Legit Reviews

well i have had this problem ever since i got my board. originaly, i had planed to get after market coolers for all the parts of my mobo, but then when i saw this, i thought the heatsinks were all copper, so i thought that i could handle it pretty well. well i found out the hard way that the heatsinks were infact aluminum painted the color of copper, and i realized why my system was so unstable, my nb and mosfets were over heating. so now i am faced with a choice. i got some AS ceramique from radio shack, to replace the thermal pads. do you think this will help at all? i am probably going to get after market cooling anyway, but i did this just to hold me until then, but if it wont make a difference i wont bother tearing my pc apart to put it on. and when i do go after market, what should i do? for the mosfets and south bridge, i like this for the south bridge http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/ ... s_id=22241
and this for teh mosfets/voltregs
http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/ ... s_id=21655
as for the north bridge, should i get this and mount a 80mm fan to it
http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/ ... s_id=22488
or get one of these blocks and throw it into the water loop?
http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/ ... ts_id=4042
do you think i could get a higher overclock if i use water? im not very good with mob cooling, i more of an expert in the area of cpu/vga cooling
thanks in advance for your help

How long do you plan on keeping the board? With the nForce 790i right around the corner and it supports 45nm 1600MHz FSB processors unlike the 680i...

Personally i suggest not investing any more money into that board and to start saving for the next. The 790i will run cooler too since it's on made on a smaller process and doesn't have a bridge chip like a 780i... I can't say much more cause it's not out yet. Once a board is more than two chipsets old and doesn't support the newest processors it's time to stop sinking money into it IMHO.

The cheap fix is to get a fan and put it above the hot spots... under $10 and easy.

Apoptosis wrote:How long do you plan on keeping the board? With the nForce 790i right around the corner and it supports 45nm 1600MHz FSB processors unlike the 680i...

Personally i suggest not investing any more money into that board and to start saving for the next. The 790i will run cooler too since it's on made on a smaller process and doesn't have a bridge chip like a 780i... I can't say much more cause it's not out yet. Once a board is more than two chipsets old and doesn't support the newest processors it's time to stop sinking money into it IMHO.

The cheap fix is to get a fan and put it above the hot spots... under $10 and easy.

im pretty much broke now, so im going to have this board for a while. as for fans, i already have a 60mm fan blowing on the nb, plus the huge 250mm fan on my side pannel is blowing right there any way. as for the mosfets, they fan that goes on top of my water block is blowing air on them. the south bridge isnt getting very hot though. heres a pic:


as for money and future upgrading, im pretty sure that i could reuse these on a future upgrade if i wanted to, but you never know

man I can't believe that is giving you such a problem... The reference 680i SLI heatsink isn't too bad

Man, if your mobo can't keep cool with that many fans blowing on it already, that must be running like a furnace.

To me it looks like you would have a hard time bending the tubing to go straight from the CPU to the NB, but it might just be the angle of the photo.

The thing I hate about heatpipe mobo solutions is that you can't just change one component, ok can't just change the NB 'sink, as the others are left hanging without the heatpipe to help them.

Dan

PS. Have you had to add lots of voltage to things to get your quad at 3Ghz? Maybe that's why everything is so hot? What are you using to judge temps with? how hot are we talking here?

i hate heatpipes too. they make changing the northbridge coolling soultion a 60$ job instead of a 20$ job. and yes, i thought about the harsh angles i would have to do, but i think my tubing might be able to do it. if all else fails then ill just get another water block. as for voltages, i only uped the nb one step. i dont know exactly how hot the north bridge is, but i know the mosfets are running around 100-125 c. i belive that is whats making everything else so hot (cause of the stupid heatpipes transfering the heat to everything else) the northbridge heatsink is hot to the touch, i almost burnt my had on it.
@apop: thats not the reference heatsink, its a special abit one that was originally fanless. god knows how hot they would be if i ran them passive

martini161 wrote:i got some AS ceramique from radio shack, to replace the thermal pads. do you think this will help at all?

It will help greatly. Thermal pads are a real joke. They may have worked back in the days of the 486 machines, but not on today's CPUs or NB/PCI-E chipsets or memory.

So, scrape off the old pads and move forward with the ASC thermal grease.

stev wrote:

martini161 wrote:i got some AS ceramique from radio shack, to replace the thermal pads. do you think this will help at all?

It will help greatly. Thermal pads are a real joke. They may have worked back in the days of the 486 machines, but not on today's CPUs or NB/PCI-E chipsets or memory.

So, scrape off the old pads and move forward with the ASC thermal grease.

ok then. as soon as its done the work unit its crunching ill take her apart. hate to have her not folding for a while though. oh well. and while im at it, i might as well do teh gfx card heatsink too.

Stev's right I pulled my NB passive HS and applied AS ceramic because it was cool to the touch, now it's hot to the touch but that means the heat is moving away from the NB. I'm putting it under water soon as I get out to the stores, wanted the swiftech block you were looking at, but due to lousy capacitor placement on the Mobo had to go with A zalman water block on a separate loop.

im probably gonna get the water block, buts its gonna be a helluva job making a bend like that from my cpu. probably going to be a giant loop sticking out about 1foot from my mobo i just hope my single 120mm radiator can handle it i need to get a better fan on that thing, the current one moves alot of air on high, but it also sounds like an f16 taking off, and this is going to double as a htpc

I have one of those f16 fans ThermalTake ThunderBlade, was supposed to be 21dba more like 39dba. Pushes 93cfm and people out of the room.

can you post a pict showing the whole side view of your case (so I can see the total pict of how your mobo is mounted)?

(one big prob is your airflow, in the front and out the back works best. Side door fans and fans that blow onto the mobo (instead of across) just mess up airflow)