How to cool NF4 chipset

[carlosd]

This mobo has a passive cooling for the chipset but the temps of the NF4 chipsets are high (near 70º). What would you recommed to cool this chipset in this motherboard to acceptable levels?

 

[evilharp]

Replacing the heatsink will be tough. nForce 3/4 chips are usually located under the video card (PCI-E or AGP) which rules out virtually every aftermarket cooler. I tried to replace the noisy cooler on my Gigabyte GA-K8NS Ultra-939, and I ended up using a trimmed passive Zalman cooler. No problems so far, and it fits (barely)below/beside my X800XT AIW.


You could try a Zalman FB123 ( http://www.zalmanusa.com/usa/product/view.asp?idx=15&code=016 ) and have it blow down on the nForce4 chipset. It might help.

It would be nice though if someone (consider this an open invitation Zalman, Thermalright, Thermaltake, Swiftech, etc...) would create a good aftermarket cooler for nForce3/4 chips.

Good luck

 

[GadgetBuilder]

Originally posted by: carlosd
This mobo has a passive cooling for the chipset but the temps of the NF4 chipsets are high (near 70º). What would you recommed to cool this chipset in this motherboard to acceptable levels?

On my VNF4 I tried several things before I was happy with the cooling.

My guess is that if you have a passive cooler you can improve the cooling considerably by adding an 80mm fan to blow air across the existing cooler. It's cheap and easy to try - I got an old fan from a dead machine - crude but it works fine. One nice feature is that if the fan fails you still have the original setup so the temperature rises but doesn't cause a part failure. I found that the fan can be slowed way down and still have a big effect on cooling the passive heatsink.

More details on my NF4 cooling adventures:
http://www.gadgetbuilder.com/Computer/ComputerCooling.html