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nforce 4 NB cool enough for passive?

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Davegod

Platinum Member
the northbridge fan on my Epox 9NPA+ is making nasty noises, it's clearly on the way out and in any case very annoying.

Touching the heatsink it is pretty warm even with the fan running, does anyone have experience of just unplugging the stock fan on one of these boards? (only overclocking going on is having upped the 3700+ FSB to 400 and lowered multiplier -1 to compensate)

I had a look at the aftermarket offerings but they seem to go from tiny heatsinks with 5000rpm fans to gigantic passive heatpipe ones.

 
I remember those chipsets running extremely hot. I used a passive zalman on one but I pointed a very small fan at it. Even a tiny amount of airflow can make it work. I wouldn't go completely passive.
 
I've had a Zalman ZM-NB47J on my Asus A8N SLI Deluxe since day one. I've had the board in three different cases over the years and as long as there is any air flow in the case, the chipset has been just fine. This included full time OCing for most of the board's life. And it's still going. 🙂 I don't think I've ever had the chipset go above the mids 30's C.

Edit: Here's a pic from my original setup.
 
my nf4's are firebreathers... if u go passive u will need a big copper or heatpipe cooler, and they will still need some air blowing by them...

be careful...
 
I have a Thermalright HR-05 SLI on mine and it's fine. I do have front and rear 120mm case fans running at ~900rpm though so not really 'passive'
 
I wouldn't worry. I got a cheap Zalman aluminum northbridge cooler on my NF4 rig and it's been perfect. Fanless is the way to go.
 
image

I'm a big fan of the Zalman ZM-NB47J after I used it on my nforce 2 board but while generally airflow is pretty good the northbridge is probably in something of a dead spot, so I'm a little wary. There's also the Thermalright HR-05 IFX or Noctua NC-U6 which are probably big enough to get into some airflow but might interfere with the graphics card...

There is a very low rpm fan on the other side of the hard drive holder, but it blows in front of the NB rather than onto it, and the graphics card blocks anything coming from below. Even the cpu HSF's fins are lined up horizontal so it doesn't blow any air there.

 
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