How I accidentally fixed the Northbridge cooling issue

[Peroxyde]

Hi,

Old computer, Pentium D 830. AGP card died, I decided to replace the old 775 motherboard with a more modern one with integrated graphics. I went for a Gigabyte GA-G41MT-S2P + 4GB of DDR3 RAM.

Then I ran MemTest and saw that the Northbridge chipset was burning hot. The CPU cooler is an Artic Cooler Freezer pro rev2. This is the 3rd time I have chipset overheating issue because of the tower shape of the cooler.

I was decided to buy a new CPU cooler which has a top down air flow design. Before I threw away the CPU cooler, a weird idea struck me. What if I angled the fan a little bit downward?

http://s1123.photobucket.com/albums/l552/ZeroPixel/?action=view&current=DSC_0013.jpg
http://s1123.photobucket.com/albums/l552/ZeroPixel/?action=view&current=DSC_0014.jpg

Surprisingly it works wonder! CPU + chipset are cooled with minimum noise. After a few days, the solution is convincing. I repeated the same trick on another computer (same CPU cooler) using this time a 120 mm fan. The results is even better, less noisy than the original fan of the Artic Freezer, and the chipset is much cooler. Even better, the 120mm fan covers partially the RAM modules which also benefit from the extra cooling.

Conclusion: looks ugly but quiet, cheap and effective.

 

[quakefiend420]

:thumbsup: for ghetto modding

 

[Zap]

:thumbsup:

Way to think outside the box, inside the box.

 

[Slugbait]

Reminds me of the time I bought a Pentium 4 1.6a, and couldn't get it anywhere near stable at 2.4. Had to run at 2.2.

Then I got The Card Cooler so I could OC my Ti200 to near-Ti500 speed, and realized that part of the airflow was going right after the Northbridge and CPU...adjusted the BIOS to 2.4, and was perfectly stable for the following two years afterward.

My Smackover came with a dedicated 40mm fan for the Northbridge...nice blue glow, too.