<< lordbob99, thanks. I don't really feel like spending another $20-30 on a heatsink and/or fan when I already have a decent one, but I guess if I want things to be as quiet as possible, then this is the price I pay. thanks again for the info. >>
i understand where ur coming from with this. i was actually considering buying the heat sink that ur using now, but i decided on the gc68 because it accommodates the 80 mm fan, which i swapped out for a panaflo L1A. if i had gone with a 60 mm heat sink, i would have most probably had to end up shelling out like $15 to get a 60-80 mm adapter to quiet it down.
while this may be the solution for u, there's some things that u shoudl consider when u do this. the main thing is that from what i've read in the forums (which is actuall quite a bit), these adapters don't tend to work that well, and end up costing u as much as a gc68 would in the end anyways. due to this, i opted to replace my hair-dryer volcano 5 with the svc gc68.
<< Oh, what about the 40mm fan on the chipset? Any advice about that? What do most people do regarding these? >>
i actually had the same problem with the 40 mm chipset fan on both my original board, the gigabyte ga-7dx, and shuttle ak31a, which i repalced the 7dx with. my solution was to just disconnect the 40 mm fan. the general consensus is that these are really not all that necessary unless ur going to be overclocking. i run my 1.4 tbird @ 1.4, so i just went ahead and said to hell with the loud lil ah heck.
i noticed however, that on both my mb's there was a heat sink under the fan. if your board doesn't have this heat sink underneath, u may want to consider putting one on if u take off the fan, as a completely non-cooled northbridge is more likely to have problems than an at least passive-cooled one.
hope this helps.
lordbob99
