Heatsink upgrade on an mATX board

[Tech Tweaker]

So, during a storm earlier today I decided to break down and tear my PC apart to to replace the stock cooler with a higher-end aftermarket model.

After spending an hour or so taking it apart, cleaning everything up, and affixing the necessary LGA775 mounting bracket I come to find out that my chosen new heatsink (which is massive by the way) hits the fan on my NB cooler (and I think "well, that's a drag, but I'll try it without the fan"), no such luck, I removed the fan and then it was hitting my NB's heatsink itself. Made of Copper, weighs 125g without the fan attached.

So, then I try my secondary option, thinking if the NB cooler and the CPU cooler are made by the same company odds are good they'll both fit next to each other. Wrong! The fit with these two was even worse. Made of Aluminum, weighs 60g.

Okay, plan C, rip apart my socket 939 rig to scavenge the NB HSF from it. I was hoping to avoid this, but having no other heatsinks on hand good enough to do the job I figured I may as well try it. Wouldn't you know, this one fits perfectly. Made of Copper, weighs 55g with the fan attached.

This is why I don't like mATX boards, or mATX/mini tower cases for that matter, they aren't easy to work with/in and difficult to get things to fit properly. I have to say, had this been a regular ATX board I doubt I would have had any of these problems. Really wish I could have kept the heatsink I had originally put on there, seems like such a drag to go from 125g of Copper to just 55g of Copper.

Well, after a three-hour process to replace a CPU HSF and a NB HSF (though I had never intended to do so) I finally have everything back in the case and got it up and running again.

At least I didn't have to take the board out. Everything I read on this HSF before purchasing it swore up and down that the board would have to be removed to install the heatsink. Ha, not in my case!

Results are encouraging, with CPU socket temps down from the low-to-mid thirties down to the high twenties/low thirties in degees Celsius. Idle temps in RealTemp are about the same really at 28-32°C most of the time; temps at typical loads during average use are around 33-40°C (haven't tried full load on prime or any benchmarks yet). While temps are about the same I say this is encouraging because the fan on this heatsink is spinning at 900-1000RPM, while the stock one had to spin at 1100-1400 all the time to maintain the same temperatures.

Out with the old:


After the upgrade:



That darn capacitor being right there at the top-left makes mounting a NB HS a more difficult task than it should be.

 

[Automata]

I can't imagine that being good for the northbridge. I'm not sure how hot a G33 gets, but I wouldn't even think of running that small of a cooler on my P45. But, as long as it works for you...

 

[Tech Tweaker]

I can't imagine that being good for the northbridge. I'm not sure how hot a G33 gets, but I wouldn't even think of running that small of a cooler on my P45. But, as long as it works for you...

That's it? The first thing you can think to say upon reading my post involves accusing me of doing something wrong?

 

[Automata]

I'm honestly not sure how to respond to that.

You created a thread, so I assumed you wanted some sort of feedback. Sorry if you did not.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

I'm honestly not sure how to respond to that.

You created a thread, so I assumed you wanted some sort of feedback. Sorry if you did not.

Feedback, yes, if it is positive or constructive in some way.

Yours however just came across as being very insulting to me. Kind of like you had said, "I understand you took all this time doing this, but you did it wrong though," just to tear me down. There's nothing really constructive I can take away from that for me other than, "you should use a bigger heatsink for your NB," when it's fairly clear that I can't fit one any bigger than what I have on there now.

I have four different NB heatsinks here, only three of them were robust enough for this purpose, but of those three only one of them actually fit.

Anyway, the cooler that's on there now isn't all that warm (about the same as the other one I had on there previously, judging by how hot it feels by touch), so I'm not particularly worried about it at the moment.

 

[Wayward_Son]

I didn't see anything untoward in Thiddy's post. He's a standup OCF member. Not the most diplomatic of posts, but it certainly wasn't outright rude in my opinion. In my own tests I have found that the Zalman cooler you purchased (which I also purchased and lapped out of curiosity) has good cooling capacity for single, dual and tri core processors, but as the heat goes up you have to increase the fan speed and that particular cooler just gets too loud when asked to cool a tri-core processor at full (and even moderate) load. I think what Thiddy is saying is that the G33 needs more cooling capacity than what that S939 heatsink/fan combo can dissipate, and that you are running some thermal risks in using it so that you can use that Zalman. I happen to agree with him.

