How to say GOODBYE to whiny NB fans!

To the OP. So you used a hacksaw? I have a 4speed dremel, wonder if it would have the power?

How did you get it so smooth, with a fine or rough file?
 
Lukano said:
I've actually got the EXACT same heatsink (from a 3000+ Venice) sitting on my kitchen table next to my dremel, for the EXACT same project to be completed tomorrow (I hope).

My motherboard being a DFI Ultra-D has a slightly different NB HSF placement, which is overlapped directly by oversized PCIE cards in the upper slot - so I was thinking about taking the gap that runs down the middle of the stock heatsink and expanding it to allow the card to run in-between. I may have to shave the lower 'half' of the heatsink fins down to allow the NV Silencer I have on my 7800GT a bit of clearance though.

Good to know someone else has tried this before me.

I'm also considering taking another heatsink and cutting it up into smaller heatsinks for placement on various hot components on the board - I'm just not sure how to secure them with no screw/mount holes.

Same goes for the PWM IC location... it's not exactly a convenient location to passively cool, but I'd like to find a way.
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just use a mix of 33% themal epoxy and 66% thermal goo. transfers heat and still removeable. whoops need 1% brains to make 100%
 
qbackin said:
To the OP. So you used a hacksaw? I have a 4speed dremel, wonder if it would have the power?

How did you get it so smooth, with a fine or rough file?
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It wasn't the power of my dremel I was worried about... it was the depth of cut. The aluminum block was over 3/8" thick at the base. Besides, you get a more controlled cut with a hacksaw, if you've got a sharp blade... I was thinking of cutting it with my jigsaw, but I didn't want to mar up the bottom of the heatsink, and the jigsaw would have most likely done so.

And yeah, both a rough file initially to square it up and remove the saw marks, then a fine file first diagonally to clean up the rough file marks, then some draw-filing (file perpendicular to surface, pulled towards me) to shine it. I probably could have sanded it, but there wasn't really any point.
 
TheAcorn said:
Very clean, very pro looking, very nice solution.

The NB fan is also always the first to go. Always.

How much do we shell out for motherboards? It is always proprietary, too, it's never a 40mm fan stuck to a heatsink you can replace, oh no. It's this moronic, clearly inefficient round thing or something... Drives me just batty. Just plain batty! I've never seen a NB fan survive a year. No joke.
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Yeah, I think the nForce boards would have worked out better for cooling if the CPU and northbridge were both above the top card slot, but I guess the signal pathways were better this way or something. I did block off a couple pci slots, so they can't have long cards in 'em now, but then... I don't have ANY pci cards in my computer. I might get a sound card some day... but that can go in the very bottom slot.

This is the third motherboard I've modded a passive heatsink for... the last two were a lot less pretty. lol. Just old k6 heatsinks drilled, tapped, and screwed in from the bottom of the board.
 
Great mod, my file server's NB fan was sooooo loud it was starting to bug the hell out of me. So I ripped it off and slapped an old heatsink onto it, no fan, has been running fine for a month now. The sound decrease was HUGE! :eek:
 
chronic9 said:
nice work. but u could just buy a CM heatsink from compussr for 5 - 10 bucks that will do the same thing....
http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=319345&pfp=cat3

i bought one for my PC (see sig and all i did is bend it so i can stick in my GTX and woola.
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Did you notice that the videocard hangs over the northbridge? I would have had to cut down that CM heatsink anyway. All aluminum colored heatsink > partially aluminum, partially anodized heatsink, imo.

Besides, this cost me nothing. :)
 
qbackin said:
wonder if my dremel has the power to do this
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You'll never know to you try - and you're obligated to post a pictorial, no matter the results (that includes the potential flaming wreckage of your underpowered dremel).
 
It's not so much a matter of power, it's depth of cut. The base of this heatsink is nearly 1/2" thick... thicker that the depth of cut for most dremels. If you used a heatsink with a lesser base, then probably... but the chance of binding increases with the depth on a dremel. More likely to break or jam the disc.
 
Howdy All...1st post here.

I'm preparing to post pics of my twin Lian Li's in the Gallery section next week but thought I'd jump in here. One of my priorities of the project was to reduce noise & the first things to go were the vid card & chipset fans.

Kudos to Logan321 for his method of getting rid of the chipset fan. I did something similar with both my chipset & vid card fans. I'm not a gamer, so the vid card mod isn't something that most of u can use on u'r card, but the same thing could be done to chipsets.

I've saved all of the heat sinks from my discarded PSUs & used one of them for this mod.

This PSU HS fit w/ no cutting at long. It was the exact width as the chipset HS. The card is a Matrox Parhelia.
DSC01077.jpg

It's held in just w/ pressure. I bent the top downward to catch air being blow in it's direction.

