dadi_oh
05-20-2008, 08:58 PM
I have an ASUS P5N32E-SLI motherboard and am toying with the idea of upgrading the factory northbridge cooler. I am not happy with how flat (or "not" flat) the heatsink sits on the bare die of the 680i chip. I discovered this when playing around with overclocking an E2180 on this board. I was hitting a wall at a much lower FSB than I had previously been able to hit with this same chip installed on a P5K-E motherboard. As part of that process I removed the stock heatsink which includes a heatpipe to a radiator mounted on the power section next to the CPU socket. My theory is that the bend of this heatpipe has to be very precise to prevent it from leveraging the heatsink on the 680i chip. This was evidenced when I reassembled everything using a thin layer of Arctic Ceramique compund and was horrified to be met with a non-posting computer...
I disassembled the heatsink (which required removal of the mobo... what a PITA). When I did this I noticed a whole corner of the chip that was not contacted by the compound. I wiped everything clean reapplied more compound (than I would have liked) to fill in the gap, and it booted up after that. But I am hitting a FSB wall at 300MHz which is puny compared to the 370MHz that I was hitting on the P5K-E board.
I am suspecting that the 680i is running really hot although I have no way to measure that. I can measure the temprature of the heatsink itself using an IR probe and it is about 49C but if the heatsink had poor contact with chip, the 680i could be roasting and I wouldn't know it.
So now I am considering a Thermalright HR-05 IFX as seen below.
http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=14650AC7368
Anyone install one of these on this board before? I would like to mount an 80mm fan on it but am wondering if there is enough clearance between the CPU cooler and the first video card (this is an SLI setup). Note, this is not the system in my sig. This is my son's system... P5N32E-SLI with E2180 processor, OCZ Vendetta heatsink, 2 X 7900GTX SLI, in an Antec Sonata 2 case (120mm in, 120mm exhaust), Ultra 650W SLI power supply...
Comments, questions, flames welcomed...
I disassembled the heatsink (which required removal of the mobo... what a PITA). When I did this I noticed a whole corner of the chip that was not contacted by the compound. I wiped everything clean reapplied more compound (than I would have liked) to fill in the gap, and it booted up after that. But I am hitting a FSB wall at 300MHz which is puny compared to the 370MHz that I was hitting on the P5K-E board.
I am suspecting that the 680i is running really hot although I have no way to measure that. I can measure the temprature of the heatsink itself using an IR probe and it is about 49C but if the heatsink had poor contact with chip, the 680i could be roasting and I wouldn't know it.
So now I am considering a Thermalright HR-05 IFX as seen below.
http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=14650AC7368
Anyone install one of these on this board before? I would like to mount an 80mm fan on it but am wondering if there is enough clearance between the CPU cooler and the first video card (this is an SLI setup). Note, this is not the system in my sig. This is my son's system... P5N32E-SLI with E2180 processor, OCZ Vendetta heatsink, 2 X 7900GTX SLI, in an Antec Sonata 2 case (120mm in, 120mm exhaust), Ultra 650W SLI power supply...
Comments, questions, flames welcomed...