Asus A7N8X?

bobkoure · Post by **bobkoure** » Mon Jan 13, 2003 10:47 am

Does anyone have an Asus A7N8X motherboard? I have one on order and would like to put a water block on the northbridge (there's currently a big passive cooler, but I'm guessing that this would need airflow from the CPU heatsink fan - which I've eliminated).
If you do have one, could you measure the distance between the two screw/spring hold-downs used to hold this heatsink onto the northbridge?
I'm aware that it's a diagonal setup http://www.overclockers.co.nz/showimage ... grease.jpg but need the distance between the two to see if I can find a waterblock to fit.
Thanks!
Bob
PS: the two waterblocks I'm thinking about:
http://www.cooltechnica.com/Merchant2/m ... y_Code=CWB
http://becooling.safeshopper.com/6/120.htm?805
If you know of others, I'd be very glad to hear about it.

Post by **NeilBlanchard** » Mon Jan 13, 2003 6:30 pm

I have one on order and would like to put a water block on the northbridge (there's currently a big passive cooler, but I'm guessing that this would need airflow from the CPU heatsink fan - which I've eliminated).

I very much doubt that it needs any extra cooling. Do you have any case fans? How about the PS fan? They would have put a fan on it if they thought that it even remotely needed it. No, I'd count your blessings that you have one less thing to worry about. The nForce and nForce2 northbridges run relatively cool, and you will have an excellent motherboard -- that runs silently all on it's own.

Save your cooling capacity (and it's fan noise) for the CPU and maybe a honkin' video card!

bobkoure · Post by **bobkoure** » Mon Jan 13, 2003 8:34 pm

...why I can't find info about water block sizes for this northbridge - maybe nobody's bothering. I was concerned as there are often elements on the motherboard that assume that there'll be a breeze from a heat sink fan.
There'll be a fan in the Zalman PS, and another exhausting case air through the radiator (both hopefully runing very quietly).
BTW, this is to be an image editing machine, which means (perhaps surprisingly) that graphics speed isn't particularly an issue - although RAMDAC speed is. Anyway, I've been looking at graphics cards and can't find anything that works better for this than the (now obsolete) Matrox G400 OEM (single head) - which runs pretty cool without a fan.
The memory does get a workout every time there's an image transform, though (major reason for picking the Nforce2 with memory interleaving - and fast-ish CL2 memory.
Thanks for the reassuring info!
Bob

aaronspink · Post by **aaronspink** » Tue Jan 14, 2003 12:59 am

bobkoure wrote:...why I can't find info about water block sizes for this northbridge - maybe nobody's bothering. I was concerned as there are often elements on the motherboard that assume that there'll be a breeze from a heat sink fan.
There'll be a fan in the Zalman PS, and another exhausting case air through the radiator (both hopefully runing very quietly).

Having just installed the Zalman chipset cooler on an MSI KT3 board with a VIA kt333 chipset, I can state that with full passive cooling the chipset doesn't seem to be a heat issue. After running for about 3 hours with no fans running in the case except for the PSU, the chipset cooler isn't really any warmer than room temperature. The chipset heatsink on the ASUS AN8x looks fairly similar to the zalman. It shouldn't have any issues.

miker · Post by **miker** » Thu Jan 16, 2003 11:36 am

I have an A7N8X and I can assure you that it needs no active cooling. In fact, the only time I think even any cooling is necessary is when someone is overclocking their FSB. I have read over at AMDMB.com that the NB can get toasty during a 33Mhz overclock, but beyond that, there is no problem whatsoever. I would be more worried about the South bridge, which has no sink on it, and actually gets hot all the time. That, I put a Zalman NB sink on.

-EDIT-

BTW, I will measure my board when I get home

bobkoure · Post by **bobkoure** » Thu Jan 16, 2003 6:54 pm

miker wrote: BTW, I will measure my board when I get home

Whoops! Sorry - don't bother measuring - mine came in - it's 63mm on center, but I'm taking your advice and not worrying about the northbridge.
Good idea with the southbridge. You used one of those thermally conductive epoxies, right?
Thanks!
Bob
PS: UPS shows the CPU due to arrive tomorrow, my water cooling rig's been running on the test bench without problems for days. Fun!

Asus A7N8X?

Asus A7N8X?

Why bother?

maybe that explains...

Re: maybe that explains...