Is it worth replacing thermal compound on AB9 Pro

[d3fiant]

Is it worth removing the SB and NB sinks, cleaning them up and using a better compound as I noticed they get quite warm? What about active cooling?

[Johnny Bravo]

the South bridge could probably be left alone, depending on what sort of hardware are you running off it.

The northbrige is a toasty little guy if run above stock volts. If you do take it off you'll find a brown/gray square on the underside, this is the thermal pad, should be able to peel it off as one. Theres a foam spacer attached too but keep it onto avoid damaging the NB. To be honest the cooler isn't all that great and I've advice pulling it off if you intend to overclock for something active. t he heat pipe seemed to be "glued" to the big heatsink so a quick twist and it came apart fairly easily.

Hope that helps

John

[d3fiant]

are there any implications on the OTES branded hs if I replace the NB cooling solution due to the lack of heatpipe? TBH I run at stock across the board and have a well ventillated case, however I have several hard drives and the stock cooler on my 7950GT dumps its heat inside the case and I have been unable to find a 3rd party cooling solution like the NV5 silencer I had on my old card which exhausts out of the case, and that card does get very warm after a few hours of BF2

[gilgamesh]

Is it worth removing the SB and NB sinks, cleaning them up and using a better compound as I noticed they get quite warm? What about active cooling?

Some people say no, however as demonstrated by my AW9D MAX mod guide I got quite a bit of performance out of them.

It can also be said if that heatsinks are getting quite warm then they are just doing their job right of getting rid of the heat from the north/southbridge core.

As Johnny said if you are ocing it will be most useful to do the mod.

cheers

gilgamesh

[Johnny Bravo]

are there any implications on the OTES branded hs if I replace the NB cooling solution due to the lack of heatpipe?

Pretty much none, they really are for show at the end of the day. Unless your running big volts or an oveclocked QX6700 the current draw is never going to get to the stage where the MOSFETs are overheating. The big heatsink exists so sink the heat from the NB rather than keep the MOSFETS underneath cool. If your running stock and have an air cooler on the cpu I think you could get away with leaving it alone, but theres always room for improvement

[d3fiant]

.... but theres always room for improvement

Trying to turn me to the dark side are u.... have dabbled in the past, perhaps Im getting weak in my old age

Thanks for the info, both of u