HR- Product line

[Biscuit]

Since i bought my new laptop rather than upgrading, im going to have to live with my 939 system for another year or so i reckon.

I have nver been happy with how hot the motherboard and graphics card run and i wondering if the line of thermalright coolers would actually be of much help.

Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK

I have an asus a8n-32 sli deluxe and an 320mb 8800GTS

Which of the heatsinks would i need for my motherboard and would the HR-11 be a good investment for my GFX card or should i go all out on that and go for the HR-03?

[amjedm]

When you say 'motherboard' are you referring to the Northbridge?

[Biscuit]

well it has a wierd heatpipe cooler thing. goes over two chips and what i assume is the mosfets. Im not completely sure its compatible at all tbh :/

[Madafwo]

I'm pretty sure that it's the HR-05 SLI and also the HR-09 Mosfet coolers for your board, for the graphics card I think it's the HR-03 Plus... not the GT version

[Biscuit]

On scan it does say pretty clearly which one i need but i was wondering if the HR11 witht he stock cooler would do just as good a job?

[amjedm]

On scan it does say pretty clearly which one i need but i was wondering if the HR11 witht he stock cooler would do just as good a job?

Is the HR-11 compatible with the existing cooler?

With regards the motherboard temps, I have a Asus A8N Sli Premium motherboard. It has a similar heatpipe cooler to your motherboard but its aluminium, not cooper and it only cools 2 bits, not 3 like your cooler. I was getting temps of around 40C so pointed an 80mm fan at the part of the heatpipe near the PCI-E slots, temp as I type this is now 33C.

I removed the heatpipe cooler and applied better thermal paste but it didn't make much difference to the motherboard temps until I pointed the 80mm fan (at 7v).

[chuckskull]

The thermal right stuff is very good, try reseating the current stuff with some AS5 first though. The A8N is a very hot board normally anyway(well mine was and it never struggled, even overclocked), so dont worry too much

[[R4A]Bigman]

Personally, I'd hit the HR-03 (in fact I did) IF you have the space inside your case for it + a 92mm fan protruding off it. Mine pretty much eats up all the internal space because I couldn't mount it over the card (RAM/NB/CPU in the way), and instead it comes off the front of the card.

Otherwise the HR-11 might be worth your time. It depends on why you are going for it - the HR-03 gives what can only be described as unbelievable cooling for near-silence (or silence if you can run it passive). If its just to keep the temperatures down, then I don't really know. The HR-11 seems a bit like a false economy to me.

All in all, if its just temperatures, I'd pretty much say live with it unless its giving you stability problems or you really want to push the overclocks to the max. These things are designed to run at the temperatures they run at with the stock cooling, so I wouldn't lose sleep over it

[Biscuit]

I have already reseated the mobo coolers with AS5 and it didnt really make any difference. I just wanna take the temps down on the 8800GTS as i think a lot fo the heat front he back of the card is heating up the other componants on my motherboard.
I did run an overclock on my CPU once not so long ago and windows seemed to work fine but whenever i went into a game i got unbarable frame lag. I put it down to motherboard memory or psu but thinking about it the memory was running at stock and the psu has dual 18a 12v rails so should be able to handle it. When i have been playing a game such as BF for a long time witht he current set-up i experience similar issues after prolonged amounts of time. If i come out of the game and look at speedfan on of the mobo temps is at high 50s...

[Webby]

Here is a photo of the inside of my case (Silverstone TJ-08) with my HR-03 installed just to show how much space it actually takes up...



As you can see that is basically the next 3 PCI slots when mounted that way round and it would interfere with my CPU cooler if mounted the other way up. Fortunately I don't need any other cards in there so its not an issue and the temps are so much better.

As to the motherboard cooling I have no idea how much more effective the thermalright components would be than your current heatpipe system, with sufficient airflow i'm sure they would be amazing but the question is does your case have the airflow for all these large coolers or as suggested before is the answer just to mount an 80mm fan blowing air onto one of the existing heatsinks. I know which is cheaper.

[vicar]

nice rig.

[Biscuit]

woah that thing is huge! I have some fans on the order and im going to experiment a bit more. Might drill some holes on the side of my case and fit a 120 blowing over everything. My bigtyphoon does tend to make life difficult tho :/

[Webby]

Yeah it is a bit of a beast, if the PCIe slot was one lower it would fit the other way (wrapped around the card) but as is the fan touches the CPU heatsink which probably isnt the best idea and if I turn the CPU HS round by 90° then you pump all the hot air from the GPU straight through the CPU cooler and the PSU which isn't ideal...

Great cooler though has my X1950xt idling at 41°C and under full prolonged load (playing Hellgate at high everything 1680*1050 for 4 hours) gets to about 72°C and this is with a quiet low airflow fan (1400rpm, 92mm) and the limited airflow that it can pull due to being so close to the bottom of the case... although I have moved the cabling (blue in the photo) which lowered temps by 3°C so in a bigger case I imagine better results would be expected.

For your GTS you would need the HR-03 Plus which has additional heatpipes and so in theory cools better providing adequate airflow is provided.

Oh and I have run it the other way up previously and got better temps (before I installed the CPU cooler) possibly due to the better air access and the 120mm exhaust fan right next to it although Thermalright suggest you mount it the way it is now if possible as this allows for airflow over the memory sinks and voltage regulators.

[Biscuit]

if I turn the CPU HS round by 90° then you pump all the hot air from the GPU straight through the CPU cooler and the PSU which isn't ideal...

Have you tried experimenting this? you might find that it removes a pocket of air underneath the GPU and cools the ambient temp down?