**Official DFI LanParty UT P35-T2R Review/Overclock/Guide Thread**

[kberguy1]

Short of pulling the heat pipes off has anyone had any luck or have any advice on securing something a little more substantial (such as an MCX159 CU or an HR-05) on top of the NB heat sink short of thermal adhesiving something on top permanently? I get nervous strapping something so top heavy and conductive so close to the video card

I am going to have a closer look at this myself over the next day or so. I just picked up a Thermalright HR-03 R600 VGA cooler for my ATI HD2900XT card, and need to mount it first to see what clearance issues it might create. I have a Swiftech MCX159 HSF and a Noctua NC-U6 HS in my "spares" bin, so I can trial fit them both. I will see what works best, and can give you all my impressions by about this time tomorrow.

I used to work as a mechanic and am pretty good at making things work. Unfortunately, unless a person is willing to just use cable ties to mount the HS on to the Northbridge, I don't see a way around having to remove the DFI heatpipe assembly in order to mount the HS on it.

The choices to properly mount the HS on to the top of the DFI NB comes down to two basic methods:

1) If a person uses thermal adhesive, it will create a permanent bond to the top of the NB cooler. This will allow very good heat transfer, but it is a PERMANENT mount. In addition, you would want to mount this with the DFI Heatpipe assembly off the motherboard because you would not want to run the risk of getting thermal adhesive stuck on the motherboard itself.

2) If a person mounts the HS to the Northbridge via machine screws and nuts, he/she will find that if the thermal paste was applied correctly the higher mounting pressures of using fasteners will ensure there is decent heat transfer. The added benefit here is that the HS will be able to be removed if necessary at some future point.

NOTE: The top of the NB cooler on the stock DFI heatpipe assembly has a protective finish as well as paint on it. It also has some stylized ridges that would probably need to be dealt with. In my opinion, if you were using thermal adhesive, you would need to at least sand the finish off the top of the NB cooler to give better grip for the thermal adhesive to adhere to.

If you were going to mount a HS with a flat surface using machine screws, then the top of the NB heatsink would probably need to be lapped to get rid of the little ridges that are on its surface. Otherwise, these little ridges would leave a pretty large gap that would have to be filled with larger amounts of thermal paste, and heat transfer would be adversely effected.

Initial inspection leads me to believe that mounting the Noctua HS with machine screws will work best for me. This HS has a lot of surface area and uses heatpipe technology. Because I have mounted my Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme so the fan blows up through the CPU heatsink and out the top of my case, the Noctua HS assembly will sit just in front of the 120 mm Scythe fan, where it will get lots of airflow.

The tradeoff is that there is very little room to work with. If I ever have a fan problem or want to put a bigger fan on the CPU HS, I will need to remove the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme and my Scythe SFF-21F fan as an assembly first.