XBOX 360 CPU cooler repurposed as northbridge cooler?

[Negatron]

I have this original white xbox 360 CPU cooler that I'm thinking of using as the north bridge cooler on my ASUS M5A97 LE R2.0. It's an AMD 970 chip and I don't like it running as hot as it does even though it's well within its designed range even before I added the 140mm fan to the side case.The 360 CPU cooler in question is 2.75" by 1.6" by 2.5" in size overall, with a 0.2 inch thick solid copper plate. It has a single 1/4 inch copper heat pipe soldered to the copper plate and to the bottoms and tops of the fins. It has 45 aluminum (I think, maybe something else) fins, 2 inches by 1.6 inches. Picture below. You can see the thick steel mounting clamp on the bottom but it's actually a two piece system that is screwed directly to the copper plate so those won't be a concern.

There are two things I'm not sure about. If I end up using this thing should I orient it so that the fins are vertical (relative to gravity) so that hot air will pass more easily by them? It would be right below my 240MM radiator and 2 120MM fans. Air flows very well in that direction in my case. Or, should I orient it so that the fins are perpendicular relative to gravity so that my case fans can blow air past the fins (in the direction of the rear panel of the case)? My case is set up so that the 240MM radiator is in the top panel with 2 fans, and various other 120MM and 140MM fans blow air towards the top and the back of the case.

The other thing I'm unsure about is weather or not I should/want to use thermal epoxy to permanently mount this thing, or if I want to spend the better part of a weekend disassembling my machine and tapping holes in the heat sinks copper plate and try to make it work with screws. This thing is pretty tall, as north bridge heat sinks go, and it could certainly get in the way of future upgrades and/or repairs so it would be nice if it's removable.

Thanks for reading so far if you have haha. I'm a details guy.

I've done a couple very crude initial tests on this heat sink and I have found that it is very efficient for its size. The materials, design and construction are very, very high quality. I love the idea of using sheet fins and copper plates and heat pipes as my N/B cooler. It just looks so cool!

Would you do this? Would you mount it with thermal glue, or would you spend the time and risk damaging components in order to fit it with screws? Comments?

 

[Negatron]

Nobody?

 

[dostov]

It's a nice idea, but will need some work to execute. Also, your northbridge probably doesn't need that much cooling unless you want to overvolt the poor NB like crazy and OC it to the moon.

That being said it would look very cool. I would not mount it with epoxy because you may want to remove it in the future. Do you have the tools required to modify the current mounting bracket so you can use your motherboard mounting holes?

Also make sure you consider clearance issues with the CPU heatsink and such.

Cheers!

EDIT: If it doesn't work in the end and you still want better cooling performance you can just use your current heatsink, apply some better thermal paste and replace the push-pins with bolts.

 

[Negatron]

It's a nice idea, but will need some work to execute. Also, your northbridge probably doesn't need that much cooling unless you want to overvolt the poor NB like crazy and OC it to the moon.

That being said it would look very cool. I would not mount it with epoxy because you may want to remove it in the future. Do you have the tools required to modify the current mounting bracket so you can use your motherboard mounting holes?

Also make sure you consider clearance issues with the CPU heatsink and such.

Cheers!

EDIT: If it doesn't work in the end and you still want better cooling performance you can just use your current heatsink, apply some better thermal paste and replace the push-pins with bolts.

The chip does run within specification but it runs close to the upper end of that. because of that I haven't dared to overclock it yet. I turned a 140mm fan loose on the factory heat sink which helps but I would like to have the option to overclock if I feel like trying it. I have the tools and skill to modify the mounting bracket but I don't know if it will work with that steel x clamp type o thing. I'm thinking the best way to mount it is going to be to drill holes and tap threads in the copper plate. The only problem with that is that it's not a very wide copper plate and I might have to rotate it so that it's not perpendicular and parallel with the chip in order to have enough space to drill both screw holes and it will look stupid. I have my CPU liquid cooled so there's plenty of room but I do want to avoid mounting with epoxy. I'm going to try it out some time this week.

 

[Conumdrum]

Good luck. It's not complicated, see what you can do. It's just a NB HS. We don't see them extra cooled much, not a lot of interest these days.

Thus the ?Nobody? issue.

 

[dostov]

Keep us posted. I like hack mods!

 

[Negatron]

I've decided to wait until my fan filters come to do the heat sink. Since I'm going to have to have the machine apart to do it, I want to have the filters ready to install right after I put it back together so that it will stay clean inside.