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I am looking for a decent northbridge cooler to replace the horrid droning one on my Abit IC7-MAX3 (i875P "Canterwood" chipset, so it needs those weird spring mountings).
I am going to watercool the rest of my system and so the FSB may be anything up to 250Mhz. Would a passive solution such as the Zalman ones be good enough, as I like the idea of noiseless cooling?
Thanks
Dihi
The Zallman passive jobbies are very effective.
Having said that i've been running my IC7 with a 3.2 P4 northwood overclocked to 3.6 with std cooling for months with no nb cooler at all. PC runs 24/7 @100% (UD & BOINC) flawlessly.
Passive cooling the north bridge is perfectly fine; however some northbridges do run hotter than others. I sympathise with you completely, as I do in fact own an IC7 and yes the fan it totally awful. The main problem with getting an after market heatsink for the IC7 is the mountings it uses (as you mentioned). However having done some research into this myself I can recommend one. I never got round to purchasing it, but the reviews are all super positive.
The chipset cooler is the Thermalright NB-1 or NB-1C Pure Copper Northbridge Coolers. Basically they have the correct mountings (it's a wire type mounting as you know), the copper version is very expensive but one of the best you can buy. Prices are about £6 for the NB-1 and £15 NB-1C. You should be fine with the standard version but if you want to, there is no reason not to get the copper one.
They are supplied with fans but there is no need to use them, I planned on doing just that, but never got round to it. The board is now in a secondary computer used in a different room, so unless the fan fails, I’ll likely leave it as it is. As for the Zalman, as far as I can see there isn't a version with the correct mounting method. They all use adjustable arms for screw mounting holes which the IC7 lacks.
Hope this helps.
The ones (zallman) i used to replace the faulty IC7's @ work were stuck on with thermal epoxy.
Yeah, forgot about using that! Good point! :)
I'd rather not use the epoxy, simply so I could take it off again if it didn't cool well enough.
I will look into the Thermalright one, Speed2003. Thanks
Quick tip, mix a little Arctic Silver with the epoxy, makes it less permenant :)
Still, good luck.