Replacing NB fan with heatsink

jozi

I'm using my brothers pc the last few days and his nb fan is really starting to anoy me with its whining noise.
The mobo is a abit an7 and i was going to sugest this i'm pretty sure i've seen it recomended here on ocasion but i just want to check with those who know before i do.
thanks,

Brendan

WizZard

That's perfect. Have used it myself and it's a worthwhile investment.

gline

jozi wrote:

I'm using my brothers pc the last few days and his nb fan is really starting to anoy me with its whining noise.
The mobo is a abit an7 and i was going to sugest this i'm pretty sure i've seen it recomended here on ocasion but i just want to check with those who know before i do.
thanks,

Brendan

ah the aul abit dodgy NB fans, many a man/woman plauged by these.. Did they start putting new ones on their newer boards???

jozi

Thats a good enough reply for me, ill tell my brother to order one.
They prob still use the same nb fan??

Jozi

rabbitinlights

What kinda CPU coller do you have? is it stock? Im just asking because alot of the larger one's (Zalman etc) block NB heatsinks that are in anyway higher than the stock fans. Ive an IC-7 and that bloody NB fan was annoying the ****e out of me till I just unplugged it, Doesnt seem to have caused any problems.....

jozi

Nah he has a stock cooler so it shouldnt be a problem

Jammer

gline wrote:

ah the aul abit dodgy NB fans, many a man/woman plauged by these.. Did they start putting new ones on their newer boards???

Yeah, they use heatpipes now...

unkel

Yep used that NB heatsink on an Abit AI7 mobo early last year

rabbitinlights wrote:

What kinda CPU coller do you have? is it stock? Im just asking because alot of the larger one's (Zalman etc) block NB heatsinks that are in anyway higher than the stock fans.

Good point. I had the Zalman 7000CU and it only barely fitted. If it doesn't fit, you could just saw off part of the fins that don't fit

rabbitinlights wrote:

Ive an IC-7 and that bloody NB fan was annoying the ****e out of me till I just unplugged it, Doesnt seem to have caused any problems.....

I would not recommend that unless the PC is not working at full load much. NB temps can shoot up very high although most will still be fine well over 100 degrees centigrade - I kid you not

duridian

@rabbitinlights I'd say the same as unkel, especially if it is a prescott cpu you are using with that IC7. Prescott causes the chipset to run a bit hotter as well, than Northwood. Those original NB coolers with the fan built into them aren't any good for cooling without the fan running. From what I've seen of most of them there is more metal in a chewing gum wrapper. You need something witha decent bit of metal in it for adequate passive cooling. You may have survived so far but the chances are you are shortening the life of your chipset by disconnecting the NB fan.

gizmo

Yea the NB fan on my Asus A8N-SLi Deluxe is really annoying me, its pretty much the loudest thing in my case and I can definitly see why Asus switched to heatpipes for the Premium model...

Anyway I'm torn between the passive Zalman and Coolermaster Blue Ice but from what I've read the only one which will let you have an SLi setup is the Zalman...

duridian

Yeah a friend of mine has the A8N-Sli deluxe too and the fan gave trouble. Pain in the a to fix. We actually doctored one of these to fit his northbridge. The pinhioles were ever so slightly too wide and needed to be ground back a bit so as not to touch the fan header and a capacitor on the other side.We used very small bolts with plastic washers to secure it.
To make sure it wasn't wobbly (because the die of the NF4 chip is a small raised area in the middle like on an Athlon XP) we used Arctic Silver thermal adhesive to build up the area at the sides of the die. There is a plastic shim on the chip from beneath the original cooler that we left in place beneath this adhesive. I was concerned that the AS adhesive may be conductive and there are some smaller components under this shim, so the shim keeps them apart. This gave a good firm fitting cooler. The main reason we went about doing it this way is that this was the lowest profile all copper cooler we could find at the time, and my friend has a Leadtek 6800GT which has a big lump of a cooler which made height of NB cooler very critical, it just clears it safely with the Vantec cooler.

Ajnag

Another abit nb fan victim here too, I replaced it with a vantec iceberg gpu(just about mounted and badly at that) but that too is now giving off noise .

Might just go passive for the replacement.