Okay, this is the first guide I've ever done so you'll have to bare with me on this. This cooling guide has been completed with the knowledge I have of the Epox 8rda+ motherboard. However, all Northbridge and Southbridge chipsets on almost all motherboards still adhere to the same basic rules.
Let us begin...
Where is the Northbridge?
Here is a picture of the 8rda+ motherboard. The placement of the Northbridge is fairly similar on all typical motherboards:
As you can see, the Northbridge is situated slightly to the left of the CPU socket. You can't actually see it because it's covered by an alluminium Epox heatsink. Cool you might say, but you'd almost certainly be wrong. The stock NB heatsink that ships with the 8rda+ is nowhere near as effective as some users would like. And it definitely doesn't cut the mustard when serious overclocking is performed.
Where is the Southbridge?
Here is a picture of the Southbridge on the 8rda+. Again, the placement of the SB is similar from board to board:
Now, on my motherboard, my Southbridge is actually hotter than my Northbridge! Then why didn't they include some sort of cooling with it? Your guess is as good as mine, all I can tell you is that it NEEDS some sort of cooling on there. And hopefully, by the end of this guide, you'll feel confident about changing the cooling on your motherboard.
Why do I need to cool these chipsets?
To some, this may be speculation, others would swear by it. It has to be said that greater overclocking results have been achieved when more effective NB and SB cooling are used. Some people have reported that it didn't have any change whatsoever on the maximum overclock they could achieve. I would say that a lot of it is based on luck and the capabilities of your motherboard.
If you're still not convinced that you should change the cooling on your motherboard. Take a look at this website created by BUBO.
The only thing I can suggest is to try it, and see for yourself.
What are my choices for an effective Northbridge / Southbridge cooler?
There are quite a few choices when it comes to cooling the chipsets on your motherboard. Some of the more effective ones are listed below, along with where you can buy these products.
Detailed instructions on how to fit these chipset coolers can also be found on the link provided.
REMEMBER some of these chipset coolers may not be compatible with your choice of motherboard. This may be due to motherboard components that impede the proper installation of the cooler or maybe your motherboard doesn't have the necessary mounting holes to install the chipset cooler. I would suggest checking first around various forums and with your motherboard manufaturer to see if you can successfuly install your choice of chipset cooler.
Should I use Active or Passive cooling? What about the noise?
I think the general rule here is to have Active cooling on your Northbridge, and Passive cooling on the Southbridge. The noise of a standard 40mm fan is usually not anything to be worried about and generally you will not notice a difference in audible sound when you install a small chipset cooler.
The only time you may want to use Active cooling on the Southbridge also is if you have poor case circulation. If the temperature in your case is warm then a passive cooler will not be as effective. In most cases, the front intakes (usually situated at the bottom of the case) aid in passing cool air over the passive Southbridge heatsink.
continued in part II (too many characters apparantly!!)
How do I remove my original cooler? It seems to be stuck on!
Okay, here's where it gets good. There are many different ways in removing your existing coolers, but there is one way in which you can safely remove your cooler without risk of doing damage to yourself or the motherboard (You probably prioritise your motherboard higher than yourself right? Yeah i was right...)
What you need for this job is a hair dryer. Yup, a standard hair dryer capable of pumping out hot air.
Take your motherboard out of the case and remove all of the components on it. Place these to one side so that you have lots of room to work with. If your cooler has push pins on the back of the motherboard holding it in, unclip these now so that the cooler is ready to come off.
Place your hand on the cooler and aim the hairdryer at it. Blow warm air over the cooler and start to gently tug it off of the chipset. You might find that slight twisting motions work here as well.
BEWARE, the heatsink will absorb a lot of the warm air and it may become very hot to the touch. You have been warned.
After a certain amount of time (not too long i hope) you'll start to feel the cooler coming free of the chipset. What's happening is the warm air from the hairdryer is turning the thermal pad supplied with the motherboard into a gooey mess. When the PC is turned off, this mess turns back into a solid state.
What's that? You've done it? Good! As the push pins were already released you should now be holding the cooler in your hand, some distance away from the actual motherboard!
If your chipset cooler is not held on by pushpins, then it is likely it is held on with thermal adhesive of some kind. The same method still applies, as it is the most effective one I know of. Just be patient and keep gently tugging at the cooler until you release it from the motherboard. Easy peasy.
Does removing my stock cooler void my warranty?
In short, YES it does. Although you could probably get away with re-attaching the cooler without there ever being proof that you removed it. Unless you got rid of the thermal pad that was holding it on and replaced it with some Arctic Silver. But that's a totally different story altogether.
I've just bought a new Northbridge / Southbridge cooler! How do I fix it to my motherboard?
