Hello!

I have an quite old ASUS A8N-SLI motherboard for socket 939. It works very good but the chipset fan is very noisy. I have thought of replacing it with a passive hetsink. I have a quite good airflow in the computer case so I hope it will work. It is not very much space there though so the heatsink can't be very big. I have thought of these three and want your comments and advices (the website is in swedish but I think you can understand enough, model number etc.):

https://www.inet.se/datorkomponenter/ky ... e/6308152/
https://www.inet.se/datorkomponenter/ky ... e/5321145/
https://www.inet.se/datorkomponenter/ky ... a/8903371/

I have no experience of changing chipset coolers so it would be nice if someone could guide me a little bit too. I will answer as soon as I possibly can.

Yours sincerely
Johan

I have the A8N-E motherboard, notorious for having some batch(es?) of the NB fan die prematurely.
I've read many confessions about owners replacing the original cooler with Zalman NB-47J and have no problems with that.

I'm thinking about replacing my cooler too, but due to the position of the NB the NB-47J can only be used if the graphics card has a single slot cooler.
With an Accelero S1 mounted on the graphics card there's not enough room for any elevated NB cooler.
My solution, under development, is to apply some heavy machining to a used Athlon 64 heatsink, turning it into a fairly large and very asymmetric NB cooler.

Cheers
Olle

Hello!

Today I bought the Revoltec Northbridge Freezer. Do you think it will work on my A8N-SLI motherboard? Will it be able to cool the nForce4 SLi chipset enough?

Yours sincerely
Johan

Does it come with an AMD style pushpin option? Looks like it just has the Intel clips which wouldn't work.

i'm running the blue zalman on my A8N-Sli deluxe and it works fine. i might get the HR-o5 SLI/IFX. since the fins on the zalman do get in the way of long video cards.

Here is mine. I have a 80 mm Panaflo attached to the lower drive cage with wire ties (just out of view on the right) that is running at 5V (12 fan) to blow some air in the direction of the Zallman Chipset HS and the Video Card. I used Artic Silver Ceramique paste (do not use AS-5 silver paste).

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Thank you very much for your answers!

The Revoltec Northbridge Freezer can be mounted with pushpins, but the holes are not adjustable. I read (after I bought the cooler) that the distance between the holes on the A8N-SLI are not standard. So I will measure to se if it looks like it can work. If it won't, I will check if I can change to another cooler. Should I go for the Zalman NB47J then? It looks like it works for others with the same motherboard. The store where I bought the Revoltec didn't have that model but they can maybe order it from their supplier. Otherwise they had the Zalman NBF47. What du you think about it?

Yours sincerely
Johan

If you don't want to remove your mobo to attach the HS, you may as well try an adhesive compound with thermal properties such as the Arctic Alumina Thermal Adhesive.

http://tinyurl.com/m555uh

Result (southbridge)



With the adhesive thermal compound you don't have to worry about the cooler's mounting solution possibly not being compatible with your motherboard. You could also use about any aftermarket HS.
I don't know if you can find this adhesive compound in Sweden, I bought mine from the US.
I wouldn't recommend buying those heatsinks that comes with a pre-applied thermal tape. Those are bound to fall off sooner or later.

To use an adhesive compound is not an alternative, becuse I want to have another chance if something goes wrong. Now I have also chosen to wait with changing the cooler, probably till after the summer. But if anyone else have any ideas about which cooler will work the best, I would like to hear.

Yours sincerely
Johan

Yeah, once the adhesive compound has stuck, it's quite difficult to detach the HS without possibly destroying the naked chip.

Judging by some photos of your motherboard, it looks like the NB heatsink is attached to the board by two plastic push-pins**, rather than the hook solution Revoltec is using. Which means you have to remove the motherboard from the case to access its back, otherwise it will be very difficult to detach the existing heatsink unless you want to cut away those plastic push-pins and leave the left over parts rattling inside your case, which of course isn't recommended.

** I have no idea if the AMD's version of the push-pins work in similar manner as the intel push-pins

Once the mobo has been taken out from the case, you have to carefully flip it over (I held to it with my hand, balanced it on the side, the IO-ports worked fine as handles) and locate those tiny plastic push-pin heads protruding on the back - the "heads" look like blunt arrow heads and have to be squeezed together in order for them to let go of the hooked grip and slide through the motherboard.

