Asus P5Q Deluxe & Freezer 7 Pro

Credo · 30 Jun 2008 at 13:45

I've upgraded my system over the weekend to what's in my sig, and thought it worth mentioning that the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro will only fit on the P5Q Deluxe facing 'up' or 'down' the board (as opposed to directing the airflow towards the back of the board). I didn't think to check for compatibility, silly arse. I got it on with a little fin bending but then had to put the sodding fan on which made it too wide. This resulted in having to remove it and clean all the beautifully applied goop off. I re-fitted using an old tube of AS3 I had lying around, I hate buggering things up!

All's well in the end, the fan sits very closely over the top of the larger of the passive cooling fins (with the Asus logo) and I suspect gives them a bit of breeze to boot... My temps are OK according to RealTemp, ranging across the cores from about 25 - 32 degrees idle, 35 - 45-ish 100% load.

Very pleased now, just let it bed in for a week and I'll try an overclock - I plan to try and run at 8 x 400=3.2GHz, RAM running at SPD, If I can do that I'm happy.

1M SuperPi calcs on my old X2 4200 took 36 secs - the same on the new setup @stock takes 17 secs - job done!

setter · 30 Jun 2008 at 16:53

Thanks for the headsup on this. im ordering a p5q deluxe this week and was gonna use the freezer7. may just go with the stock intel cooler for a few days till i get a TRUE 120.

Credo · 1 Jul 2008 at 00:05

setter said:
Thanks for the headsup on this. im ordering a p5q deluxe this week and was gonna use the freezer7. may just go with the stock intel cooler for a few days till i get a TRUE 120.

Glad to be of help - the pictures of the socket on the P5Q Deluxe make it look more roomy than it is, I think it's designed around the stock cooler, as they blow air downwards and so onto the passive cooling system.

The Freezer 7 Pro is really quite big, my CoolerMaster Stacker is fine, but a smaller case may cause problems...

setter · 1 Jul 2008 at 00:19

Credo said:
Glad to be of help - the pictures of the socket on the P5Q Deluxe make it look more roomy than it is, I think it's designed around the stock cooler, as they blow air downwards and so onto the passive cooling system.

The Freezer 7 Pro is really quite big, my CoolerMaster Stacker is fine, but a smaller case may cause problems...

Its definitely a fair size as i had one cooling a q6600 up until a few days ago. Thankfully my akasa eclipse is a very roomy case unlike my previous thermaltake tsunami

19ninety · 5 Jul 2008 at 13:34

The freezer will fit, but you need to bend the bottom three fins down, you may need to fold the rear edge inwards too so that the arctic cooling fan will still clip on, or you can snip the bottom corners of the fans frame out. Will post so pics in a bit, still installing after fitting this board.

19ninety · 5 Jul 2008 at 13:39

The freezer will fit, but you need to bend the bottom three fins down, you may need to fold the rear edge inwards too so that the arctic cooling fan will still clip on, or you can snip the bottom corners of the fans frame out. Will post so pics in a bit, still installing after fitting this board.

Natima · 5 Jul 2008 at 15:01

With the antec 300/900/1200 series surely this would be just as effective?
Or is the top fan an intake?

19ninety · 5 Jul 2008 at 15:11

shouldnt be too much of an issue, best thing is to see what the temps are that way with those cases, but theres many who will swear that the cpu cooler has to push to wards the rear exhaust fan, granted this is better if you have say reaper ram with large heatsinks which benefit from the cpu cooler drawing cool air over them as it pushes into the cpu heatsink, very dependent on what the setup is.

mikeo · 5 Jul 2008 at 21:36

Hi... I wonder if anyone could offer some advice.

Thinking of the pro version of this board and was also thinking of the Freezer 7 pro! and am wondering if there is likely to be the same fitment problem?

From looking at pictures of both the Pro and the Deluxe boards, it looks like the Pro maybe has a bit more room around it.

What exactly is the HSF catching on?

Thanks.

mikeo · 5 Jul 2008 at 22:05

Credo

Sorry for being thick... but are you saying you did actually get it to fit blowing across the case? or was all the fin bending necessary to even get it blowing up the case?

Excuse my ignorance... but as heat rises, is having the fan blowing up, not a good idea?

19ninety · 6 Jul 2008 at 00:06

All depends on the design of the case. The 900/1200 has a exhaust fan in the rear of *** case and a supplemental large exhaust fan in the top. Traditionally air is pushed from front to back, with the antec cases they offer the addition of extracting air from the top of the case, for the most part it'd be better to have the cpu cooler blowing towards the rear of the case where the air is sucked straight out, however having the cpu cooler blow upwards will also work (the air blows out the sides of the cpu cooler too regardless of which way mounted).