I think the better bet would be to pick up an inexpensive-but-capable "tower" style heat sink instead, and use the northbridge cooler that came with your motherboard instead of that 939 fan.

/as an aside, I remember the NB fan on my 939 Asus A8n-SLI being the single loudest thing in my case... between that and that Zalman cooler, that setup would be way too loud for me.

 

[Wayward_Son]

By the way, is that rig overclocked? If so, you should stamp your sig with the same stamp I have in mine, and join the \m/ OverClockers mATX L33T Club \m/.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Just tested the new CPU HSF and NB HSF on prime95 for 43 mins.

Max temp reached on the CPU die detected via RealTemp was 52°C (but it stuck around 45-48°C most of the time and only hit 50+ a few times), the max temp with the stock cooler was around 55-57°C IIRC (it stayed around 49-53 most of the time).

The system was completely stable, and completed all tests without error (I believe the final tally was 18 of them). The NB was noticeably warmer than at idle, but was nowhere near anything that would give me cause to worry (my old nForce 4-4x chipset on my S754 board ran much hotter even at idle with its stock heatsink for around four years, so hot in fact that if I touched it my finger would be burned within seconds, but it was completely stable), the NB chip itself on this board is smaller and cooler-running than any other chip I've had so I think that HS should do fine, at least for this 200MHz FSB C2D E4400 chip. I'd say the NB heatsink runs at about the same temp as it did when I had it installed on my DFI board's nForce 4 SLI chipset, maybe a little cooler even.

Actually, at idle the NB heatsink is luke-warm to the touch and I can hardly tell it's warm at all. So, it's probably around body temperature, perhaps a little warmer.

I wish the board reported the northbridge temps, going by feel alone isn't particularly accurate and I don't have a temp probe around here. The only things that show up in HWMonitor for temps are the CPU socket temp and the System temp, and I don't think it's either of those. If it does have a temp sensor I haven't been able to figure out which one it is in HWMonitor or SpeedFan.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

I didn't see anything untoward in Thiddy's post. He's a standup OCF member. Not the most diplomatic of posts, but it certainly wasn't outright rude in my opinion. In my own tests I have found that the Zalman cooler you purchased (which I also purchased and lapped out of curiosity) has good cooling capacity for single, dual and tri core processors, but as the heat goes up you have to increase the fan speed and that particular cooler just gets too loud when asked to cool a tri-core processor at full (and even moderate) load. I think what Thiddy is saying is that the G33 needs more cooling capacity than what that S939 heatsink/fan combo can dissipate, and that you are running some thermal risks in using it so that you can use that Zalman. I happen to agree with him.

I think the better bet would be to pick up an inexpensive-but-capable "tower" style heat sink instead, and use the northbridge cooler that came with your motherboard instead of that 939 fan.

Well, perhaps he didn't mean it in the way it came across (expression of intent and the meaning behind the words and the emotion to be expressed by them doesn't come across well in text-based conversations).

You seem to be under the impression that this is a stock S939 NB HSF, if so it's actually an aftermarket HSF and much heavier than the stock HSF for my 939 board (the stock HSF for the 939 is around 15-20g of Aluminum, and the aftermarket one is 55g of Copper.

I actually find the fan on the Zalman CNPS8700 NT to be quiet (at least mine is). I hooked it directly up to a 12V line and ran it at full speed and to be honest I could hardly tell it was on without putting my ear right up next to it. It's a little louder than the stock fan, but just barely, and pushes much more air even at lower speeds.

Well, this motherboard didn't come with a stock heatsink on the NB, it came with the Zalman ZM-NBF 47 since I bought this board used and that was what it came with, so I can't go back to stock.

I actually do have a tower-style heatsink here, in the form of a Thermalright Ultima-90, but unfortunately I have no spare 90mm fans on hand which fit it.-Being currently unemployed, buying fans for it hasn't been a big priority for me lately, and I got the CNPS8700 NT for cheap, as in cheaper than I could get two fans to run push-pull on the Ultima-90.

