Do any aftermarket chipset coolers fit on the A8N-SLI motherboard?

[Andrew LB]

I've noticed that the little chipset fan assembly on the A8N-SLI motherboard is pretty crappy and i was looking into upgrading it to something more effective. Do any of you know of any aftermarket chipset coolers that will not get in the way of the first PCI-Express Video card? lemme try and wedge my camera into the case close enough to shoot a macro shot of the distance between the cooler and my 7800gt and its Arctic-Cooling NV Silencer.... Brb.

edit:
Man.... the fit would be extremely tight. The only thing i could think of tht would work is a heat pipe design like on the Platinum or 32-SLI versions of the A8N Motherboard or perhaps a short microfin heatsink with angled fan blowing across it.




Edit again:

I just looked at the heatpipe design on the A8N32-SLI board and noticed how much differently the board is setup, allowing a pretty tall cooler to sit on the chipset, as well as the heatpipe setup.

[.sentinel]

I thought that the MCW-159 does

[Andrew LB]

I could not find anything regarding an MCW-159 but i did find an MCX159-CU made by Switech.

http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/swmcchco.html

The issue here is, my GPU cooler is a big arse "arctic coooling" VGA Silencer and there is no way it would fit. The only solution i could think of is to completely remove the fan assembly on the arctic cooling silencer and mount a new fan on it blowing diectly over the heatsink. I actually did this with my previous video card since the fan on the silencer blew out, so instead i threw on an 80mm Panaflo U1A fan directly on top of the heatsink (i cut off the stock plastic fan shroud except for the exhaust portion blowing out the back. If it comes down to that, i'll get better video card cooling, as well as chipset cooling. Either that or just say screw it and find a better very low profile chipset cooler.

[humeyboy]

The blue taller passive Zalman, you can oc the HT also with it but unsure how far is safe to do on air, i run a NF2 at 250/500 fsb on one so its ok for me.

[Andrew LB]

I don't think any of those will clear the Arctic cooler i have on my video card. Take a peek at the photograph. Right now i have roughly 1/4" gap between the top of the stock chipset cooler and the plasic fan shroud on my video cards cooler....

Here are some i found.... all too tall. http://www.heatsinkfactory.com/North...p-1-c-306.html

[Andrew LB]

So what i'm looking at now is a decent heatsink i can put onto my chipset to replace the stock cooler and since i have height restrictions, i plan on attaching this Sunon 40mm high output fan to the side where it wont interfere with the video card. The distance between the chipset itself and the video card cooler is just way too small to put the fan on top and allow decent cooling.

Here is the fan i plan on using.

[humeyboy]

Well i know all asus mobos inc SLi have better gap than other makes and Zalman is fine even with 2 6800Ultras(dual slot) but not sure on if gpus have artic silencers fitted, try google it and see if other use both items with no issues.

[Andrew LB]

Well I did a little google research and found out a few things. There are two pretty nice looking options. The first is pictured below. The owner physically trimmed the plastic housing on his Arctic-Cooling NV Silencer to allow room for the Zalman northbridge cooler. It also seems to blow air through the fins via the fan on the cooler.






And here is the second option where someone took a Zalman chipset cooler and actually ground down the fins to avoid running into the arctic cooling silencer.




Now both methods look pretty nice and effective. Whats your guys takes on which you think is better and why?

[Nights Dawn]

I'd think the method whereby the plastic shroud was modded to allow space for the heatsink, because airflow over a chipset heatsink is always a good idea.

A chipset cooler comprable to the Akasa 920 Evo would be nice ... shame no one has developed one yet, a small heatpip to radiator(fins) afair would be good, to mount a small 80mm fan or smaller onto it at low rpm.

[linczs2000]

You can try these two VGA coolers from EVERCOOL

VC-RF

VC-RE

I use them on my DFI NF4 SLI-D and EXPERT

[Andrew LB]

Hmm.... random find of the night when going through some old stuff. I came across a Vantec Iceberq 4 GPU cooler. Perhaps i can get that to fit.

Edit: It seems the holes on the cooler are a tiny bit wide for mounting it but i'm sure after a little work with my dremel and some machine screws, nylon washers, and nuts i'll get it on there. IIRC i bought this cooler for my old 9700pro which is still somewhere in a box in my room but removed it because i decided to solder some resistors onto the card to up the GPU and MEM voltages. I then added some BGA ramsinks and a copper microfin 1U Dynatron Cool Jag CPU cooler and delta 70mm fan. The card was so great in its day. The R300 was probably the biggest jump in 3d performance with any GPU redesign as long as i could remember. Well... i did own a pair of Diamond Monster Voodoo II cards in SLI way back in the days of 3dfx. Man those card were so far ahead of their time.

http://www.kalionzes.com/computers/vantec4.pdf (specs on the Vantec GPU cooler i'm going to mod)

[farooqm]

Can you let us know how you get on... I am in the same situation as yourself (except I have a 6600GT with Arctic Cooler Fitted). Pics of how your install goes would be good. Option 1 above where he trimmed the Arctic Cooler seems good, but what was the effect on the GPU cooling of doing this. Do you have the links where you got the two pics above from.

