memory right now I'd say its durn close to that size.


I do like that AllElectronics site though, I'll remember that one for some upcoming projects.


Zyzzyx
-having a great xmas break, working on parents' computer (and I built it last year at xmas :) )