Northbridge cooling question - **UPDATED**

[wisdomtooth]

Greetings,

I have an Abit IC7 motherboard (875 Canterwood chipset) and the Northbridge fan that came with it is one loud sumbitch.

I am thinking of getting rid of the fan altogether and maybe sticking on a much bigger heatsink and rely on passive cooling for quietness.

Feasible or not? I am hesitant because I don't want to end up with a dead motherboard.

Thanks for any insight!


Edit: I finally fixed the noise. Explanation on new post below.

 

[beatle]

I've read that the fan doesn't even affect temperatures. The heatsink is relatively beefy as it is.

 

[DerwenArtos12]

yeaht that heat sink seems plenty lard to hald the cooling without the fan, what you may also consider is just putting the fan on a fan controller instead of on the motherboard. Also one thing to consider is that some motherboards are set up in the bios to not boot or to boot with an error if it notices that the northbridge fan is not working. Some bios you can disable this other require you to put a jumper over the fan header once you un-plug the fan. I woudl definatly look around in the bios before disabling the fan to make sure you'll be able to boot with no problem once you disable or remove that fan.

 

[Operandi]

If the heat sink has a fan there is good chance it was designed work with active cooling, passive might not cut it. I would get this Zalman, it's designed with passive cooling in mind.

 

[smoothness]

i've got an ic7-gmax3 - the problem with the zalman coolers is that they don't attach to abit boards. they have the wrong connectors. you could always take artic silver adhesive, some AS 5, mix it together, and paste one of them on though.

 

[wisdomtooth]

Thank you all for your advice, gentlemen..

At this point I still got a question: The Northbridge fan is spinning at 5600RPM (!), which is part of the reason why it's so #^%$# noisy.

Is there anything I can do to slow it down? If I can somehow get it to run at say 2000RPM instead, it would at least cut the noise level in half..

 

[Spike]

Originally posted by: smoothness
i've got an ic7-gmax3 - the problem with the zalman coolers is that they don't attach to abit boards. they have the wrong connectors. you could always take artic silver adhesive, some AS 5, mix it together, and paste one of them on though.

This cooler does not fit on Abit boards? Crap, I ordered one a few days ago for my Abit NF7-S. I have some AS epoxy, so should I just use that? Also, does this mobo have that issue of not booting when the NB fan is not installed?

-spike

EDIT** Nevermind, I just read multiple places where this works just fine with a Abit NF7-S, it might just be the IC7-MAX3 that it does not work on instead of ALL abit boards. Just ignore my questions...

 

[Cawchy87]

Thanks for looking into that spike, I am going to go pick one up for my nf7 tonite.

 

[Spike]

Originally posted by: Cawchy87
Thanks for looking into that spike, I am going to go pick one up for my nf7 tonite.

No prob. Now I wish I had gone out and bought mine instead of ordering it as my stupid NB fan is making more noise then ever! Even when I cranked my case fans to full 12 v I could not drown out the stupid noise of the dying bearing.

I am counting down the days till it gets deliverd...

-spike

 

[DerwenArtos12]

Originally posted by: wisdomtooth
Thank you all for your advice, gentlemen..

At this point I still got a question: The Northbridge fan is spinning at 5600RPM (!), which is part of the reason why it's so #^%$# noisy.

Is there anything I can do to slow it down? If I can somehow get it to run at say 2000RPM instead, it would at least cut the noise level in half..

there are a couple wayt to do this, one woudl be to just solder a resistor in line with the positive lead of the fan. Or, get an adapter and just hook this fan up to a rheobus or other fanbus.

 

[lobadobadingdong]

is it a 40mm fan? could you just replace the fan with a quieter one?

 

[MDE]

Just unplug it. Thats what I did on my IS7 and it's running 225FSB in an Antec Sonata with no trouble at all.

 

[wisdomtooth]

Thank you all for your further insight.

I decided to experiment tonight and unplugged the fan for a hour. The heatsink got hot to the touch-- having the fan blow air on it actually does make a difference.

Unfortunately, changing the just the fan is out of the question. The Abit IC7 Northbridge heat sink and fan is one of those Orb-type coolers (round heatsink with a cutout in the middle for the fan).

Changing the heatsink might be an option, but the clip-mount does complicate things (the Zalman previously suggested is a screw-mounted HSF).

I guess my only option then is to solder in a resistor, since my IC7 does not have a fan header that lets me set the fan speed in BIOS.

Anyone know a good article on how to do that?

Thanks again!

 

[DerwenArtos12]

just so you don't have to completely cancel out the option, here is a cooler that comes with the clips to mount to your motherboard and comes with a standard 3pin fan so you can hook it up to your rheobus or jsut up to a fan header on your motherboard. though it only is 18db at 12v so you really shouldn't need to slow it down at all. But, if you would like to solder a resistor in line you need to just get a 20 or 30 ohn resistor, cut the red wire, take a 1/2" chunk out of itn stip cak yet another roughly 1/8" from eah or the red ends, set the resistor in place, bend the exposed wire from the red ends in half then bend the resistor wires to they kind of hook together on both sides. solder it in place and trim away the excess wire. A 20 ohm will slow your fan to nearly half it's origonal speed, considering it is probobaly a very low watt/amp fan.

 

[wisdomtooth]

DerwinArtos12:

Thanks for the explanation, man. I really appreciate it-- I'm heading down to Radio Shack first thing tommorow morning to pick up some resistors.

Would this work for my graphics card fan as well? The stock fan on my 9800 Radeon is also a screaming banshee at 5000+ RPMs... It's not overclocked or anything, so I can probably mod the fan to spin slower with no ill effects, I hope?

Thanks, and I appreciate your advice!

 

[wisdomtooth]

Update:

I got hold of a Zalman NB47J heatsink today, free of charge from someone who couldn't use it.

Mounting it isn't actually a problem... What I did was I clipped off a piece of wire from a clotheshanger, and then bent it to form a new clip-- Did it in about 20 minutes with a pair of needle-nose pliers.

It does need to be mounted at a 45-degree angle though, and it will fit if one uses a stock Intel CPU heatsink.

However, it will NOT fit if I used a big aftermarket CPU heatsink like the Thermalright XP90.

Looks like my best option is to solder in a resistor on the stock northbridge fansink as Derwin suggested-- Will do that tommorow.

Now if I can figure a way to quiet down the stock fansink on my Radeon 9800, I'd be in business..

 

[wisdomtooth]

NO MORE NOISE!!! YEAH!

Following Derwin's advice, I went down to Radio Shack today and picked up a package of 22 Ohm 0.5-watt resistors.

Spliced them into the red power line, and the fan RPMs dropped down from 5322 to 4171. The immediate improvement in noise was noticible.

I went one further and spliced in another resistor in series, and the RPM further dropped down to 3438. My NB fan is now virtually silent.

Thank you Derwin for your advice, and let me add that those who want to slow down their NB fan should probably use a stronger resistor so you won't have to splice multiple resistors in series. Try something in the 50-ohm to 70-ohm range.

Worked out good!

 

[smoothness]

hey wisdomtooth, you wouldn't want to send me that zalman heatsink, would you? i'd pay shipping charges.