Those can be little tricky to flatten. I successfully removed my NB HS by using a pair of tiny tweezers to flatten those arrow-heads but be careful not to slip and scratch the mobo! It took me 4-5 attempts, those plastic "arrows" can be tough to get a grip on.

Also always remember the risk of ESD!

Once the hooks/arrow-heads have been flattened, you simply push those through the holes and the HS will come loose. Be careful so that it doesn't unexpectedly fall out and hit some sensitive stuff on the mobo.

I suggest you check again and see how the heatsink is attached to your mobo, but I'm pretty sure it's not using the Revoltec's hook-variant.
If you're using those hooks, you're lucky. It's much easier to remove them than the push-pins.

If your northbridge chipset does get very hot, it will need an assisting fan or another cooling solution such as the
Thermalright HR-05 IFX; pricey yes, and a high riser, but cools much better than those standard square-type chipset coolers such as the Zalman ZM-NB32K. It cools my very hot nforce chipset sufficiently with some spill-over airflow from the CPU fan. You can also attach a slow spinning 80mm fan to it.

Good luck!

Hello and thank you for your answer!

The Revoltec cooler has push-pin mounts, but there were other reasons that made it not fit to my motherboard. Now I have returned it to the store where I bought it and got my money back. I will let the stock cooler remain on the board until I can find an affordable solution that allows me using dual-slot graphic card coolers, and if it is possible, also dual cards. As I said before, if anyone has a good idea of what cooler will work well, I would appreciate to hear. I am not going to use this computer in the summer, so I think I will wait at least until middle of August to buy another cooler.

Yours sincerely
Johan

I used a Titan Copper VGA cooler to replace the NB fan/heatsink on my old Asus A8N-SLI DELUXE as the fan died on it, didn't bother whit trying to get a new fan from Asus as it was a bother and I knew the new fan would probably die sooner than later again.

The specific model number is TTC-CUV2AB/RHS(DIY)

It's sadly not silent but it's really low profile, 14mm high and only 55.8mm in diameter. It comes whit 4 diffrent length metal clips and one off em fit perfectly, just had to use a file a little on one edge as it was hitting a condensator. You get some free memory heatsinks as well.

The clips that come whit it are for screw hole widths off 79.8, 52.0, 54.8 & 59.0mm.
It was the 52mm clip that worked on the A8N-SLI Deluxe.

Link to picture in my old computer:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v400/ ... 030824.jpg

Ok... hope you'll find a good solution!

By the way and OT... The shops that I've encountered have had a strict return policy. Once you've opened the package, they won't take it back, unless we're talking warranty issues of course.
You must be a very persistent customer.

Hello again!

I have decided to buy a Arctic Cooling NV Silencer 6 for my graphics card, and therefore the Zalman NB47J doesn't fit as a chipset cooler because it is too tall. I do not need extreme silence, but the 9000 RPM stock chipset cooler is really annoying. I found the Titan TTC-CSC03E chipset cooler in a store here in Sweden. It costs 67 swedish krona which is about 9.3 US$. Does anyone here know if it fits on my Asus A8N-SLI motherboard? I understand that it is not very silent, but is must be more silent than the stock cooler!

Best regards
Johan

So nobody knows if the Titan TTC-CSC03E chipset cooler fits on my motherboard? I would really appreciate an answer!

Best regards
Johan

I don't know about the Titan, I don't have one, but I can tell you the original Asus heatsink has aprox. 52mm between the two pushpin holes.

A Thermalright HR-05 SLI (IFX SLI) would be perfect for you, I have one and it fits on my A8N-SLI Deluxe (same layout) with an ATI Silencer 1
(wich is pretty much the same with the NV Silencer, even thicker - 40,5mm vs. 38mm) and with an Accelero S1 Rev.2 too.


I hope this has helped you.

Thank you for the answer!

On Titan's website it says that the TTC-CSC03E has 59 mm between the holes, so then I think I can forget it. I have been considering the Thermalright HR-05 SLI but even though it's called SLI I think it would block my second graphics port, so I can't buy another graphics card later. Now I saw that the same store that I will buy the Arctic Cooling NV Silencer 6 from also has the Titan TTC-CUV2AB/RHS(DIY) that Nighthog mentioned above which should work. I will probably buy it and I can report here later how it worked!

Best regards
Johan