Heatsink Issues with Asus P8P67 Deluxe

[aigomorla]

well asus's reply:

"hi naekuh,
ill pass this info along and get someone on there to help. its supposed to be compatible with 1156 socket type. could be that particular bracket, but i will ask or try to look into it deeper."

So they know about it now.

 

[Zap]

I may just go with a Hyper 212+ since it seems to have the right kind of bracket.

Those three "screws" holding the plate on are just mashed retention heads like rivets.

I use a CM Hyper 212+ on my P8P67 (vanilla, not Pro or Deluxe). Zero issues, plus the backplate has three holes matching up to the rivets.

 

[Chymerix]

I just finished my build with the CM Hyper 212+ heatsink and had no issues with the backplate. Unfortunately, the heatsink fan blocks the one of the RAM slots so if I ever want to upgrade from the 8 GB that I have now, I'll have to get a new heatsink or move the fan to the other side. The strange part is that even the gargantuan Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme did not block one of the RAM slots.

Anyway, time to enjoy the build. Two trips to Microcenter and three heatsinks later, I finally have a working system, although I really wish I could have used a nicer heatsink. This build has definitely been the largest hassle since my first build a decade ago. I would have thought these kinds of easily avoidable problems were a thing of the past, especially for Asus. Oh well, it's a great board other than that.

 

[bankster55]

ero issues, plus the backplate has three holes matching up to the rivets.

well, they must really be on the ball
thumbs up to them
Thnx for info

Edit:
yeah, see what you mean
avoids all three boobytraps
a lot of thought went into that
Looks like it would work for a lot of coolers
I'm gonna call and see if I can buy a retention kit

 

[Chymerix]

Problem fixed! I decided to take the advice of a few people in this thread. I took the Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme backplate to home depot and had them snip a "V" into it using metal snips so that the motherboard screw head would not touch the backplate. It was so straightforward that I wish I'd done it earlier. My temps are now 10 degrees lower than with the CM 212+, I have no obstructed RAM slot, and the heatsink looks looks much nicer.

I'm now running at a nice 4.6 GHz @ 1.35 Vcore with a max load temp of about 65 C.

Thanks for all the help!

Images of modified backplate:

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/7905/20110117145023dsc5347.jpg
http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/1036/20110117145058dsc5348.jpg
http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/2210/20110117145302dsc5349.jpg

 

[Patrick Wolf]

Awesome! :thumbsup:

Is that electrical tape?

 

[Chymerix]

Awesome! :thumbsup:

Is that electrical tape?

Yeah, I didn't want to risk shorting the backplate to the board via the screw head since the two are so close. There were also some metal filings that got stuck under the adhesive plastic layer covering the backplate (I had to do some filing). You could say I went overboard, but electrical tape is cheap and computer parts... not so cheap.

 

[pm]

It's hard to tell from the photos and I'd need a ruler, but that looks like a violation of the keep-out region of the socket 1155 mechanical specification (see section 9.2 here: http://download.intel.com/design/processor/designex/324644.pdf ).

I have an Asus P8P67 (not Deluxe though) on order - should arrive in two days and I'll measure mine - if the same thing exists on the cheaper version.

* Not a spokesperson for Intel Corp. *

 

[mv2devnull]

Is that a password-protected document or is my PDF-viewer acting up again?

 

[showb1z]

This may be a dumb question, but what's the purpose of that screw on the mobo anyway? Would it be terrible to just get rid of it?
I have a Deluxe too, and the screw is blocking my Mugen 2 backplate as well. Though it's not really an issue since the backplate has this foam on it that compresses where the screw pushes it, so it fits either way.

 

[Chymerix]

This may be a dumb question, but what's the purpose of that screw on the mobo anyway? Would it be terrible to just get rid of it?

That screw is a retention screw for one of the motherboard heatsinks. Removing it would be a bad idea. Your best bet is to buy metal snips and a metal file from Home Depot (about $15) and just cut a piece out of the backplate.

 

[pm]

Is that a password-protected document or is my PDF-viewer acting up again?

It shouldn't be. I'm accessing it from my home computer and I didn't need a password.

