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How important is the northbridge fan?

Not that important really as long as you have a good heatsink on it. You may want to replace it though if you were overclocking. Good luck.
 
i wouldn't run the board without the fan. I wouldn't bother replacing it either though as zalman makes a nice northbridge sink that you can get for about the same price as a replacement fan. it offers better cooling without the noise. you can also find a VERY similar heatsink from places like digi-key and allelectronics for under a dollar. only thing is that you will have to use thermal expoxy (or a dab or two of superglue along with some compound) to attach it whereas the zalman can use the pushpin holes (if present)
 
I've removed the fan, running at 166mhz FSB, just warm. I guess theres no need for the fan at all, though it really made my mobo look that much more powerful.
 
Much of the time the necessity of the northbridge fan depends on the cpu sink/fan.
If you have a massive cpu fan and the outlet of the cpu sink blows across the northbridge, good to go. Massive fan and it's blowing somewhere else, may, maybe not.

That's one downside to running an Alpha 8045 with a slow speed fan. It pulls air through instead of pushing which doesn't help the northbridge and it enters on all four sides which decreases flow in any one spot even more. Then top it with a slow fan and it's near useless to the northbridge. My nForce2 northbridge has a larger sink on it, no fan. Sitting near a 8045/panaflo it gets hot, uncomfortable to the touch hot. I have little doubt if it was a small sink meant to be paired with a fan and the fan died I'd need a new one or different sink. In brtspears2 case, pun intended, it didn't prove necessary.

Had this same sink/fan combo on my last board, a KK266-R with a KT133A. Board came with one of those dinky greens for the northbridge and when I originally had a FOP-32 on there it was always cool to the touch. When I switched to the 8045 it ran finger burning hot after, to the point I finally just ducted some air towards it when I started getting lockups during gaming/encoding.

Something to keep in mind for others who have fans (working or not) and are reading this thread out of curiousity.

 
The NB fan on one of my KG7 boards quit...... then the MoBo quit (well sort of.... didn't like to boot, but OK once you got it going)

I had to RMA the MoBo and add the NB fan to my 'list of things to keep an eye on'

-Sid
 
NB fan = marketing gimmick. Or maybe they're just cheaper than a semi-decent heatsink. For every mobo with one of those miserable POSes, you'll find another with just a heatsink, same features otherwise. If you want to go all out, get a zalman passive sink, obvious overkill.
 
My A7V333 just has a large heatsink on it... Aluminium, about 1,5 inces high

You can get these HS at a few Overclocking Specialists as spare parts.
 
I just took the northbridge fan off my Shuttle KT266A motherboard. OMG it is so much quiter now. I emailed Shuttle, and this is what they said:

Dear User:
Regarding your question , basically this fan on the Northbridge is protect element , we do not suggest you pull off it cause you will damage the chipset , thank you !

Best Regards,

Technical Support
Shuttle Taiwan

So far I haven't had any problems 🙂
 
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