Shouldnt need much to mount it verticaly as the freezer is wider then long and the fins on the exit of it are bent down from factory.

Heres a diagram:

The 900 has a bottom mounted PSU, leaving room in the top for the large fan to suck out the hot air rather then it being sucked thrugh the already hot PSU. With this case aiming the cpu cooler upward would bugger the airflow up. Also see how in this case the cpu cooler also draws cool air over the ram. Again, different cases and layouts will have different airflow issues.

Here some images of how I made my freezer fit:

This is the same on the top side also, couldnt get a picture due to lack of space for large camera.

Sadly I slipped when clipping the fan onto the heatsink and bent the very very delicate copper fins of the asus heatsink

setter · 6 Jul 2008 at 12:35

excellent pics and guide thanks for sharing

doodah · 6 Jul 2008 at 13:11

I think I am going to skip beding my Freezer 7 Pro, putting on a HSF gets me really stressed for some reason (prob because I obliterated one of my CPU cores trying to put a HSF on). What other cheapish fans are good that will fit this board?

19ninety · 6 Jul 2008 at 14:16

Thanks

maybe the thermalright 120/tuniq tower or similar has a little more clearance between the base and the fins, the freezer on all accounts sits pretty close to the mobo.The tuniq looks like its got loads of clearance from the images courtesy of g00gle

mikeo · 6 Jul 2008 at 17:50

KALIB'R

Thanks for taking the time to do such an in depth guide. Appreciated.

That HSF is a lot bigger than I thought it was!

Question... Is there enough clearance to fit it facing / blowing up wards? (IE. will the fan clear the heatsink on the board (the big one with ASUS written on it)? As this might work for me as my PSU is fitted at the top of the case and has an extract fan on the underneath (rather than on the back end). So hot air would be extracted through the PSU (as you comment yourself).

Though obviously I'm looking at the pro version of this board and the heat sinks on the mobo are not quite the same (they "look" a little smaller).

Thanks again.

dbappa

The Arctic Alpine 7 pro cooler looks like a more traditional design and I would think would fit OK. It was the other HSF tested in the same article on AnandTech that I mentioned before. And it got a decent write up as well, much better than the stock HSF. Don't be put off by the cheap price, AnandTech thought it was great value (though not quite as efficient as the Freezer pro). Depends I suppose on how much overclocking you are thinking of doing.

Credo · 7 Jul 2008 at 00:16

mikeo said:
KALIB'R

Question... Is there enough clearance to fit it facing / blowing up wards? (IE. will the fan clear the heatsink on the board (the big one with ASUS written on it)? As this might work for me as my PSU is fitted at the top of the case and has an extract fan on the underneath (rather than on the back end). So hot air would be extracted through the PSU (as you comment yourself).

My setup is the same - the Freezer 7 Pro is blowing into the bottom exhaust fan of my Enermax PSU. What with its alos sitting next to the rear 120mm exhaust and also sitting in the breeze from the 120mm at the front - I'm not sure the orientation in a well ventilated case makes much difference!

Those pics bring back memories - didn't have the guts for such surgery!

doodah · 7 Jul 2008 at 12:22

mikeo said:
KALIB'R

dbappa

The Arctic Alpine 7 pro cooler looks like a more traditional design and I would think would fit OK. It was the other HSF tested in the same article on AnandTech that I mentioned before. And it got a decent write up as well, much better than the stock HSF. Don't be put off by the cheap price, AnandTech thought it was great value (though not quite as efficient as the Freezer pro). Depends I suppose on how much overclocking you are thinking of doing.

Thanks for the reply. When I buy this mobo, it will have my 6300 which can do 3.2Ghz easily so hopefully get it up to 3.5Ghz - eventually it will be replaced by a quad or 8400/8500, again hoping for around 3.5Ghz. Will the Alpine cope with that?

mikeo · 7 Jul 2008 at 17:13

credo

Thanks for the reply. So no problem with the fan on the HSF clearing the mobo HS then. Just got to hope it's will be the same situation in the pro version of the board.

dbappa

I expect the Alpine pro may not be up to such an extreme overclock. Have a look at the AnandTech article

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3210&p=1

The Freezer pro is the way to go, as long as it fits your mobo.

setter · 10 Jul 2008 at 22:31

Got my p5q deluxe in today and followed the advice given here. Had to bend the bottom few fins as in pics, but to get the fan to fit i had to resort to some p80 grade sand paper which done a great job. Regarding the board itself im well pleased with the quality and the layout, seemed a lot easier to install than my old 680i was.

19ninety · 11 Jul 2008 at 21:25

yea i love iot too, only thing is change about the layout is having the two flat sata ports upright instead as they are a pig to get to in my case.
othe then that i'm chuffed still