Well aren't we adventurous! So you've obviously taken some of the above onboard and decided to do something about the lack of decent cooling on the motherboard? Good for you, it'll be worth it.
With any of the coolers mentioned above, you should be provided with some if not all of the following:
I'm sure it doesn't take a genius to work out what to do with these. And if you have managed to successfully take off the cooler then you should have no trouble at all re-applying one.
If you're motherboard has mounting holes around the NB and SB chipsets, I would recommend that you use the push-pins or the screws. These generally give a much tighter and secure fit between the cooler and the NB/SB. Note also that you'll be wanting to use some sort of Thermal Paste in order to aid the cooling of the heatsink when it's firmly attached to the chipset. What you want to do is apply the thermal paste evenly to the chipset first, and then rub a small amount into the base of the actual heatsink. Then place the cooler above the chipset and slowly lower it down and secure it into place. This will ensure that you don't smudge any of the thermal paste around too much during the installation.
Some motherboards however do not have these holes, and all you have to work with is the chip itself. Here is where the pads and the adhesive come in. If you're nervous about the possibility of messing up your motherboard and want to remove the cooler at a later date, go with the pads. If you're confident that the choice you made is the right one then use the adhesive.
I say this only because some of the Thermal Adhesive I've used is like concrete when settled. The bond it has formed between my chipset and the cooler is so strong that I'm quite confident that I'll never see my little Southbridge again! : (
Guides on how to apply thermal adhesive can be found here:
Lastly, here are some pictures of my Northbridge and Southbridge chipsets. Here you can see where I had to shave some of the fins on the NB heatsink for it to fit on the SB. You may find that you need to do this in order for the cooler to fit properly. A file will do the job, and on the Zalman Heatsinks, you can actually bend and pull the pins/legs off.
Just in case you're wondering, the 40mm fan is held onto the heatsink legs by way of simply pushing the corner legs onto the screws in the fan. This provides enough grip for it not to fall off. The weight of the fan also keeps it held onto the Zalman Passive Cooler.
I hope this has been helpful enough and that you take a lot from it. Removing the stock coolers can be quite a daunting task but I believe the risk is well worth the gains that can be had from having a far cooler Northbridge and Southbridge. Not to mention as well that it adds some visual bonus to your motherboards.
If there is anything you think I may have missed then please contribute to the guide.
Fragster (David Haydon)
Special thanks goes to Dean B. Nottis Jr. over at 3dextreme.org for letting me use the pictures of the motherboard. 3dExtreme
Here's a couple of NB/SB cooling pics (Vantec Iceberg):
I hope the images didn't turn out too large. It's very easy to get some good cooling on those chips, provided your MB is out of the case and you have some patience . BTW, I used the stock heatsink nylon bolts to hold the vantec hsf on, I made sure not to damage them before removal .
Last edited by RareAir23 : 04-30-2003 at 01:47 PM.
I was setting up my new HTPC system which uses 2 7200RPM drives striped in a RAID array. The bearing noise from those drives was the most noticable noise the entire system made, so I started brainstorming a way to quiet that noise.
Initially, I thought it was a dumb idea , but I tried it anyway. Out came the drive cage, which only holds 2 drives. I put velcro on one side of it and on the bottom of the case in front of the motherboard. Since there is no longer any metal to metal contact between the case and the HD cage, I used a small gauge wire to ground the drives to the case to eliminate the possibility of static buildup.
To clarify, I just found a flat surface on the bottom of the case that the drive cage could sit on without touching anything else in the system, applied velcro to the side of the cage that sits on the case bottom, and on the case where it will sit, and stuck them together. There is nothing other than Velcro and gravity holding the drive cage in place. As it turns out, it actually holds pretty securely!
When assembled, it perfectly isolates the bearing noise from the case, and quiets down the seek noise as well. the best part is that it is DIRT cheap and really easy to do. It also makes removing the drive cage and hard drive(s) extremely easy! I am very pleased with how it turned out.
