A8N5X NF4 chipset Cooling Recommendations? Passive possible?

[DrCR]

Mods, if this should go to another forum (vga maybe?) feel free to move it there.

Hey, recently got in some new core components for my rig.

Seasonic S12-430
Asus A8N-SLI Premium OEM
AMD 3500+ E4 stepping
Corsair XMS 2x512MB
Scythe Mine

The A8N-SLI Premium was unfortuantly cooked (flacky bigtime) on arrival. Really disappointed, it being an Asus board, but not too suprised since it was a newegg OEM. Probably wouldn't have had a problem if I laid out almost twice as much on a retail version. Sending it back for a refund.

I'm getting in a Asus A8N5X monday as I never did plan on SLIing anyway. Pics of the board at newegg here. Fortunatly unlike the A8N-SLI Premium, the chipset isn't located under the vid card, so I'll have some height to work with.


Any recommendations for a more quiet and robust chipset cooling solution?

- Thermalright HR-05 Chipset Cooler? (looks rather impressive)
- Zalman VF900? (assuming you can put it on an NF4 chipset)


FYI I am planning on overclocking with this rig while headphone gaming, so the chipset cooling is going to have to be sufficenlty robust for that, not just normal operation. As for my quietness standards, I have a AthlonXP Barton, A7N8X, two MadDog YLs @ 5v, Thermalright Si-97, Zalman 92mm @ <5v that is starting to sound loud -- I've been bitten by the quiet bug lol. (Zalman 92mm kept for when I what to OC the rig @ 2.4GHz.)

Case fans: Two D12SL-12 @ 5v for case intake and extake (intake for HDs)
CPU HS: Scythe Mine modded with a D12SL-12 @ 5v
OC: I'd like to take the 3500+ 2.2GHz to at least 2.6GHz when gaming, with the three total D12SL-12 @ 12v.


Thanks for the help! I miss the days of the NF2 Ultra chipset that would 250MHz passively.

DrCR

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[nici]

Err, the VF900 is a GPU cooler. The VF700 with a fan removed and a bit cut off might fit though, why do you want to do that anyway?

The HR-05 should fit very nicely on that mobo A zalman NB47J isn´+t enough for nF4 without some airflow, a zalman gpu cooler is enough airflow even if the air ios rather warm. Id still go with the hr-05 though

[DrCR]

Well, I've been in this game for a while now, and I remember when we were putting chipset coolers on vidcards... so I just thought that you could potentially do the opposite nowadays.

Not in-the-know about the VF900 really. I'm holding out for the next-gen Arctic Cooling solution for the 7600GT I have. If it turns out to be a flop, I can mod an NV6 to fix without too much difficultly. I like getting the hot air out of the case, though the Arctic Silencers are quiet as silent as the good old original Rev.3.

DrCR

[nici]

Yeah you can do that, but the zalmans are quite a bit larger than a chipset cooler It wa nice when chipsets and graphics cards didnt even have heatsinks...

There was a review of GPU coolers a couple of weeks ago here on SPCR, check it out

[evilmedic]

You can definately do passive on the A8N5X. No need for fancy heatsink too!!

Their compeitor Gigabyte's GA-K8NF-9 uses low profile heatink.

ASUS's own A8N-VM CSM which have almost the same features but with an intergrated video core too!!! uses cheap passive heatsink.

I pulled use passive on it too. I pulled the fan/heatsink of mine and replaced it with a heatsink from a old asus athlon xp mobo. photo below.

[Towermax]

On my Asus A8N5X, I mounted a Zalman NB47J using Arctic Silver 5. Works great--installation was easy, through a bit fiddly.

This system has an AMD 3800X2 overclocked from 2000 to 2400. (10X240). Everything is at stock voltage. Zalman AlCu7000 on the CPU. 2GB RAM. 2 hard drives--one Raptor 74GB SATA and one Seagate 7200.7 200GB PATA. Radeon X1800GTO video card. Antec Truepower II 430 and one Nexus 120mm case fan at about 750RPM.

No chipset heat problems that I can detect. Everything runs fine, even when stressed for hours on end.

There are other chipset solutions out there, but not many are cheaper than the NB47J, unless you use/mod an existing heatsink as evilmedic did.