Touching issues - Zalman 7700, Zalman Northbridge, and Zalman VGA

[MIDIman]

I have all three of these monsters on my Abit IC7 max3. I had to bend back a few fins to make sure the Zalman northbridge and my 7700 were not touching, but now I'm trying to get my Zalman VGA heatsink in and its touching the northbridge as well. More bending...


Question - is it OK for any of these to be touching each other or not? i.e. will it short or something if they are touching?

Thanks in advance...

 

[fixxxer0]

cant say 100%, maybe wait for someone else, but as far as i know.... the heat sinks do not transfer any electrisity and if they are, something is terribly wrong.


therefore nothing should get shorted out because of this.

 

[Mrvile]

What are you bending the fins of? The 7700? I wouldn't be doing that on a 60 dollar CPU cooler...

 

[Dough1397]

i wouldnt advise bending the fins on something with a fan, you could cut/noptch the fin but most would advise against that.... and heat sinks touching can sorta be bad... could if the heat form a really hot item (cpu) goes to northbridge, then norhtbridge may be too hot...... so try to avoid it

 

[MIDIman]

I have been bending the Northbridge fins since its a $5.00 item.

I use Arctic Silver 5 and I could've sworn I read something about heatsinks touching being bad.

 

[Auric]

I was just eyeballing that badboy on tomshardware. I already have the 7000... did you get the Al or Cu? The Cu seems a worthwhile improvement when needed, but not so much the Al... yet the Cu is awful heavy. I wouldn't worry about shorting but maybe vibration. Perhaps you can just cut/snip/file some NB fins down.

 

[Dough1397]

man 52 CAD for the 7000b cu i think it is one of the best deals... and if i was feelling richer i would go for the 7700 cu which is like 60 (ncix.com)

 

[MIDIman]

Well - no one really answered my question, but I basically bent back about 6 or 7 pins far enough so that none of the three heatsinks touch...give it a good bump though and they might, who knows.

Thanks.

In motherboard monitor, what is PWM?

Temps in silence mode with a nice quiet Super Tornado 300 and two 120mm Nexus fans:
Case - 32
CPU - 48
PWM - 35