 

[mv2devnull]

It was my viewer.

I have an Asus P8P67 (not Deluxe though) on order - should arrive in two days and I'll measure mine - if the same thing exists on the cheaper version.

I can confirm that P8P67 Pro does not have screws there, just plastic pushpins (and soldered tips). Southbridge heatsink has retention screws, but that is elsewhere.


BTW, what components are ok to touch with metal? The back-plate of the socket -- or at least two of its screws -- seem to touch the backplate of Thermalright HSF. Furthermore, the squarish plate on the frontside does touch the blue heatsink, and the clamp that will hold the tower almost collides with the heatsink. (Luckily the clamp is not perfectly symmetric.) I did not try the tower itself yet (no CPU yet), so cannot say whether there will be fatal hits. (HR-02)

 

[Dadofamunky]

Problem fixed! I decided to take the advice of a few people in this thread. I took the Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme backplate to home depot and had them snip a "V" into it using metal snips so that the motherboard screw head would not touch the backplate. It was so straightforward that I wish I'd done it earlier. My temps are now 10 degrees lower than with the CM 212+, I have no obstructed RAM slot, and the heatsink looks looks much nicer.

I'm now running at a nice 4.6 GHz @ 1.35 Vcore with a max load temp of about 65 C.

Thanks for all the help!

Images of modified backplate:

LOL. A rare story where Home Depot was actually HELPFUL! I have a mondo Dremel setup, I might take a shot at that if I can find a Tuniq Tower somewhere.

Heh, I ran into the exact same problem with the exact same board. Turns out the Zalman 120MM fan casing is too thick - it blocks TWO RAM slots! I had a skinnier fan and it only blocks one, and Asus mandates using A2 and B2 for 2-DIMM configs, so I'm good going forward. BUT... good to know the Hyper 212+ still blocks a DIMM, 'cause I was thinking of grabbing one tomorrow. Geesh. You'd think Asus would know better with their board layouts.

 

[Chymerix]

LOL. A rare story where Home Depot was actually HELPFUL! I have a mondo Dremel setup, I might take a shot at that if I can find a Tuniq Tower somewhere.

Heh, I ran into the exact same problem with the exact same board. Turns out the Zalman 120MM fan casing is too thick - it blocks TWO RAM slots! I had a skinnier fan and it only blocks one, and Asus mandates using A2 and B2 for 2-DIMM configs, so I'm good going forward. BUT... good to know the Hyper 212+ still blocks a DIMM, 'cause I was thinking of grabbing one tomorrow. Geesh. You'd think Asus would know better with their board layouts.

Yeah I was fairly surprised... they opened one of the metal snips right in front of me, cut the metal away according to the sharpie lines I'd drawn, and then repackaged the snips.

In addition to blocking a RAM slot, I experienced 10 C higher temperatures with the Hyper 212+ than with the Tuniq Tower. Granted, the tuniq's fan failed after a day and nearly gave me a heart attack, but the heatsink is so massive that the CPU temp stayed at 27 C all day while I was at work (or at least that's what it was at when I found it... I can only hope that it was at that temp all day).

I have an S-Flex fan on order which I have had great experience with.

 

[Insomniator]

I've had problems like that a few times, had to file some plastic out of my H50's backplate to get it to fit on an EVGA 750 board.

For my Asus P67 board the holes barely lined up with the H50 plate and have the same portruding screw problem you had. Its not as bad in my case though I just left it that way... can't be bothered.

 

[GrumpyMan]

As far as the design layout is concerned, I would imagine that it would be difficult for Asus or any mobo maker to design a layout to fit all the possible varieties of heatsinks on the market. Wouldn't their engineers just get a sample of the heatsink that ships with the chip and design around that initially?

 

[Insomniator]

As far as the design layout is concerned, I would imagine that it would be difficult for Asus or any mobo maker to design a layout to fit all the possible varieties of heatsinks on the market. Wouldn't their engineers just get a sample of the heatsink that ships with the chip and design around that initially?

I think they should just figure out how to leave the the square or rectangle area outlined by the mounting holes completely alone on the bottom of the board. Also HS manufactures should design plates that only take up that amount of space.

