Socket F (1207) Cooling Solutions

[endlesszeal]

Hey guys,

Im very new to servers (first one ever) and socket F; and I acquired an ASUS KFN32-D SLI with 2x Opteron 2220.

I did a lot of research and my conclusions are:

-Socket F is LGA like modern Intel sockets, and it has two pitch lengths: 3.5" and 4.1".
-If its 3.5" pitch, I can use stock socket 754/939/940 coolers
-I can also use bolt through coolers from Noctua and Thermalright
-Lastly, retention brackets are two parts instead of one piece.

So my question is, since the ASUS board uses 3.5" pitch, can I chop up a Socket 754 retention bracket and use them with a stock cooler? Its seems like the latch has a hook at the end instead of a straight arm, like on all consumer AMD boards. It appears that hook would get in the way of using a one-piece retention bracket from 754,939, etc...

Also, if anyone has a couple spares of the 2-piece retention brackets, i would love them so i can save myself the trouble of chopping up brackets if it did work =)

Thanks in advance!

-Ae

[Bail_w]

http://cgi.ebay.com/Retention-Bracke...item3f06296c8a

Ebay has some.

[endlesszeal]

thanks for the reply.

i have two dead socket 754 boards that i can steal them from, but i was wondering i had to hack them to use them since socket F has that little hook on the cpu latch like the Intels do.

[Jacka]

[endlesszeal]

exactly what i was looking for, thanks guy!

so i guess i do have to hack the one-piece retention brackets...... what did the person do to the latch? i see a vice grip then it magically fits into the bracket, lol. did you bend the loop inward or straightened it a bit? or both?

[Jacka]

Compare pictures 3 and 5. The end part was straightened slightly.

[shoota]

Or what I did was just dremel out a little notch in the plastic where the lever was hitting. Works fine and was easier than bending metal

[endlesszeal]

many thanks shoota! has anyone tried just chopping into two pieces like the real socket F retention brackets? also, would stock heatsinks be okay (just the aluminium fins sans the heatpipes or copper?

[retro77]

My levers worked just fine without massaging them with the channel locks. I used some of these to cut the plastic retaining brackets:


Made by Fiskars and cut metal real nice. Plastic gets cut by theses babies no problem

[Sparky]

I'd sooner notch the plastic than bend the metal retaining arm

[endlesszeal]

thanks a bunch guys. i ended savaging some s754 brackets and took a dremel to them. now it sets nice and flush and i mounted the stock fans on them and have them on full blast (3800 rpm). the cores idle around 45C and load to around 60c. im waiting to put some Corsair A50s because im sure the stock ones cant handle 119watts.

anyway, now i have a troublesome issue. the nvidia 3050 companion chipset is hot has hell. i accidentally touched it and it burned my finger. i started up speedfan and it says its around 120C!!!

this picture identifies the area and which chipset im talking about:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ImageG...%20Motherboard

thats too high right? or sensors cant be right? i really dont want to spend a whole bunch of money on this thing, so if this is normal or wont affect the life of the system im not worried about it. im 100% sure i wont be connecting anything more than 1-2 hard drives and 1 pci-e video card for light gaming. the only thing i can think of doing is taking the heatsink off and applying some thermal grease and then point a fan at it.

[OldChap]

Point a fan at it first and see where that takes you.....I mounted one on 3" screw through one of the MB mounting holes so it ended up around 2" from the heatsinks....worked a treat so now I have a fan like this pointing at my other rigs too

[D_A]

I see three possibilities with heatsinks on them and one chip without, none of which are named in that image. For the ones with heat sinks, yeah you COULD take them off, clean them, put some better thermal compound on and add a fan. You could also just add a fan and see how that goes.

[shoota]

I'd say if it's that hot to the touch and a temp says it's 120C, even it's off a little bit that's way too hot. you have two choices, aftermarket chipset cooler or attach a fan.

in that pic is it the top, middle or bottom heatsink?

edit: you guys just had to sneak in there before me didn't ya lol

[endlesszeal]

sorry guys, its the picture in the top row in the middle. and its the heatsink that sits squarely with the rest of the mobo.

thanks oldchap. ill try doing that and see if it helps. but it seems weird that the other ones are playing so nicely except that one. its like twice as hot as the others and everything is running stock default on BIOS. i even tried to wiggle the heatsink but its nice and firm on there. so i have no idea why its having a meltdown.

[D_A]

It might still be a bad mount even though it's firm. There could be an air bubble between the sink and the thermal tape/chip and thermal tape or even the wrong material in there completely (some fool purchasing officer thought double-sided tape and thermal interface tape were close enough to the same and bough 10,000 rolls of the cheap stuff) ... it's impossible to say without pulling it down. Just be careful.

[shoota]

ew it's the hook kind of heatsinks, i hate those. be careful when you take it off like DA said

[endlesszeal]

any tips on have to remove those? would i need to take out the mobo?

[OldChap]

Probably safer that way. On the old asus x38 boards the best way to remove the heatsinks was to use a hairdryer and warm them up before attempting to break the seal of the thermal goo because it seemed to have a glue element to the paste

[shoota]

i think he means how to unhook the heatsink. i've only done it once and the only thing I remember was how much i hated it. sorry

edit: i just found an old dell mobo laying around that has this hook type heatsink and it came off easily. just push one hook down pull it out from the metal ring holding it down then do the other side. pretty straightforward

[endlesszeal]

aaaarrggggghhh..im done with this motherboard. i tried for a good 30 minutes trying to get the dang hook off from the heatsink, and the damn thing wont come off. i used a needle nose plier and pushed down on the hook and tried to pull it out but the dang thing wouldnt budge. i even slipped once and i thought i damaged it, but good thing the mobo booted right up. so i gave up there.

then windows 7 would friggin hang after the "starting windows" part. after screwing around with the BIOS i traced it down to a USB issue. If i had USB 2.0 Hispeed on, the BIOS would take 10 secs to load and then hang on Windows start up. Even with a USB bootable drive plugged in, you could see its wasnt being detected because no flashy lights and if you entered bootable device selection menu, only the hdd showed up. However, if I enabled only HiSpeed, everything worked dandy and I could boot into the USB drive.

I dont have the EZ Plug 4 pin molex plugged in, but as I understand it, its only if I was going to run SLi. If its a BIOS issue, I can only downgrade, but that makes running Barcelona impossible. So i think im going to run it as it is now and then get a PCI USB card and turn off the onboard USB.

If i ever buy a new server board, I will make sure its not an ASUS one. >=(

[shoota]

Bummer dude. I feel your pain, been messing with stuff all night.

I can't tell for sure from the pic of your board but it looks like there might be a usb header on there.
If so, this might be a better solution than a usb pci card:



unless by turn off the on board usb it would obviously kill this too so maybe nevermind, i need to go to bed

[endlesszeal]

most definitely speedfan is wrong about the 3050 chipset. i pointed an 80mm fan about 1inch above from it and have it at max rpm (2900). now its only slightly warm to the touch. however, speedfan still says its 127c.

awkwardly enough, thats the only program that can detect its presence and temp because everything, including the BIOS, cant even detect it to turn it on or off or what the temps are. hell, even i dont know whats it for except some extra pci/pci-e lanes.

at least, with the extra fan there, my gpu, hdd and northbridge dropped a good 5-10C each. doesnt surprise me because i could feel a hot spot there with the case open.

[shoota]

cool. sounds like you may have fixed the problem