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how important is northbridge fan?

lozina

lozina

Lifer
I've got an Epox 8KHA+ motherboard, and the fan over the heatsink started making some annoying noise so I tried to clean it out but it actually didnt help. I used an air compressor to blow off clods of dust and I was sure it would sound great but alas, it wasn't the dust. So can I just do without this fan? It's got a heatsink on it... at least for a week until a new fan gets delivered
 
probably be fine if you just unplug it until the new one gets delivered, aslong as not overclocking blah blah (though you might prefer to go for a passive NB 'sink like those Zalman jobs anyway).
 
The fan on the Northbridge is very important. It is a great weakpoint in many motherboards, as they would be better off with a larger, passive heatsink. If you have aome air going over it from the CPU HSF, you're probably OK, but I can't say a NB32j or NB47j woud be a bad buy.
 
The fan is a marketing gimmick, like racing stripes on a Pinto. I figure the chintzy hsf's used for the purpose are probably cheaper than a decent sink... Look around, you'll notice that many boards with that same NB chip have no fan, many don't even have much of a heatsink, either. The Zalmans are inexpensive, and work great. Never fuss with it again. the worst part is removing the board to mount the new sink, after that, it's all good...
 
i have teh same mobo and my fan stopped spinning liek 6 months ago, comp was still fine, but yes it did die compleatly on tusday because the mobo blew a capasitor 🙁, thoes 2 arnt related tho
 
I used on of the Zalmans to replace a failing fan on an Asus A7V133 and the temp went down about 1-2 deg. On Zalmans site though they highly discourage using these sinks on any chipset with integrated graphics. Has anyone tried before and what were the results?
 
IMHO, If you are running games/ overclocking/ or doind intensive graphics, then you need to cool the NB. If not, take your chances at a BSOD.
 
Originally posted by: Big Lar
IMHO, If you are running games/ overclocking/ or doind intensive graphics, then you need to cool the NB. If not, take your chances at a BSOD.
Click to expand...

was running my Xp1700+ @ 1.7GHz for a long time when my fan didnt work, no BSODs for me
 
I'm with biglar on this; overclocking, use a fan. And passive s/bridge cooling so you won't get messed up issues there.
 
Meh, even on an overclocked system, if there's good airflow around/through it, a passive northbridge cooler should work fine IMHO. Temps may rise higher than with active, of course, but not by much.
 
The fan on my nf7 has been unplugged from day one and it's been running fine for 2 years now. It has been oc'd but never for long periods of time.
 
1000's of people use the Asus P4P800 and it doesn't have a NB fan. Just a regular heatsink. And people OC the hell outta those boards. I have an IC7 with a fan....and am seriously considering switching to the Zalman heatsink. I just don't want to have to spend money and time on something that won't help out my performance. I'm just too lazy for that :beer:
 
great, thanks for all your replies, i decided to order the zalman heatsink and will install that (doh gotta strip out the mobo again!). now if only my video card didnt have a small fan on it then my system would be nearly silent!
 
Originally posted by: lozina
great, thanks for all your replies, i decided to order the zalman heatsink and will install that (doh gotta strip out the mobo again!). now if only my video card didnt have a small fan on it then my system would be nearly silent!
Click to expand...

Just buy a Zalman heatpipe or something similar while you're at it!
 
Yeah it's not that crucial really to have it. I just kept the stock heatsink on my a7n8x-deluxe and took a stock amd fan, used doublestick and put it on the heatsink. You can't see the double stick and it actually looks pretty decent.
 
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