By the way, is that rig overclocked? If so, you should stamp your sig with the same stamp I have in mine, and join the \m/ OverClockers mATX L33T Club \m/.

No, I'm running this one at stock clocks at the moment.

 

[Conumdrum]

Good for you Tech, and don't Tweak over meh replies. Thideras knows his stuff and would of done it different I'm sure.

 

[woboy]

It looks well enough and works better for you, as a bonus we see a tidy Cooler Master 430 build. I like it.
Ihave havealways wondered if a little dremel cutting (say trimming the original fan frame and then the cooler fins) would have a good result.
Not for the budget constrained.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Good for you Tech, and don't Tweak over meh replies. Thideras knows his stuff and would of done it different I'm sure.

Sorry, but I don't get the joke.

Perhaps so, but he doesn't have my low budget.

It looks well enough and works better for you, as a bonus we see a tidy Cooler Master 430 build. I like it.
Ihave havealways wondered if a little dremel cutting (say trimming the original fan frame and then the cooler fins) would have a good result.
Not for the budget constrained.

I wonder if it will handle the heat output of 333MHz FSB now, when I tried my C2D E6550 I originally had problems with the northbridge overheating because of poor cooling and/or not enough airflow.

Actually that's not my Cooler Master Elite 430, it's an old Systemax Ascent case, thanks for the compliment though.

It did for me, I had to modify one of my NB heatsinks with a dremel to get it to fit one time. I did get it to fit, and managed to do it without destroying the heatsink. The mounting holes were the wrong size on that one.

 

[Automata]

Sorry, but I don't get the joke.

It wasn't a joke. I brought up a concern I had for the cooling on the northbridge and you got defensive about it like I was insulting you.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

It wasn't a joke. I brought up a concern I had for the cooling on the northbridge and you got defensive about it like I was insulting you.

I just didn't get what he meant by, "don't Tweak over meh replies." Took me a while to figure that one out.

Well, you have to understand though, I was having a rough day. Had to fight for three hours to get the two heatsinks in there, then some guy who'd agreed to buy something from me (not here) backed out of the deal and bought from someone else, along with a few other issues that I won't go into here, so by the time I saw your post I wasn't in the greatest of moods.

Okay, well why is it you think there would be a problem with using that heatsink?

At the moment, I fail to see how there could be an issue with using that heatsink versus say using a stock heatsink. The stock heatsink is passively cooled, probably weighs a lot less, and is most likely made of Aluminum, the one I put on though is made of Copper and is actively cooled which most likely results in better cooling and it is also fairly heavy.

 

[Automata]

To clarify, I'm talking about the northbridge heatsink, not the CPU. There is less mass and area on the heatsink compared to the one you linked in your first post. It might work fine, I was indirectly stating to watch your temperatures.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

To clarify, I'm talking about the northbridge heatsink, not the CPU. There is less mass and area on the heatsink compared to the one you linked in your first post. It might work fine, I was indirectly stating to watch your temperatures.

Yes, I know.

Well, what you may not know though is that I ran it with that Zalman passive NB heatsink I linked as my plan B for a month or so before I switched to the SilenX, it ran just fine with the Zalman (which weighs about the same as the one I just put on) when using a 200MHz FSB (800MHz effective FSB), but when I tried a 333MHz FSB chip (1333MHz effective FSB) the northbridge quickly overheated and locked up the system, such is why I then went to the SilenX heatsink (I would have liked to use that one in tandem with the new CPU HSF, had it fit). I'm hoping the heatsink I've got on there will be sufficient to run at a higher FSB on a faster chip, if not I may have to get some 90mm fans and put in my Thermalright heatsink and swap the SilenX back in.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

It seems I may owe you an apology, Thideras.

Under the smaller heatsink my system locked up once or twice while doing a virus scan.

That 'sink was very hot to the touch that day, fairly certain overheating was a contributing factor to my lockup, if not the main cause.

I have since moved up to a Thermalright tower-style heatsink and have reinstalled the SilenX NB heatsink since I finally got more than one 90/92mm fan I could mount with the heatsink, and have had no overheating issues since.

 

[Wayward_Son]

I love a happy ending.

 

[Automata]

No worries, glad you were to easily locate the problem.