Cooling the DFI LP Nf4 SLI-DR Chipset

[SplinterFaction]

It simply isn't possible to keep it under 50 with the stock cooler, I ripped it off and replaced that crappy thermal paste with some arctic silver, still only saw a couple degree drop. So now I am in the market for an aftermarket chipset cooler. The only major issue is that it has to be pretty short, too tall and it will interphere with the PCI-Express cards. Anybody got anything that does a real bangup job?

SF

[r'aggro]

The good ones I've seen are mostly pretty tall (swiftech, microcool), and are for nF2 boards anyway. I looked in on svc, sidewinder and newegg and didn't see a dedicated chipset cooler for a64.

Iceberq 4's are pretty low-profile, maybe one could be made to fit your board.

[rabidmoose171]

I think the iceberg 5 fits... better yet just get some case airflow.

[SplinterFaction]

The case airflow is good, the room just happens to be very hot.

[James]

There is a single company that makes a waterblock for it.

[LandShark-Simba]

My Chipset's fine, maxes at 44 d/c with 5,819rpm running Prime95 Torture test. CPU maxes around 41-42 d/c.

However, I am having real issues with the PWMIC. It was constantly breaking 44 d/c when the system was idle, which sets off the NVMonitor alarm. Under Prime it was hitting 51 d/c by 25 or so tests! No actual stablity issues ...just seems WAY too-hot to me [Edit: Have addressed this issue and is one for folks implementing water-cooling to be aware of. The normal effects of Heatsink/fan combos dissipate the build-up of hot air around the periphery of the CPU, with water-cooling this doesn't happen enough, even with good airflow in the case (possibly due to video card placement). However, fitting either a decent top blow-hole fan or mounting a cross-flow type fan you can easily take 10 d/c off the PWM temp readings. It now doesn't break 44 d/c even after 1000 test cycles under Prime95 ]

...I (also) affixed an Vantec Iceberg Copper BGA Ramsink to the PWM (for the RAM) and it seems to help somewhat, although my RAM is also pretty toasty to the touch and is possibly showing good use for RAM heatspreaders beyond marketing and eye candy!.

NVMonitor still seems to be reporting voltages differently to everything else; E.g. CPU core Voltage at 1.53 whereas Guardian, Clockgen and CPUID/PCWizard all state 1.4 at stock settings. The temp' reported for the PWM is consistent, don't know what else to do with these temps Any ideas from people appreciated!

These are all stock settings too. My case airflow is good, but the temps took a huge increase after going to SLI ...and that's just with Vanilla 6800's!

(IMO) I can't really see how one can contemplate SLI (probably Crossfire) without Water-Cooling or at the least a big case (e.g. Stacker) and minimal other equipment. My system is cooling 2 Raptor 74GB's, 2 250GB Plus10's, A64, 2*PX6800TDH's ...and that's using water on the CPU and is still not nearly doing so well as I'd like even though ambients are in the mid/high 30's all the time currently

In regard to the chipset cooling. There are other options w/cooling wise, you can use micro cooling from companies like Alphacool, some of the Innovatek stuff fits too ...but none is purpose built for it.

Another option can be seen here:
TT G4-VGA cooler
http://forums.kustompcs.co.uk/showthread.php?t=31067

[LandShark-Simba]

Another Chipset Cooling Block under: Motherboard-Cooler (Block) (NB-Cooler) 1A-NB-SLI

[Gudvangen]

take a look at this chipset heatsink


its a modded artic freezer 64

[r'aggro]

take a look at this chipset heatsink


its a modded artic freezer 64

I bet that cools the nb nicely, too bad it's the opposite of "low profile"

[James]

Yeah, but if you slightly adjust those tubes, they would just go on either side of the video cards, no problems. lol