North Bridge Heatsink

[Corsairpro]

I'll be getting an Epox 8RDA+ in a couple days, but I want to replace the NB heatsink w/ something heftier but still passive... I have a dead ASUS A7V333... as I recall, that had a nice large passive heatsink. Essentially I want to know if I were to switch out heatsinks (and apply some AS3) if it would cool the NB better.

 

[BG4533]

It may be a bit better, but the NB likely doesnt need more than it came with, even for mild overclocking. Do you plan on overclocking heavily? If so, then you may want to consider it.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: BG4533
It may be a bit better, but the NB likely doesnt need more than it came with, even for mild overclocking. Do you plan on overclocking heavily? If so, then you may want to consider it.

Well, opinions may vary on that; this site has some really cool pictures of the 8RDA+ taken with some kind of thermal camera. The northbridge heatsink is quite cool, but the picture of the back of the board shows that the northbridge chip is actually very toasty, meaning that the heatsink on the northbridge is fairly well insulated from the chip. There's a small square of that pink bubble-gum type thermal compound there. I replaced it with Arctic Silver II - now the heatsink gets rather warm; of course, it does have a good bit of air blowing over it, so it won't get too hot. I do plan on doing the VDD mod soon, and running 200MHz FSB, so I'll probably put something active on it; I might actually be able to just screw a fan into that round heatsink...though I'm thinking of using one of these instead. I've got like 30 of them here; they're very quiet too (I bought a bunch cheap to sell as kits, with ASII and epoxy, but the professional cooling market picked up faster than I thought).

 

[Cat13]

Check out this thread. I did this exact mod and it helped out alot.

 

[Jhhnn]

I'd use whichever cooler looks to be the best, with some good thermal goop. The zalman will definitely do the job, if you want to go all-out.

 

[WA261]

Be sure to have a fan pointing at your ZNB. If I move the 80mm away from mine, temps on my cpu go up 5c.

Does not look nice, but it keeps the heat off the cpu
http://iupload.net/032003/ZNB.jpg

 

[amcdonald]

Let me warn you that if you get a slk800 or something similair with an overhang, you'll need to bend the fins on the zalman to get it to fit.

 

[AtomicDude512]

Get one of those copper Zalman chipset heatsinks, they are supposed to be pretty good.

 

[hcarlson]

I have one of those zalmans, black with tall, thin fins. I like it alot.