Using a VGA cooler to cool a northbridge

pieman109

pieman109

pieman109

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Is there any reason you couldn't use a vga cooler like say a vantec, to cool a northbridge, other than physical dimensions. I personally think you could use one, but I'm open to reasons why not.
 
A bit overkill isn't it?

VGA coolers are designed for graphics cards that kick out LOADS of heat... not sure you'd need that kind of oompf to cool a northbridge.

Other than that I don't see why not lol :D

SiriusB
 
Justintime said:
Northbridges throw off a fair bit of heat these days.
Click to expand...

That's true but even so most only have a tiny fan to keep them cool. A VGA cooler in comparison is like swapping a desk fan for a jet engine.

SiriusB
 
ah but you dont neeeeeeeeed phase change to cool a cpu, but we do it anyway!!! there isn't any reason as it is basically just a bigger fan, however getting one to fit without a foolishly tall heatsink would be tricky.

daven
 
SiriusB said:
That's true but even so most only have a tiny fan to keep them cool. A VGA cooler in comparison is like swapping a desk fan for a jet engine.

SiriusB
Click to expand...

Theres not that big of a disparity as you'd make it, hence all the heatpipe NB coolers you see on some boards these days, to passively cool em dosen't take just a fairly oversized NB sink anymore. I know one guy who had a few Intel D945GTP NB sinks fall off (notoriously poor QC by Intel, not the first case i've seen) and the NB chip fried in seconds.
 
I am not saying he can't use one. If you can get one to fit then go for it. He asked for a reason why he shouldn't and I gave one :D

SiriusB
 
well there a guy at xtremesystems who managed to fit a tuniq120 over his nb as well as his cpu.. have a look thorugh there if you really wanna go xtreme cooling
 
Maybe, if it was overheating and causing the true fsb potential not the be reached, but in most cases no, even when i was mad into watercooled setups, cooling my NB never really gave much more Mhz, just a cool NB :)
 
OP here, I've got one these gigabyte DS3 mobos waiting to be installed and I've read a few threads about the n/b getting a bit toasty as it were, so I thought about cooling it down a bit. I've got loadsa spares so what I had in mind was to use something like a vantec connected with a zalman fanmate to lower fan speeds to make it quiet. I know its overkill, but I thought it might be a good idea, gotta be better than the stock heatsink and gives a chance of a higher overclock, runs cooler than stock (I reckon) and is dead quiet :D
 
Why don't you try one of the Zalman NB passive coolers. I've got the ZM-NB47J which i had to modify (cut off some pins) to get it to fit beneath my graphics card. It still cools well. I'm not sure how the newer model (ZM-NBF47) performs but looking at some reviews on the net it seems to be a winner. Also, you won't have to modify the cooler to get it to fit, whichever one you get, as the NB chipset is in a different location on intel boards.
 
dont assume that all northbridges run hot because your nf4's do. My ati northbridge with an onboard x300 @ 460mhz runs passive loading out at 56c. Comparitively, they are cool as a 'cumber.

nothing wrong with putting a vga cooler on if it'll fit. no telling what difference it'll make however.

i put a vantec iceburg 4 pro on my nf7-s for example. the screw parrerns didnt fit, but with some cable ties it did. cooled it very well.
 
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