nForce4 + cheap chipset HS/F = Meltdown! w/ pics

[Operandi]

This was a friends system (built by his dad) based around a MSI K8N Neo4 that was suffering from some stability issues as well as problems accessing data off of a secondary drive used mostly for music. It turns out the hard drive was bad but the chipset fan was also long gone.

This machine was less then a year old and while far from clean dust build up didn't seem to be an issue. Cooling as also pretty good, 4x medium speed 80mm fans that made a lot of noise so probably moved a decent amount of air The hardware itself was also cool running; a A64 3000+, a 6600 (non-GT), and two 7200RPM hard drives so heat should not have been a problem.

Onto the pictures?

The heatsink itself, some of the fan blades broke off when i tried to turn just to see how bad it was, some others broke off when i tried to take it apart.

Here is the underside of the heatsink. Note how the shim almost looks burnt.

The fan motor is completely fried, it had to have been subjected to some serious heat. Same story here with the PCB and the base of the heatsink. You can see where the shaft of the fan was is at an angle (melted) when it should be straight as well as the charred black fan PCB.

The above is why all the motherboards I use are passively cooled.

 

[A5]

Geez. Glad I just swapped out my fan (same mobo) for a Zalman NB47J.

 

[ColemontHD]

Originally posted by: Operandi
This was a friends system (built by his dad) based around a MSI K8N Neo4 that was suffering from some stability issues as well as problems accessing data off of a secondary drive used mostly for music. It turns out the hard drive was bad but the chipset fan was also long gone.

This machine was less then a year old and while far from clean dust build up didn't seem to be an issue. Cooling as also pretty good, 4x medium speed 80mm fans that made a lot of noise so probably moved a decent amount of air The hardware itself was also cool running; a A64 3000+, a 6600 (non-GT), and two 7200RPM hard drives so heat should not have been a problem.

Onto the pictures?

The heatsink itself, some of the fan blades broke off when i tried to turn just to see how bad it was, some others broke off when i tried to take it apart.

Here is the underside of the heatsink. Note how the shim almost looks burnt.

The fan motor is completely fried, it had to have been subjected to some serious heat. Same story here with the PCB and the base of the heatsink. You can see where the shaft of the fan was is at an angle (melted) when it should be straight as well as the charred black fan PCB.

The above is why all the motherboards I use are passively cooled.

Ouch!

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Doesn't the DFI cooler constitute a cheap chipset cooler? Hah. Good thing I replaced mine with a Vantec Iceberq, but still, I think a lot of cooling in my case depends on the 3x 120mm fans I have in addition to my giant Thermalright XP120 with another 120mm fan giving the board some good cooling.

 

[Operandi]

Originally posted by: DLeRium
Doesn't the DFI cooler constitute a cheap chipset cooler? Hah. Good thing I replaced mine with a Vantec Iceberq, but still, I think a lot of cooling in my case depends on the 3x 120mm fans I have in addition to my giant Thermalright XP120 with another 120mm fan giving the board some good cooling.

Yeah the DFI ones have been known to fail pretty quick too, though they do look more substantial then the junk MSI and Asus was using. The only stock active cooling I've seen that I wouldn't consider junk came from AOpen boards.

The fact that the fan failed doesn?t surprise me, but having it literally melt down like it did was a bit of a shock.

 

[Budman]

My feelings towards MSI.

 

[pkrush]

The fan on my MSI board (same one) failed within six months, so I replaced it with a passive cooler. Surprisingly enough, it continued to work fine for almost a week on the stock chipset heatsink without the fan spinning, which I guess is a testament to how hot the nforce4 can get and still work.

 

[Mr Fox]

Originally posted by: Operandi
This was a friends system (built by his dad) based around a MSI K8N Neo4 that was suffering from some stability issues as well as problems accessing data off of a secondary drive used mostly for music. It turns out the hard drive was bad but the chipset fan was also long gone.

This machine was less then a year old and while far from clean dust build up didn't seem to be an issue. Cooling as also pretty good, 4x medium speed 80mm fans that made a lot of noise so probably moved a decent amount of air The hardware itself was also cool running; a A64 3000+, a 6600 (non-GT), and two 7200RPM hard drives so heat should not have been a problem.

Onto the pictures?

The heatsink itself, some of the fan blades broke off when i tried to turn just to see how bad it was, some others broke off when i tried to take it apart.

Here is the underside of the heatsink. Note how the shim almost looks burnt.

The fan motor is completely fried, it had to have been subjected to some serious heat. Same story here with the PCB and the base of the heatsink. You can see where the shaft of the fan was is at an angle (melted) when it should be straight as well as the charred black fan PCB.

The above is why all the motherboards I use are passively cooled.

This looks the result of a major overclock without adjusting the HTT in order to have generated that kind of heat... that has caused Nylon 6 to break down... that is the material that the fan impeller is made out of.

Under normal operating conditions that unit gets warm, but not blazing hot. I have mine running 400 - 600 Mhz. Overclocked and in order to get stability you need to reduce the HTT to 4x. and then it is warm but not hot... I have had mine running 24/7 for over a year now..... Kinda looks like the motor on the heatsink went first... or the heat caused the failure.

 

[Bill Brasky]

Originally posted by: Budman
My feelings towards MSI.

LOL. I have the same feeling towards the crap MSI nb fan that stopped spinning after 3 months. I still haven't replaced it. When I monitor temps with speedfan it stays around 30C. I'm just not looking forward to taking out my motherboard. :| Any other suggestions on a passive heatsink, or are they all about the same?

 

[fluffmonster]

if you have meaningful airflow in your case, the zalman nb-47j is an outstanding and inexpensive choice for passive nb cooling, unless it is competing for space around the vid card slot (which it does for some DFI boards at least). Something that's more expenisve that i've read decent things about is the Thermalright HR-05 which has a version with some offset to get around the video card, i think they call it the SLI version.

 

[Operandi]

Originally posted by: Budman
My feelings towards MSI.

Hah, well generally I think MSI is one of the better manufactures but that sad excuse for a chipset heatsink is not one of their finer examples.

Originally posted by: Mr Fox
This looks the result of a major overclock without adjusting the HTT in order to have generated that kind of heat... that has caused Nylon 6 to break down... that is the material that the fan impeller is made out of.

Under normal operating conditions that unit gets warm, but not blazing hot. I have mine running 400 - 600 Mhz. Overclocked and in order to get stability you need to reduce the HTT to 4x. and then it is warm but not hot... I have had mine running 24/7 for over a year now..... Kinda looks like the motor on the heatsink went first... or the heat caused the failure.

Nothing was overclocked. The fan blades broke off when I tried to turn the fan; as fan shaft had "melted" out of place it didn't budge.

I didn't do any extensive tests but I measured the surface of the heatsink at 62c at idle but I'm not sure how accurate the measurement was since I wasn?t making perfect contact with the heatsink. I didn't even bother to test the temp at load but if idle was 60 load would have been much worse.

 

[w00t]

I prefer passive for motherboards having a complete passive system that met my expectations would be sweet also

 

[Rubycon]

Heat pipe coolers are becoming standard. I suppose the next step is to strap fans on their radiators. Asus supplies such a fan in case the owner is using watercooling on the cpu.

 

[themisfit610]

Oh yeah. The new high end ASUS boards for AM2 and the Core 2 Duo are using such sweet ass heatpipe / copper fin integrated cooling systems for the chipsets / MOSFETs. It's gorgeous and heavy!