XFX nForce 680i Southbridge cooling help

[AlexTheKid]

Hey guys.

So I have a little problem. The Cooling fan on the Southbridge (or MCP as its labled in the manual) on my motherboard has gone completley. ( a bit of an older board i know)

http://3btech.net/renvnfvgaors.html

This is the fan I am refering to. The problem I have is that I live in Spain/UK and cannot manage to find an exact replacement anywhere here. Dont really want to pay £20 postage and wait 2 weeks for one really.

Also I was looking into alternatives that could be used to replace it that are the same size but it seems to be pretty difficult. I would rather buy something better if its available aswell as that chip gets pretty hot.


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Revoltec-Ch...1_6?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1331984180&sr=1-6

I came across this but dont think the dimensions will be right and also it may be a little big? The size for VGA or Northbridge like the one posted below but im really not sure.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-com-Universal-VGA-Card-Heatsink/dp/B000EBP6Q8/ref=pd_cp_computers_0


Anyone have any experience with this or know of any that will definatley fit.

Any help would be much appreciatted. Thanks!

I went into over 20 shops here is in Barcelona and everyone said no straight away

 

[juane414]

This is tough because I can't find any info on the distance between the mounting holes on your board or on the size of the stock cooler. Since the stock cooler says its for VGA cards also,I would think the southbridge mounting holes on your board are the same distance as those on a VGA card. If I were you I would take off the bad cooler and take out your VGA/GPU and see if the pins on the bad cooler line up with the holes on the VGA. If they do, then you could just get any small VGA cooler. It looks like your board has a larger southbridge cooler than most.

 

[AlexTheKid]

Hey thanks for the reply. The distance between the mounting holes on the southbridge is approx 50mm.

I dont think it matches up with the distance of the VGA holes but when I get home from work I can double check.

 

[Bobnova]

You can take the fan out of that heatsink and strap a 40mm fan to the top of the heatsink with a ziptie or somesuch. It won't look fantastic, but it'll work fine.

 

[txus.palacios]

Glad to see another Spaniard here! ¡Bienvenido!

If I were you, I'd just grab any other kind of heatsink, f.ex., an old GPU heatsink, and stick it there on top of the chipset. Then, just be creative. Ziptie it to the board, or use some kind of thermal glue (PCComponentes has some in stock).

IIRC, PCComponentes and Coolmod had some cheap north bridge coolers, from Zalman and Coolink. Give those a look.

 

[AlexTheKid]

Hola soy de Escocia, pero viven en España

Thanks for suggestions.

Im not sure I want to go down the route of thermal glue, incase the fan I get fails again? the it will be stuck there? But it may be the only option really as im not quite sure how i would manage to attach with zipties really.

The other option of taking the fan out of the heat sink thats on there and strapping or glueing another 40mm fan on there may be a good idea aswell.

 

[txus.palacios]

Hola soy de Escocia, pero viven en España

Thanks for suggestions.

Im not sure I want to go down the route of thermal glue, incase the fan I get fails again? the it will be stuck there? But it may be the only option really as im not quite sure how i would manage to attach with zipties really.

The other option of taking the fan out of the heat sink thats on there and strapping or glueing another 40mm fan on there may be a good idea aswell.

I guess you mean you and your family live in Spain. That'll be "vivimos", not "viven".

Anyway. That heatsink does not look like a very heavy duty one. I think that, if you have the room, a tall passive heatsink may do the job. Something like this. http://www.pccomponentes.com/zalman_zm_nbf47_chipset_cooler.html

BTW, I just remembered that I have an old X1600 ATi AGP card with a heatsink that may work as a chipset heatsink. Let me check and, maybe I can ship it to you.

 

[AlexTheKid]

Haha my spanish is terrible

I dont really have room for tall passive synch, ive taken some pics il post below.

So i tried the vga cooler, and its the exact same size! So i guess im going to be ok to find a replacement really, as long as the mounting hole distance is fairly standard. Its def 50mm.

Heres a shot of inside the case (bit of a mess i know, could do with some shorter sata cables!)



Heres a close up of the fan underneath graphics card.



I then replaced it with the VGA synch/fan which fits perfectly with mounting holes.



However the graphics card then wont fit in the primary PCIe slot as the fan is too high off the board. So i tried putting in slot 2, however im not sure if it will work using this one, or if it makes any difference. The other thing is that I have a pci wifi card and pci sata card above and below it then and im unsure if its an issue having them all so close.



Finally from the back the power cables and data cables for both the graphics card and the drive may be a squeeze, but Im sure can jam them in



All in all i think it will be ok as long as the graphics card will be ok in the secondary slot and also the two pci cards being above and below wont be a problem?

Thanks for offer of heatsinc, but Im going back to the uk for a week in 2 days so will just oder some stuff to collect there. Just to choose first!

 

[txus.palacios]

Just wondering, what about the northbridge?

 

[juane414]

Yea, what are you doing about the orthbridge? You definitely can't leave that bare! If the northbridge heatsink fits on the southbridge then I would guess that a low profile vga heatsink would fit also.

 

[AlexTheKid]

Haha of course this was to just to test it fits, im not even going to leave that on the southbridge but order one to replace. Going to order new one for nothbridge while im at it anyway as it runs pretty hot aswell. I dont think that sink/fan is very good. Also if I order two then if there is problems with one fitting the nat least hopefully one will

I will look for a low profile one but if that doesnt fit then would the graphics card run in the secondary PCIe slot? Or is that only to be used for a secondary card in conjuction with another? Its just that altho the Northbridge fan fits on Southbridge. There are four mounting holes for the Northbrige on the processor, and I have a feeling that the two this fan uses are not the most standard ones but that the other two are, but thats me just guessing. Will have a search today anyway and see what I can find to order.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Titan-TTC-C...4W/ref=sr_1_33?ie=UTF8&qid=1332054507&sr=8-33

Thats pretty low, and seems to come with difference length strips for mounting holes. Not sure how good it is though.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-co...P6Q8/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1332054463&sr=8-4

and was thinking may order that aswell anyway. Could be better than the stock nvidia one that was on the Northbridge.

Just going to keep looking for another low profile one mmmm

 

[Xtemeone]

Have you thought about something like this? http://www.performance-pcs.com/cata...e=product_info&cPath=54_197&products_id=22488

That would allow you to run a larger cooler while keeping the graphics card in the main PCIe slot.

 

[AlexTheKid]

I ordered both of the two fans listed above. The titan and the StarTech.

I was away on holiday and just got back last night and fitted the titan on the southbridge, and the graphics card fits above it (just) but seems to be working fine

I also fitted the StarTech on the Northbridge. Im not sure if it is better than the stock nvida one that came with the card, but thought I would give it a try since I had bought it.

Everything seems to be running fine atm. The temp for Northbrige is sitting around 50 though. Im not sure if the reading is false as it doesnt feel very hot to touch.

The fan is running about 2000rpm however, when it says should run at 4600rpm....

Ive looked in the bios to see if can change this, but its set at 100%?

Will have another look at it when I get home from work.

After all this tinkering around ive decided to build a new set up, soley for editing and games! Just been searching out all componets atm.