Possible Conflict Between Northbridge Cooler and Graphics Card Cooler

therefused · 23 Feb 2006 at 00:06

Hello,

i am planning on getting a Arctic Cooler for my graphics card so i can do some overclocking.

my problem is the chipset cooler on my current board, MSI K8N Diamond is very close to the PCI-E slots and i think the Arctic Cooler may partially cover the chipset cooler.

at the moment the chipset is running at 35degree's which is ok i guess for an overclocked system. but if i want to overclock more will i have a problem due to the chipset temp and the fact i might not be able to get another cooler for the chipset?

i have a Vantec Copper Chipset Cooler than i am not using at the moment, will this be better than the stock Northbridge cooler on the K8N.?

i will add a picture if i can to show you what i mean if i havnt really made it that clear.

Dirk · 23 Feb 2006 at 16:01

Have you considered using a Zalman cu-700 to cool the gfx card instead?

therefused · 23 Feb 2006 at 17:39

are they actually any good tho? because i found the artic coolers veruy good when i had 1, and i also liek the fact the air is getting pushed out of the case and not back into

ajgoodfellow · 24 Feb 2006 at 01:03

Yep - very good. I'm using mine on 5V and it lowered my GPU temps by 20° and it's very quiet

I've uploaded a few pics when I fitted it to my X800Pro (all 800x600 and less than 200kb)

Removal of stock heatsink

Close up of core

Pic of memory chips and core

Pic of back after fitting Zalman back plate and memory heatsinks

Pic of front with memory heatsinks fitted

Finished fitting Zalman cooler

Graphics card fitted back into case

As for the Artic Cooler it should still be OK as the included northbridge cooler is very low profile. Most nForce 4 boards have this layout and people have fitted the artic cooler without any problems. I'd still go for the Zalman one though

BigDom · 24 Feb 2006 at 09:58

Note for the record ( don't think it's relevant in this case but might be if someone shocks us by using the search function

) - if you use an SLI pair (or probably a crossfire pair ) you can't use the Zalman backplate on one card, it fouls the fan on it's neighbour. Doesn't seem to cause an issue though.