How well will I be able to overclock?

[scrawnypaleguy]

Yeah as you can see in my sig, I've got a 3500 venice and an A8N-E motherboard. I was wondering if I wanted to squeeze maybe an extra 200 mhz out of the proc to get it up to 2.4ghz, would my motherboard cooler be ok? It's running passive, but the fan from my vf700 is blowing about 2 cm away from it, so it provides some airflow. Here's the cooler:link As I said before, I'm running it without the fan, so will it be enough?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I haven't done any controlled experiments.

For a while I was planning to buy this chipset cooler. It IS a nice cooler for a chipset.

I also see that ASUS has already placed a fan on the A8N-E's Northbridge chipset.

Here's my experience, which deterred me from buying an HSF for my chipset on an ASUS P4P800.

I went through two heatpipe coolers on my "MOJO," giving up the ThermalTake PIPE101 easily for an XP-120. By that time, I decided to duct the motherboard, CPU/HSF/VGA and memory for quick and efficient exhaust out the rear of the case, so that the front intake fans fed the CPU fan working in series with the exhaust fans.

Before I ducted the motherboard, I had suspended a 40mm Sunon Mag-Lev fan above the chipset cooler with a Zalman fan bracket and a replacement screw-mount for the Zalman assembly so that I could hang the Sunon very close to the chipset heatsink.

Keep in mind that all these things contribute to temperatures taken off anything else: CPU, VGA, chipset, memory -- all connected by circuit traces which also conduct heat. Cool down one -- their hearts and minds will follow.

My chipset temperature at that time was just a few degrees F either way around my VGA idle temperature, which has an extremely effective Zalman ZM80D heatpipe cooler and OP-1 option fan. The AGP card usually idles somewhere around 32C to 38C depending on room temperature. The load value is something considerably lower than 110F or 45C.

After ducting my motherboard, the chipset at idle is some 8F lower than the AGP at idle and only 2F higher than the CPU at idle (Northwood 3.0C@3.6Ghz with either stock voltages or voltages well within manufacturer's "Maximum" approved.)

The chipset never seems to go over just in excess of 40C even when running PRIME95 Torture-Test LargeFFT. I could test that again to verify, but that's what I recall.

Again, the Swiftech is a really nice chipset cooler. It costs about $30-something, which is a night out for one person at a decent restaurant. But a Sunon 40x25mm mag-lev is something like $6, a Zalman bracket was once on sale for less than $9, foam-art-board is about $6 for 3'x2' (of which you only need about a third to make a ducting mod), Lexan for a ducting mod probably costs about $10 or $11.

Anyway, your ASUS board already has a little fan on the chipset. Have you stuck a thermal sensor on that chipset or as close as possible underneath the base of the HSF to see how hot it gets?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Sorry, I was reading too fast -- you already got the Swiftech and took the fan off.

I don't have a fan on mine either, but it's the stock heatsink.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I have it second-hand that the Venice core (preferably 3000+, though) can OC 149% -- provided -- PROVIDED -- that you use fast memory modules, like OCZ's DDR500 VX series.

As I said, my chipset seems to be just a couple degrees above my CPU idle temp now. Of course you want to keep it cool . . . of course the cooler the better . . . .

Try a thermal sensor on it, consider some of my suggestions. There are other things to think of besides the Northbridge.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

One more. I went back and took a closer look at that Swiftech chipset cooler.

There have been other discussions, either here or at other forums, about the "forest-of-pins" design of similar coolers for the CPU. Perhaps this is the reason you removed the fan, because these things tend to clog with dust, and after they get gunked up with a blob-like dust-bunny, they are a PITA to clean.

I heartily approve of the fan removal, but I don't know if that will alleviate the problem in the long-run. It would certainly cool the chipset -- even without the fan -- better than a stock heatsink or little "Iceberg-type" cooler. I'd rather have a copper cooler with fins as opposed to pins.

 

[scrawnypaleguy]

Yeah I took off the fan because of the noise. Even though it was quieter than the stock solution, it was still too loud for me. Speedfan says that my motherboard is about 36C idle right now, and I know that the northbridge on these motherboards are good up to something ridiculous, like 90C. Anyways, just an idle thought, I probably won't be doing any overclocking right now in my hot dorm room. Thanks for the tips though.