This doesn't make much sense probably, but when I post the whole project ur'll see how it fits in w/ the air flow.

Logan321...My wife & I spent lots of time at Quadra Island...what a beautiful location. We lived aboard r boat & would cruise up to BC (from Oregon) every year (yea, I'm older than most of u here). We spent many delightful over nights anchored at Rebecca Park.

Cheers
Peter
 
epiphane said:
Howdy All...1st post here.

I'm preparing to post pics of my twin Lian Li's in the Gallery section next week but thought I'd jump in here. One of my priorities of the project was to reduce noise & the first things to go were the vid card & chipset fans.

Kudos to Logan321 for his method of getting rid of the chipset fan. I did something similar with both my chipset & vid card fans. I'm not a gamer, so the vid card mod isn't something that most of u can use on u'r card, but the same thing could be done to chipsets.

I've saved all of the heat sinks from my discarded PSUs & used one of them for this mod.

This PSU HS fit w/ no cutting at long. It was the exact width as the chipset HS. The card is a Matrox Parhelia.
DSC01077.jpg

It's held in just w/ pressure. I bent the top downward to catch air being blow in it's direction.

This doesn't make much sense probably, but when I post the whole project ur'll see how it fits in w/ the air flow.

Logan321...My wife & I spent lots of time at Quadra Island...what a beautiful location. We lived aboard r boat & would cruise up to BC (from Oregon) every year (yea, I'm older than most of u here). We spent many delightful over nights anchored at Rebecca Park.

Cheers
Peter
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welcome to the forums!
for the love of Mike post that in the ghetto mods thread (it is HUGE!)
nice work man! lol
 
chronic9 said:
nice work. but u could just buy a CM heatsink from compussr for 5 - 10 bucks that will do the same thing....
http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=319345&pfp=cat3

i bought one for my PC (see sig and all i did is bend it so i can stick in my GTX and woola.
Click to expand...

Nice threadcrap. But the point is that it's free and making use of something that is otherwise useless. Not to mention there's a certain level of pride and wisdom that comes with doing something yourself, rather than waving some money.
 
demografik said:
Nice threadcrap. But the point is that it's free and making use of something that is otherwise useless. Not to mention there's a certain level of pride and wisdom that comes with doing something yourself, rather than waving some money.
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Plus it's custom, and looks cooler if your case doesn't have that not-so-hot ugly anodized blue.
 
thanks for the inspiration man! linkage . as you can see it worked out quite well on my old NF7-S. i am working on a version for my AN8-SLi as we speak.
 
Well, I think you win in terms of time saved... I think it took me about 3 hours to make mine. Nice work tho, simple and effective.
 
the AN8 version is taking a hell of alot more time. its the same idea as yours but the card sits directly in the center on my machine. so i have to widen the original channel out and cut a bit off of one corner to clear a cap. otherwise it is the same base dimensions as yours. the dremel is great for grinding and cutting the base itself into the rough shape you want but the hacksaw is actually faster and requires less finishing work (i tried both ways. got a box of these suckers :)) hacksaw FTW!
 
Yeah, widening a fin channel with a dremel would be damned near impossible.... Hacksaw makes short work of those fins though. Does tend to bend the fins together, but if you use something as a spacer it helps. I used the extra fins I cut off the first row for spacers for the second row... but I'm sure you'll figure something out. :)
 
Things to do this weekend:
1.) Pick up hacksaw.
2.) Work on a few stock coolers.

:D

I need a few NF4 chipset coolers to reaplce the loud fans.
 
Nice work, although I don't understand your comments about the Dremel. I've had no problems doing similar mods to aluminum heatsinks with a low-power Dremel. A carbide disk and drum sander, perfectly smooth results in about 10 minutes.
 
The largest radius dremel disks are about 1/2" from the center ring, and the heatsink was about 1/2" thick, so there wasn't a lot of room to spare for cutting. Besides, it's good to make something with hand-tools once in a while... builds character... and caluses. :)
 
Nice job man. on a side Note if you find a way to quiet down whiney NickleBack fans I would welcome that thread as well ;) (that is the first thought that went through my head when i saw the thread title)
 
Always good to see someone get the tools out instead of the wallet.
Never under estimate the versatility of the good ol' hacksaw & file. :D

Would have been nice to see Copper instead of Aluminum but hey, you work with what ya got.

qbackin said:
wonder if my dremel has the power to do this
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Power & Dremel don't belong in the same sentence. It should work just fine provided you
keep the RPM's up, and the cut isn't too deep for the disk as mentioned above.
 
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