LITTLEBLACKDOG.COM

I replaced the whiny 40mm fan and heatsink on the NForce4 Ultra northbridge my MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum motherboard with a Zalman passive cooler. After a few hours of testing, it seems to be providing adequate cooling without the noise.

http://www.littleblackdog.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-743
http://www.littleblackdog.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-744

That's a Radeon X800XL nestled up beside it. Curse the MSI engineers who placed the northbridge in line with the PCI Express X16 slot!

EEps · Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2005 12:27 pm Post subject:

Looks pretty nifty. Where did you get yer cooler from and how much did it run yah? Wink Smile

Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2005 12:35 pm Post subject:

I bought the ZM-NB47J from Newegg a month ago. I paid $13.98 for two of them, delivered.

Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2005 5:32 pm Post subject:

A little dremmel work to make room for the vid card? Nice job?

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 12:49 pm Post subject:

Wow what cooler is on that video card?

Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 5:23 pm Post subject:

flipflop wrote:
Wow what cooler is on that video card?

It's stock.

Moderator Joined: 05 Dec 2000 Posts: 5941 Location: USA

A search brought me here - imagine that - w Big Smile

f!

Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2007 6:02 am Post subject:

I have almost the same problem, although it's even worse in my case: The fan is not just noisy but completely gave up the ghost. My mainboard and VGA are also almost the same (K8N Neo4-F and Radeon X800 GTO). I have the impression that this is a frequent problem, as a lot of people in different forums complained about the same fan being either too noisy or defective. I don't know which chipset designer had the idea to place it directly behind the VGA, but I hope he got fired Twisted Evil

I think I'll try to build in the Zalman cooler or a similar one like you did, and I will post if and, in case it did, how it worked.

Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2007 9:51 am Post subject:

Welcome to the forums, shinryuu. Nice to see new faces.

Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2007 4:52 pm Post subject:

The whiny little 40mm fans on northbridge coolers are almost all junk.

The Thermalright HR-05-SLI looks like the best solution for this motherboard. The off-set design of the heatsink should get it out of the way of the graphics card. If you want to seriously overclock the northbridge, you can optionally add a 70mm fan to the HR-05-SLI.
http://www.thermalright.com/a_page/main_product_hr05sli.htm

Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 3:31 pm Post subject:

I bought and installed the ZM-NB47J now with the same adjustments as JustAnEngineer, i.e. I removed eight pins like on the picture. The result is really great: Not only is my computer working again, but the average system temperature dropped by almost 3°C, and it's also wonderfully silent. The old fan was seemingly responsible for almost all of the noise the computer made.

It's running for 4 hours now since I installed the new cooler, and it seems to work properly as far as I can tell. The Thermalright HR-05-SLI is probably the overall better choice, but I think the adjusted ZM-NB47J is sufficient for those looking for a cheaper solution, although you need some tools for it.
I don't know how JustAnEngineer removed the pins, although it looks like he used a metal saw. I did the same thing, which worked well as aluminium is very soft, and removed the two inner pins with needle-nose pliers after filing a small nick into them at the designated breaking point. Produced a lot of swarf, but that was worth it.

Thanks alot to JustAnEngineer for this great idea.

Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 6:04 pm Post subject:

That sloppy cutting on mine was done with a cordless Dremel rotary tool and a fiber cutting disc.

The HR-05-IFX-SLI is even bigger, but I haven't seen it for sale.
http://www.thermalright.com/a_page/main_product_hr05_ifx_sli.htm

Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 7:44 pm Post subject:

bah!... needle nose pliers and bend em until it breaks Twisted Evil

much more satisfying for me Very Happy