What will happen if...

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I rip the fan out of the northbridge heatsink on a nforce 4 mainboard?

Seriously, the noise coming from it is outrageous! It sounds like a Bee having a mild stroke.

The pitch goes up then down then laft then right!! If i unplug it what will happen?

Could have trouble with a replacement too because the graphics card goes over the edge of it! But i can't deal with the noise any longer!
 
I don't think thats a great idea really. There isn't a large enough surface area on that to cool it passively.

Get a zalman passive cooler, I think most people with space issues get this one (someone will confirm this, I'm sure) and remove/bend some of the fins. It's a great cooler apparently.
 
Yep, a passive cooler is best. You might get away with fixing some pennies to your existing cooler though :eek: :D . We put a pile of coppers on a hot chip in electronics and it worked very well (could barely hold the coin after!)
 
Have you tried oiling it? Usually the bearings are underneath the sticker part if there is one. If not then fiddle around and see if you can open up the fan and get some oil in there. I have a PCI slot exhaust fan that's acting up so I'm going to try oiling it with some old hair clippers oil I have.
 
lol same with my small fan on my mobo,..

it sounded like a verry muffled motorbike engine, then when you loaded a program it sounded like it was trying to kick start..

so what iv done is i just linked it to one of my fan speed controllers,

(funny i mension this cause i just said exact same thing in a previous post)

iv got 10 x 12cm fans and a 25cm fan on side panel, and there all silent :)
 
I had the the same problem on my DFI NF4 mobo many moons ago....

I used a program called ITE Smartdoctor (dont quote me on that), and with that software you could turn down the speed of the northbridge fan. Just dropping it slighty, vastly reduced the noise. I think that particular software worked with most NF4 mobo's. It certainly worked with an ASUS NF4 a mate had too.

Actually, i think it came on the motherboard driver cd, but you could download it too.
 
Which board is it?
Oil will only perspone fan death, it won't prevent it.
Don't run it passive, NF4s don't like being cooked, mine gave me bsods when the fan was failing.
Get a new heatsink, if its an sli board you'll probably need one of those fancy thermalright ones with the heatpipes, otherwise a zalman will probably do.

Edit: The thermalright hr 05 sli is what you want, it fits even with the graphics card overhanging the chipset.
 
Board is an Asus A8N-E.

left it on all night and the noise has gone! I think it's still alive though it's hard to tell.

Gonna try that thermalright heatsink i think. It will fit my board won't it? it's not SLI and the heatsink says SLI compatible? Is there a difference?

Thanks for the advice.
 
Does the graphics card overhang the chipset cooler, or is the pci-e slot in line with the chipset cooler? If so you need the sli version, if not you can get the standard version. Thermalright website has a list of compatible boards, check that. A8n sli deluxe is on there but not sure about A8n e.

I would replace that cooler anyway, its the same as the one i had on my a8n sli deluxe i expect and that was useless. You can get a free upgraded version from asus that actually sort of works if you have the early version, but its not much better. The early version is mounted in a square shape, the newer version is mounted in a diamond shape, that's how to tell which you have.
I'm currently using the newer version and while its still pretty bad its worked ok for about a year now.
 
It's mounted in a diamond.

The graphics card over hangs one of the corners slightly.

checked thermalright website and it say's "N/A" for my board? says "not compatible" for some and "okay" for some. So god knows whether it will fit!

maybe the akasa blu LED chipset cooler will work cos it's only 24mm high?

then again i would prefer passive!

EDIT: the normal thermalright HR05 fits! but is out of stock :(
 
That's one of the things I liked about the ASUS A8N-E-Premium, that was its passive cooler, I had enough of the little 40mm fans! As already mentioned reducing the rpms really does cut the noise down, don't you have some kinda fan controller built into the bios? (On the ASUS its called FAN-EQ).

In some systems I have built where the northbridge is near the CPU I found it was ok to run them passive as they got enough cooling from the cpu fan, but in the case of the NF4 chipset thats not possible as the chipset cooler is normally situated at the bottom of a PCI-E slot, dunno what 3rd party *low-profile* cooler to suggest?
 
