WCing an Asus Mobo NB

[Russ]

So I happened to get a NB water block for my old DFI, but it broke before I used it.

I'm just getting around to putting my new Asus board in and redoing my loop, and I was wondering what people thought of that heat pipe crap they do.

Let's say I want to put the NB block on, do I have to take off the whole heat pipe system?

I don't really care about the reduced flow (currently have Res, Pump, GPU, CPU, and Rad in my loop). In my last board I bought that passive Zalman heatsink for chipsets, and it was way too hot. I ended up having to put a fan right in front of it, and I don't want to have to do that anymore. Way too noisy.

It was also definitely having a negative effect on my OCing, I could easily see the stability difference when I put the fan in there, that's why I got the water block in the first place.

So what do you Asus owners do? Stick with the default heatsink? Can I remove only part of it? Maybe put the water block right on top of that NB heatsink that's there right now?

Also, do you use that fan that comes with the board for the end of the heat pipe? Is it loud?