With SB it seems like the need for giant towers isn't so important anyway...

 

[pm]

As far as the design layout is concerned, I would imagine that it would be difficult for Asus or any mobo maker to design a layout to fit all the possible varieties of heatsinks on the market. Wouldn't their engineers just get a sample of the heatsink that ships with the chip and design around that initially?

The way it's supposed to work is that Intel talks to 3rd party cooling vendors and board vendors, gets their input and creates a keep-out region around the CPU and then publishes this keep out area in the Mechanical Thermal Design Specification - the PDF that I linked about 6 posts up - and then the board vendors design to the spec and the cooling guys design to the spec and then when the board, CPU and cooler are released, everything works together.

In the case of fans blocking RAM, that's usually the cooling guys fault - they design the metal heatsink to fit the spec, but their designs work with a variety of fans and the fan is usually added later. In the case of the Asus board, it looks to me - and it's really hard to judge from photos, but I'll be able to see in person later today I think when my board arrives - that they have the correct keep out region with regards to components (you can see there's no capacitors, resistors, etc. in there), but that later on down the road they added a heatsink into the keep out region.... which would be a violation of the specification... if that's what they did. There are no specification police - at least not that I've ever seen - but the specification does allow you to say to the company "you messed up, here is the spec, here is your design, bad bad company".

 

[GrumpyMan]

I think they should just figure out how to leave the the square or rectangle area outlined by the mounting holes completely alone on the bottom of the board. Also HS manufactures should design plates that only take up that amount of space.

With SB it seems like the need for giant towers isn't so important anyway...

Yup, I agree with you, there should be a minimum standard used by all mobo makers concerning the amount of bracket space allowed for heatsinks. I would imagine it would also help out the heatsink manufacturers as far as design goes too.

 

[GrumpyMan]

The way it's supposed to work is that Intel talks to 3rd party cooling vendors and board vendors, gets their input and creates a keep-out region around the CPU and then publishes this keep out area in the Mechanical Thermal Design Specification - the PDF that I linked about 6 posts up - and then the board vendors design to the spec and the cooling guys design to the spec and then when the board, CPU and cooler are released, everything works together.

In the case of fans blocking RAM, that's usually the cooling guys fault - they design the metal heatsink to fit the spec, but their designs work with a variety of fans and the fan is usually added later. In the case of the Asus board, it looks to me - and it's really hard to judge from photos, but I'll be able to see in person later today I think when my board arrives - that they have the correct keep out region with regards to components (you can see there's no capacitors, resistors, etc. in there), but that later on down the road they added a heatsink into the keep out region.... which would be a violation of the specification... if that's what they did. There are no specification police - at least not that I've ever seen - but the specification does allow you to say to the company "you messed up, here is the spec, here is your design, bad bad company".

I see, I was wondering how they worked that out between all the different vendors.

 

[Markfw]

It's hard to tell from the photos and I'd need a ruler, but that looks like a violation of the keep-out region of the socket 1155 mechanical specification (see section 9.2 here: http://download.intel.com/design/processor/designex/324644.pdf ).

I have an Asus P8P67 (not Deluxe though) on order - should arrive in two days and I'll measure mine - if the same thing exists on the cheaper version.

* Not a spokesperson for Intel Corp. *

Looks to me like they used a combo Intel/amd back plate, that does not work well with some Intel boards ! There is no reason for that extra metal, except for the 3 holes at the end for AMD sockets.

 

[funks]

Anybody know of a good HSF that's not stock that fits the P8P67 Pro and doesn't block the RAM slots?

 

[mv2devnull]

Thermalright HR-02 does fit P8P67 Pro (barely, the tower is well in the clear but the mounting bits touch heatsinks) and there seems to be ample space for a fan.

Whether that is "a good HSF", I cannot tell.


Edit: Alas, a (140x25) fan tends to block the first memory slot somewhat.

 

[corpfan1]

Noctua NH-D14

Anybody know of a good HSF that's not stock that fits the P8P67 Pro and doesn't block the RAM slots?