Got a Asus A8N Sli board, need some suggestions to change the Northbridge Cooler.
Only issue Is I have a arctic cooler on my 6600GT card which cover the northbridge a bit so not much clearance. It's ok with the standard Asus fan installed with about 4-5mm clearance above it. Not sure what 'quiet' preferably passive alternatives there are that will fit in this config.
If your fan fails they send a replacement which is quieter (well in UK you ghave to go to the retailer).
is it easy to change the stock hsf with a quiet one?
Because of the position of the Chipset its hard to change it for a 'quiet' passive one. When mine started been a pain I got asus to send me a new one. Which was hell to fit, but o well. If you want to try something else there are a few 3rd party chipset coolers. But i dont know which ones are good, or will fit?
some have fitted the Zalman passive cooler.
Not sure if this is OK with SLi tho.
The Zalman is fine. They (or replacement fan) are a bit of a pain to fit as you need to remove the mobo (they use push through pins). My good ole "snaketooth" makes the job much easier though.
What system are you using with the Zalman? Do you have a dual gfx set up?
I am plannin to do the same thing and on my board, which is nforce4 ultra not sli but has 2 pci-e lanes, i can use a one card setup in the "secondary" slot. Therefore it may fit. You can go passive but also coolermaster do a bue led lit one with heatpipes and a heat sink, but witha silent fan in it. This would be quiet but would be cool, good if you want to OC
My motherboard is not installed into case yet... so ideal time to update this fan. How tall is the Zalman one. Will it fit if my GPU has an arctic cooler installed onto it? The artic cooler partially covers the northbridge. Not much clearance... ?????
you might find you struggle to fit the heatsink between cards which have a AC silencer fitted.
If you can, put a Zalman Heatsink on the northbridge.
There's always the option of replacing the artic silencer with a zalman vf700 which should give you a lot more clearance, particularly as it can be put in upside down which gives more room.
Unfortuantely that means extra expense and removing a perfectly good gpu cooler.
Zalman nb47j 4tw!
Fits no probs with an X850XT no probs - no room for an arctic cooler though.
Having tried both the Zalman and the replacement fan I can say both do a good job, but the fan keeps the chip cooler on idle. Unlike the original fan I can't hear this one over the other fans in my case. The Zalman is quite tall so may interfere with some Gfx card coolers.
Should be getting my repacement fan from Asus this week. Will see how this one goes, if it's still too noisy I'll look at the Zalman and see if there is any way I can 'adapt' it or the arctic so they both fit and work together:)