P5N-E south bridge chipset cooler (with dual slot GPU)

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saan44

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Dec 13, 2005
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As you may or may not know by now, the southbridge on the Asus P5N-E does not have a heatsink on it. I'm planning on overclocking and thus will need to cool it off. However, based on a couple of pictures I've found of the board, I'm worried that a dual slot GPU will interfere with any added southbridge heatsink. I was looking at this cooler, but the height brings up concerns. I'm not sure a low profile cooler could be run passively and I'm not even sure a low profile heatsink would fit under the GPU.

Has anyone successfully added a heatsink to the southbridge of a P5N-E with a dual slot GPU and found one that works (well)?
 
I was also looking into this. I was planning on getting the same board but wanted to order it all at once. The zalman would look like it would fit, but if you were going to use a 7950 then you might run into a problem. You could always trim the fins too.
 
I know the reviews say it's hot, but would the southbridge really get hotter with overclocking? The FSB and memory buses connect to the northbridge.
 
Blakor said:
I know the reviews say it's hot, but would the southbridge really get hotter with overclocking? The FSB and memory buses connect to the northbridge.
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True, but the reviews I've read say that even without the fsb connected to the southbridge, it still gets pretty hot so I'd like to cool it off a little at least. The naked chip sitting there is just begging for trouble. Adding a cheap aluminum heatsink should be easy and cheap enough so I don't see much reason not to stick one on there.
 
Just got a P5N-E and 8800GTS so I took some pics to answer this question (I was interested in the answer as well). I seated the card firmly in the PCIe slot and then took these shots.

This shot is straight down on the board. You can see the graphics card doesn't reach the southbridge chip, so that opens it up to any of the more vertical coolers:



Similar shot, but not exactly staight down (and better focus):



Here is a shot from the back. You can see the card easily clears assorted caps on the board, so you can fit a variety of solution underneath:



Here is the same shot with the flash to show more detail:



Here is a shot from the side to show the clearance some more:



If you don't care about SLI, a Thermalright HR-05 would fit (might need airflow though, idk).

If you want low-profile and some airflow, any number of of chipset coolers like the Vantec Iceberq would fit (though there is a cap right near one of the holes for the cooler in the upper left corner of this pic)
 
p5ne-sli with scythe ninja installed in my p180. HR-05 on my NB fanless and a regular el-cheapo heatsink with thermal tape on my SB.

123430226-L.jpg
 
I bought this motherboard and it came in yesterday. I'm either going to go with the vantec or maybe an evercool vc-re if it fits for the southbridge. I know the evercool has rpm monitoring, does the vantec as well?

Also since we're talking cooling on this board, how hot do the power mosfets get? Should I be getting some sinks to stick on them?
 
idiotekniQues said:
p5ne-sli with scythe ninja installed in my p180. HR-05 on my NB fanless and a regular el-cheapo heatsink with thermal tape on my SB.

*img*
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Your temps on the southbridge are okay without much airflow? The case I'm looking at is inverted ATX so the southbridge will basically get whatever air the G80 fan brings across it, but I was under the impression that the southbridge doesn't need nearly as much cooling as the northbridge. Can you shed any light on that?
 
saan44 said:
Your temps on the southbridge are okay without much airflow? The case I'm looking at is inverted ATX so the southbridge will basically get whatever air the G80 fan brings across it, but I was under the impression that the southbridge doesn't need nearly as much cooling as the northbridge. Can you shed any light on that?
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My board will be inverted as well. That's one reason why I'm going with an active cooler. The other is I have SLI so I can't run a big passive sink and those thermalrights are too big and expensive for my tastes. I'll let everyone know tonight if the evercool vc-re will fit on this thing. *crosses fingers*
 
I know the evercool has rpm monitoring, does the vantec as well?
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The vantec does not have monitoring.

I will be very curious about your vc-re results. I looked at that as a possibility and am pretty sure it will be too big for that area. I think the only reason the vantec works is because the actual circumference of the sink is smaller, and the arms with the screw holes are stuck out. This gets around those capacitors. It sucks though, because the vc-re looks to be a better sink.
 
vecctor said:
The vantec does not have monitoring.

I will be very curious about your vc-re results. I looked at that as a possibility and am pretty sure it will be too big for that area. I think the only reason the vantec works is because the actual circumference of the sink is smaller, and the arms with the screw holes are stuck out. This gets around those capacitors. It sucks though, because the vc-re looks to be a better sink.
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Yeah, I'm afraid its gonna be too big too. I'm gonna measure it and make a paper cut out to see if it will be close or not. But I'm expecting it will be too big like you said. The evercool can cool my nforce4 SLI chipset WAY better than the DFI stock one, I'm sure it can handle the 430 southbridge. The evercool undervolts well too, its gonna be a shame if it doesn't fit. I used the vantec on my old abit NF7-S, it did fine on there. I get off work in 30 mins, then I'm playing ball, so it will be around 8 or 9 before I get to it.
 
saan44 said:
Your temps on the southbridge are okay without much airflow? The case I'm looking at is inverted ATX so the southbridge will basically get whatever air the G80 fan brings across it, but I was under the impression that the southbridge doesn't need nearly as much cooling as the northbridge. Can you shed any light on that?
Click to expand...

my southbridge just runs slightly warm under load when i touch this heatsink.

in my middle hard drive bay i do have an intake fan. the back and blowhole fan are both blowing out obviously.

however, with this heatsink you could not fit a graphics card in that second slot UNLESS you cut it down, and i think it would still perfrom well. or if you could find a low profile SB heatsink youd be ok. it doesnt need much.
 
Ok, so the deal is that the evercool VC-RE would line up and hit the holes, but that dumb capacitor would require you to do fairly extensive modification to the sink. I'm probly ordering the vantec this morning along with some mosfet coolers.
 
If you look at the reviews from madshrimps the coolermaster blue ice pro performs as well as the heatpipe coolers and I picked mine up for $4.95 at SVC on sale. The problem I am having is with the southbridge cooler. The holes are not a standard distance and the only chipset cooler I had that would fit was the vantec but it is touching some components so I had to pull it back off and I have one on with thermaltape right now with a 40mm fan. I just don't like the idea of thermal tape so it looks like I am going to have to mod one to fit.
 
I have an extra southbridge heatsink from a P5WDH if you need it, or you could just call Asus's RMA support and ask for an extra one, which is what I did, they'll mail it to you for free.
 
someone told me once that I could use ramsinks for this, would that be advisable? I have these copper vga ramsinks laying around and 4 of them would cover it perfect.
 
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