What if the HSF touches the north/south bridge hs?

[jhammer569]

I'm currently working on this thread trying to get my computer to turn on properly for the 1st time:
http://forums.anandtech.com/me...id=2227200&STARTPAGE=1

But I just had a quick question for folks, preferably those who have the P5Q-E + Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 7....

When I put the Arctic on, the heatsink basically touches both the north and south bridge heatsinks. Also, when you then put the fan that comes w/ the Arctic onto it, the bottom corners of the fan casing actually push against the heatsinks further, to the point where it moves the northbridge heatsink a little. I had to shave off the corner, and now I'm thinking I need to shave off more of the fan casing so it fits...

2 Questions:
-Would this possibly be responsible for my motherboard malfunctioning given I can't get ANY video on my screen at all (see my above thread if you want to see all the things I've tried)?

-If the CPU heatsink touches the north/south bridge heatsinks, will this short something out or is it ok for heatsinks to touch each other?

 

[jhammer569]

Here's a pic of the heatsink (fan removed) touching the north/south bridges:
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/c6e65d8186.jpg

 

[mpilchfamily]

The touching HS will have no effect on the system what so ever. BTW the HS above the CPU is cooling the voltage regulators for the CPU. The HS below the CPU is the north bridge. The south bridge sits down near the SATA ports. Unless its an AMD board in which case there is no south bridge. When AMD moved to the 939 socket they put the memory controller on the CPU thus eliminating a big portion of what the north bridges job was. So now they have a single chip that sits in the area of the NB.