OK, it took a LONG time, but here are pics in their PCS-Vision glory:
Apparrently, I can only post a total of 2 links/pics per post???, so here's a link to the rest, and pics of my theater screen!!http://mywebpages.comcast.net/dp250f/pics/
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My HTPC setup:
ABIT NF7-S rev 2.0 / Mobile XP 2500+ / Corsair 512MB TWINX 3200LL
ATI R9800Pro 128M / ATI TV Wonder PCI / Realtek 10/100 nic
2x WD1000JB RAID0 array / Samsung DVD CDRW combo / floppy
NEC LT-260 projector and Da-Lite 80" x 60" screen / Samsung 17" CRT
Harman/Kardon AVR45 receiver with KLH main, center, surround and DECWARE Wild One dual 10" folded horn bandpass sub ~THUMP!~
My old setup:
GA-7VRXP rev 1.1 / Palomino 1800+ / 512M Samsung PC2700
MSI GF3 Ti200 128MB / Davicom 10/100 nic
WD273BA hard drive / Lite-ON DVD and CDRW drives / floppy
Digital Research DRMON19 19" CRT / crappy computer speakers
I’ve been using house current fans for case fans that are made for cooling amplifiers and etc. They look just like the 92 and 120 mm fans but have aluminum housing. Sunon makes the ones I get here. Why not use 12 volt? Simple, I don’t need to burden my power supply this way. So far I’ve just routed an extra plug. Eventually I will probably wire the leads into the leads going into my power supply so the computer still has only one power cord.
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My two ASUS:
ASUS A7N8X-X
AMD XP 2600+
Arctic Silver III
2 x 512 pc3200 Corsair memory
Big Alpha 8045 Hole mount Heat Sink
SUNON 50 CFM fan
Gainward GEforce4 Ti4200 64mb
ASUS A7V333
AMD XP 2200
Arctic Silver III2
512 pc2700 Samsung memory
Big Alpha 8045 Hole mount Heat Sink
with SUNON 50 CFM fan
Sound Blaster Live Value
This is a basic guide for stealthing your optical drives. As you can plainly see, the before pictures, of my system, show just how ugly on a nice system those ROM's could look. Keep in mind this is a basic guide and if you have any pointers then by all means share them.
Before:
First step is to obtain all the needed materials.
1 x Face plate from the once empty 5 1/4" bay.
1 x Package of Fun Tak or equivalent. You can use double sided tape as well.
1 x Dremel tool with cutting wheel or cutting tool of choice.
1 x Paint to match if needed. Let plate dry thoroughly, to keep from finger printing your fresh paint job.
That's about it! Nothing special to it.
Now for the fun part, cutting and modifying your case.
Step two, cut the face plates old clips off, that used to retain it to the empty bay.
Before:
After:
Some have went as far as drilling small holes so that the drive activity LED could shine through.
Next is to apply a small firm object to allow for manual eject. You will need to make sure you cut enough of the plates edges off to allow for proper movement. This will allow the plate plenty of travel when you need to manually eject the CD. Once in place just push lightly on the corner where the eject button is. Double sided tape may be a better adhesive for this part of the mod.
Now you apply the Fun Tak to the front of the ROM. Place it on the front of the tray.
After that, you need to loosen up the ROM and let it slide back till the newly applied face plate is even with the front of your case or in the position desired.
It may take a couple of tries to get the eject button to work. But you will need it to work for those boot to CD moments.
Another method to eject the CDs, that I use, is a very small app found here. You will need to put the app in a directory of choice and make a shortcut to it on your desktop or where ever you want. Edit the short cut as in the photo below to customize for each optical drive you may have. Be sure to set it to run minimized so you don't see the BOX popup when you eject the CD. I have found other VBS scripts on the net but found they use way too much memory for such a small task. Plus this app closes itself without you having to do it.
You will need pretty much the same materials and tools as above.
Trim the 3 1/2" face plate removing the tabs that once held it in the empty 3 1/2" bay.
Attach a floppy disk in a postion to allow the disk to slide into the drive partially and to line up the face plate with the 3 1/2" bay. I took the face off the Super Disk drive so I could line it up easier.
You will want to add a spring to the back of the face plate here. Put it as close the center of the face plate as you can. Pretty much up against the floppy disk. I used Fun Tak for a temporary placement material. After I find the best place for the spring, I will epoxy it to the face plate for a more permanent attachment. You can use epoxy to attach the floppy disk to the plate, but I felt that would be too permanent as I change cases to often.
This is what it looks like with all the drives stealthed.
When I need to use the floppy I simply tap the face plate to activate the spring and out comes the plate with the disk attached. Simply remove the new face plate with the disk attached and you have access to your floppy drive.
Processors
Motherboards
Chipsets
Memory
Graphics Cards
Storage
Cases and Cooling
Mobile
Systems
Displays
Shows and Expos
. BTW, I used the stock heatsink nylon bolts to hold the vantec hsf on, I made sure not to damage them before removal 
.
Isolate hard drive noise with Velcro
, but I tried it anyway. Out came the drive cage, which only holds 2 drives. I put velcro on one side of it and on the bottom of the case in front of the motherboard. Since there is no longer any metal to metal contact between the case and the HD cage, I used a small gauge wire to ground the drives to the case to eliminate the possibility of static buildup.
As it turns out, it actually holds pretty securely!
house current fans
J-Bo's optical stealthing guide.
Linear Mode