Ran my 939 board passively and it was fine, got to about 40c load while overclocked. (Stock heatsink, fan unplugged)
Which board was that? Not all 939 boards are the same. Do you really think this cooler could run passively?

It will not run passively without dieing, i'm certain.
It may have worked passively with the old style chipset cooler, just with really good case airflow, but the new version which you have is mostly fan and has barely any heatsink.

n/a means not applicable i.e not tested.

Heres a pic of the a8n e, and heres a pic of the a8n sli deluxe. Almost identical layout, therefore i believe the hr 05 sli will fit as it does fit the a8n sli delxue. Fyi both those pics show the old style chipset cooler.

According to the thermalright website the hr 05 cooler was tested with the a8n e and it does fit. You'll need to check the graphics card compatability lists for both coolers though and make sure that the hr 05 allows a double slot graphics card to be used if you have one, i have a feeling that it might not in which case you may be able to use the hr 05 sli.
 
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Admittedly the HS was slightly better than that, but I wasn't saying it willr un passively for certain just that they don't need a huge amount of cooling. (Was an ePox board btw).




As you can see in that picture (SLi version of your board) that the cooler will fit fine in the top slot as long as you don't have a huge cooler on the graphpics card.

http://www.madshrimps.be/articles/MotherboardChipsetcoolerroundup-mich_vm-13222.jpg Whereas the Jing Ting coolers should be fine with any cooler/card (just)
 
The HR05 SLI cooler is a top performer.
I've got one attached to the n/b on my DFI NF4 mobo & have an 80mm fan attached.
Even in my SLI setup with the amount of heat coming from the RAM chips on my gfx cards, it still knocked 10 deg c off the temp of the n/b.
 
Raikiri said:


As you can see in that picture (SLi version of your board) that the cooler will fit fine in the top slot as long as you don't have a huge cooler on the graphpics card.

But turn that cooler 45 degrees either way and it won't! Mine is in diamond shape.

Installed all the "Cool n Quiet" gubbins yesterday and "Quiet" is working, not sure about "Cool" though! my cpu fan isn't moving :eek:

surely that's wrong!
 
A.N.Other said:
I don't think thats a great idea really. There isn't a large enough surface area on that to cool it passively.

Get a zalman passive cooler, I think most people with space issues get this one (someone will confirm this, I'm sure) and remove/bend some of the fins. It's a great cooler apparently.
I second this idea. I've done it myself, twice. I originally had the Zalman NB47J cooler which i needed to remove some pins from to get it to fit beneath my graphics card and it still preformed better than the stock cooler. Now with my DFI Ultra D i bought the newer zalman cooler (which is supposed to be the best performer) i had to hack off one of the sides that juts out to where the graphics card sits. I haven't actually installed it yet as i've just tidied up my cables and now have to mess it up again :(

So, i would save some money and get the zalman over the thermalright. As you can see from these results, the zalman is the better performer anyway ;)
 
G00SE said:
But turn that cooler 45 degrees either way and it won't! Mine is in diamond shape.

Installed all the "Cool n Quiet" gubbins yesterday and "Quiet" is working, not sure about "Cool" though! my cpu fan isn't moving :eek:

surely that's wrong!
The diamond and the square shaped coolers both use the same mounting. It will work.
The hr05 sli should allow you to use a double slot cooler in both pci-e slots on the a8n sli deluxe, as it can either go behind or above the top card. In your board using the hr 05 sli may allow you to use a double slot card whereas the hr 05 may not.

With cool and quiet the cpu fan will have a threshold and it will only spin up above that threshold. You may be able to set the threshold. Cool and quiet does not affect the chipset in any way.
If a chipset needs CPU like cooling it's not really well designed bloody stupid really.
This has nothing to do with the chipset, it does not need cpu like cooling. The reason for these problems is that nf4 was the first really hot chipset, and none of the board manufacturers spent the time and money they should have done making proper chipset coolers for it. Since then as hotter chipsets such as nf5, nf6 etc have appeared almost all board manufacturers use passive chipset coolers.
The reason the hr 05 is so big is its designed to be passive, and it has to fit in a space where there isn't much room for width so it has to be tall and thin to compensate.
 
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