Abit IC7 - G : the fan was really noisy so i took it off for good! wise or not?

LegacyUser

I have a well ventilated case but the fan on the Abit board was driving my and excuse the language; "****ing insane".

It was driving me mad. Whiny noise at startup and then like a jet engine most the time. Really annoying. So i tried fitting that Zalman northbridge heatsink on but of course my mobo is incompatible so i just left it off. I have two additional fans as well as a zalman alcu 7000 for my p4 2.5ghz.

Will it be ok like this? Please say it will be. Has been on all day and its doin' ok.

Col_Loki

You can get the passive cooler on with Thermal Adheisive (or you can make your own with a mix of superglue and thermal compound) , so that it actually sticks the heatsink to the NB.

You are taking a chance , im not sure how much of a one . Ive seen people take the Cooler of the NB on lower FSB AMD systems and they were fine (266mhz) and also one of my mates just unplugged the NB fan on his abit and left it without any ill effect so far.

I think www.hitide.ie have a NB cooler that should work with your board they also have thermal adh so it might be worth a look. TBH if it was me id put one on it just to make sure........ €6 is a little better than a Motherboard Cost

[edit] Especially with such a good board. Are you running a 533mhz FSB chip in the IC7?

LegacyUser

cheesedude wrote:

I have a well ventilated case but the fan on the Abit board was driving my and excuse the language; "****ing insane".

It was driving me mad. Whiny noise at startup and then like a jet engine most the time. Really annoying. So i tried fitting that Zalman northbridge heatsink on but of course my mobo is incompatible so i just left it off. I have two additional fans as well as a zalman alcu 7000 for my p4 2.5ghz.

Will it be ok like this? Please say it will be. Has been on all day and its doin' ok.

If you cut 3 (or maybe 1, cant remember which) pins off each corner of the zalman heatsink with a hacksaw, very easy to do, it will fit

Dempsey

The thing is that it could work today, tomorrow, next week fine. In a month, it might not but since yer not overclocking id reckon you'll be fine. Canterwood chipsets on some boards have only passive cooling, i think.

LegacyUser

I was so desperate. I had changed my psu and my cpu cooler to zalman so it would be quiet. Then this board started acting really loud. It was insane how loud that little fan can get.

netman

The heatsink on IC7-G behind the fan is TINY!!
And the i875p northbridge gets extremely hot, even if you don't overclock.

So taking the fan off was a bad idea, but now you can turn a bad thing into a good thing. If it's an early revision board, with kinda flat heatsink and a round fan on top of it, then you ought to replace it anyway. ABIT are issuing replacement coolers for those boards, the new one looks more like a miniature zalman flower.

You can passively cool the northbridge with a decent heatsink, that's what ASUS are doing on their boards. If you already have a decent heatsink then you can just get some thermal adhesive and glue it to the northbridge. If you mix the adhesive with some thermal compound it will form a strong bond but you'll be able to take it apart later.

Personally, I'd go with the passive heatsink. If you want more options, you could use zip ties and take them through the mounting holes and over the zalman heatsink. You should be able to fix it well enough that it sits on the northbridge. Then if you have an older type fan/heatsink on your IC7-G you could contact ABIT tech support to get a replacement. They'll ask you to send them the old one and a stamped self-addressed envelope, and in turn you'll get the new model.

And on the final note, I had an IC7-G that broke down, I might have rescued the fan but I'm not 100% sure. If I have it lying around you can have it for free. It hasn't been used at all, I had the northbridge watercooled the whole time.

LegacyUser

Hey netman,

thanks for the post. I have the one that looks like a miniature flower. I was wondering if I could just leave the fan on but have it unplugged so it is just the heatsink on it.

Also, what are zip ties? I have the ZalmanNB47J. It is blue.

All that is protecting the northbridge chip right now is arctic silver 5 and that is just a blob covering the core.

Could it go on fire?

netman

Unfortunately leaving the fan on but not having it plugged in will do nothing for cooling, if anything it will make it slightly worse than not having a fan at all.

This is what I meant by zip ties.. cable ties actually
http://www.peats.com/cgi-bin/shop/db.cgi?view=1&id=2748&type=6&sid=791394x0

You can pick them up for next to nothing, and just slip them through the mounting holes and through the fins of the zalman heatsink.

netman

As far as going on fire is concerned, I don't think you'll get that far.
The system will crash before it gets to that stage.