best solution for noisy, dieing northbridge fan

[veryhumid]

my ic7-g has a northbridge fan that has started making a lot of noise. I was thinking the asus canterwood boards have wimpy passive northbridge sinks. why don't we just unplug them when they die and run passive? It certainly is cheap and easy! I have a system temp around 25C and i'm going to give that a try. Is their any danger to this?

I have a NB-1C standing by but I was hoping this would be just as good.

 

[dfrost]

Going passive (Zalman NB32J) has definitely worked fine for me. It helps if you have some airflow like the down wash from a CPU HSF with a 92mm or 120mm fan. Don't think the system temp increased. It's quite steady at 28-30C on my sig system.

 

[veryhumid]

I looked at that, however I don't want to use adhesive and the mounting system won't work with my chipset. The shorter zalman will fit, but the bigger one won't fit under an xp-120. Right now I have found the best temps using my fan sucking through the heatsink (almost 10C better load). I know it would be more ideal to have a fan blowing, but do you think this would still work well?

I'm currently trying just unplugging the northbridge to see how it goes.

edit: oh wow I just saw your pic! what did you make that bracket out of?!

 

[dfrost]

The wire clip is made from a bicycle spoke. Here's the full description of how I made it.

I'm intrigued by your good results with XP-120 in "suck mode." I plan to do that soon.

 

[veryhumid]

great job on the clip! here's the link to my cooling results. On blow with no side panel fan I was getting up to 58C with even pretty big fans! sucking, and with the side panel fan, and very slow quiet fans I am down to 45C right now (as5 has set it)! This is with a chip that is over 100Watts, plus on boards notorious for displaying higher than real temps.

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=382688

 

[batboy]

The higher you O/C the FSB, the more you'll need good N/B cooling.

 

[ziggo0]

If your XP-120 is right over the passive cooler, why not notice how the air from the XP-120's fan blows directly down onto it? Or is it not that close