Thnx.

[Andrew LB]

I googled the pics i posted, i forgot the exact words. I'll find out if my Iceberq4 GPU cooler will work tomorrow also. Till then.... sleep.

[Andrew LB]

Well.... the Vantec Iceberq 4 GPU cooler wont fit even with the distance between holes adjusted because the overall cooler is just too big and gets in the way of things. I'm going to have to go with one of the other methods, either trimming a heatsink like seen above or trimming the plastic fan shroud on the arctic cooling silencer itself. If i just trim the heatsink, i'm not too concerned with airflow getting to the heatsink because i have two 80mm fans i custom installed on the side panel of my case side to side (not up and down) blowing directly across the video card and the one on the right blows pretty much directly onto the northbridge cooler. I may order one or two since they're cheap and first try trimming one and if that isn't too successful, i already know its easy to trim the plastic on the Silencer. When i had my x800xl AGP last year, the Silencer made for it was actually about 2 inches short since the PCI-E card was much shorter. I had to add material to the duct to make it exhaust out the back of the case.

Then after a day or so i smelled something and my video card temp went through the roof. My 1 day old modded (.... and now warranty voided) silencer blew the fan for some odd reason. So instead of throwing away a perfectly good duct and a lot of time modding it.... i ripped out the silencers fan assembly, sealed off the hole for the motor, etc... and attached an 80mm Panaflo U1a super high output fan to it!!! Heheh. You guys should have felt how much air was blowing out the back of the case. I should have taped a couple small pieces of ribbon to the exhaust duct outside the case to show the velocity and took some photos or a video with my camera phone.

here is what it looked like. the card currently resides in a friends rig and is hooked up to a fan controller to keep the noise down since his girlfriend es about it.

[Andrew LB]

btw.... i found the site that had those photos on it.

Anyone speak french? http://forum.hardware.fr/hardwarefr/...t-246533-1.htm

[Andrew LB]

Ok... instead of buying a new cooler i decided to retrofit the Vantec Iceberq 4 GPU cooler to fit on my northbridge. I had to remove the top cover of plastic that really didn't do anything, i cut off the two mounting tabs of copper where it connected to the heatsink, and used my dremel to shave a few sections of the heatsink and its base off so it would not touch a capacitor, the power socket for the chipset fan, and a few other little parts sticking up from the motherboards PCB. I got it mounted with a little AS5 and it works perfectly, and i'm sure it works a heck of a lot better than the stock cooler.

[Thrilla]

LoL wish I found this thread ealier, I got my hands on some heatpipes XD

[Andrew LB]

LoL wish I found this thread ealier, I got my hands on some heatpipes XD

Excuse me if this is a stupid question, but whats up with those things on the right? I've never used heatpipes nor have I any experience with how to build coolers made with them.

Also, what were you planning to use those with?

[farooqm]

Ok... instead of buying a new cooler i decided to retrofit the Vantec Iceberq 4 GPU cooler to fit on my northbridge. I had to remove the top cover of plastic that really didn't do anything, i cut off the two mounting tabs of copper where it connected to the heatsink, and used my dremel to shave a few sections of the heatsink and its base off so it would not touch a capacitor, the power socket for the chipset fan, and a few other little parts sticking up from the motherboards PCB. I got it mounted with a little AS5 and it works perfectly, and i'm sure it works a heck of a lot better than the stock cooler.

Nice little mod there.... what made you decide against using the first method above.. ie the one with the Zalman fitted and the Silencer cut?

[Andrew LB]

Nice little mod there.... what made you decide against using the first method above.. ie the one with the Zalman fitted and the Silencer cut?

Since I had this great GPU copper Vantec Iceberq cooler laying around my room for about two years now, i finally found a use for it. Plus it conducts and dissipates heat probably better than any other chipset cooler that is available for a setup lime mine..... plus.... i love doing things myself.

My next mod will probably be a bigger main Heatsink/FAN for my CPU. Or perhaps a third 80mm hole in the side panel of the case to blow air directly onto the CPU Heatsink itself. right now my two 80mm intakes on the side i custom made blow perfectly onto the area where I'll eventually have SLI 7800gt's (already have one).

I'll need all that cooling since i'm planning on volt V-core, V-Mem mod the 7800gt tomorrow when i have time. I have some nice 10k and 5k ohm variable resistors siting here and a steady hand for soldering to boost the power to the video card.

oh... i'm also looking into buying/building a better mosfet cooling system since the one that came on the board sucks and i'm thinking better mosfet cooling could increase my CPU v-core stability. Unless anyone here knows a mod to add capacitors in order to keep a maintained power supply to the CPU.