effective NB cooling for nForce2 chipset

[Jake the Dog]

hi,

I'm looking to better the NB cooling solution on my Soltek SL-75FRN2-L mobo. currently I'm using the stock HSF which I've lapped:

although it appears to be adequate at 200MHz, I'd like to install a better solution with a monitored fan for relability sake and extreme FSB 'overclockability'. to that end, I've all but decided to go ahead with the Zalman NB32J but there's two questions I have that I haven't been able to find an answer to.

1. apparently the NB32J doesn't completely cover the entire metal exposed part of the nForce2 chipset and this has me wondering putting a NB32J on such a chipset will create hotspots on the area not in contact with the HS and if so, can these hotspots become a problem?
2. HS cooling - can anyone suggest where I might find a monitored 40mm fan or suggest a way to effectiveky adapt a 60mm fan? I'd prefer not to use a Zalman bracket fan setup.

tia for any replies. cheers.

 

[blakerwry]

1: The power of conduction across the chip will probably save you.. but i'd rather get something that covers everything(the more thermal transfer area the better)

2:
http://www.directron.com/kd1204pkb1.html
this apears to use all 3 wires on the 3 pin connector....



http://www.directron.com/kde1204pfb2.html
This uses a 3 pin connector, but doesn't state whether it utilizes all three of them.


http://www.directron.com/5cmfan.html
this is a 50mm fan, it uses a 3 pin connector, but obviously only uses 2 of the wires...

 

[blakerwry]

have you thought about using a socket 2/3(486) or small socket 7 cooler instead?

 

[Jake the Dog]

thanks for the links blakerwry but Directron won't ship internationally for small orders I can't find any 40mmx20mm fans here in Oz so now I'm considering getting a Thermaltake Tiger 1 and just using the fan. I didn't realise that a fan such as this would be a pain to source component.

 

[Mercutio]

An nvidia product getting too hot. There's a shocker.
I kinda thought Clocker had an innovative solution.

Does your nforce2 have digital in/outputs for sound?

 

[Jake the Dog]

It's not getting too hot ... yet. actually it works quite well at 200MHz as it is now but I'm looking to go as high as 240MHz and before I do, I want to attand to any thing that could be a potential issue, such as the NB getting to warm with the current setup.

I've decided to use the Zalman NB32J HS, I just need to find a suitable fan and I think I've found one; a PAPST, 40x40x20mm, 5.9cfm, 18dB, 3 wire. I'll be moving my current NB HS, minus fan, onto the SB and fastening it with Artic Thermal epoxy.

I purchased a Volcano 11 which I was going to lap but I've decided to ditch it and get an SLK-800 and use the SmartFanII on it.

 

[Buck]

You know dogman, we will need pictures.

 

[Jake the Dog]

oops sorry Merc, didn't answer your question. my board doesn't incorporate the nVidia Soundstorm component at all, instead it uses a 6 chan Realtek AC97 v2 sound chip. I chose this board because it's a known good overclocker and it's low cost (because it lacks Soundstorm). I didn't want the Soundstorm component because I'm perfectly happy with my Hercules GameTheatre XP 7.1, and in fact I only ever use headphones anyway.

 

[Jake the Dog]

righto, will do :wink:

 

[Mercutio]

Alright, could someone with an Nforce2 please check the doohickey you didn't hook up to see if you have any kind of digital sound connectors?

 

[mubs]

You can find some nifty little fans here.The "Miniature Chip Cooling Fans" link at the bottom is a PDF.

 

[Jake the Dog]

I ended up with the followin:

the HS is a T'take Volcano 11 which I lapped. the duct is also from T'take and is supposed to help cooling by distancing the fan far enough from the HS so it gets the full effect of air flow, ie there's no 'airflowless' dead spot in the middle HS due to the fan hub. it only cost a few bucks so I thought I'd give it a go.

I've put a (lapped) Zalman NB HS on the northbridge and moved factory NB HS onto the SB. I managed to find some 40/40/10mm monitired fans which I've mounted on both HS. this is probably overkill but then I'd rather too much than too little.

 

[CougTek]

[looking at picture...then reading this]

This is probably overkill, but...

Of course it's overkill! BTW, just out of curiosity...did you lapped the heatsink on the south bridge?

It certainly won't overheat.

 

[Jake the Dog]

[looking at picture...then reading this]
BTW, just out of curiosity...did you lapped the heatsink on the south bridge?

yes, I couldn't help myself

 

[time]

Did you find the ZM-NB32J covered the Northbridge contact area, Jake?

That spacer on the CPU cooler looks interesting - where did you get it?

 

[Jake the Dog]

the NB32J doesn't cover the entire chip surface but hopefiully, being that the it should be a better cooler, it should present no probs.

I got the duct from Anyware for $8.

 

[time]

I've been fiddling with another Epox 8RDA+. Before it even went in a case, I checked how the northbridge heatsink was attached, and sure enough, there was only a miserly little square pad barely 15mm square. (I've seen a picture somewhere, but can't find it now). The circular contact area on the chip has a diameter of about 25mm, so less than half of this is actually in use. Not good.

I initially tried cleaning off the pad and using Artic Silver, but the round Epox heatsink only has a contact area diameter of about 20mm, so although nearly 50% better, this is still only about two thirds the size it should be.

Nonetheless, I could easily reach FSB over 200MHz. My earlier 8RDA+ test board could only manage 192MHz.

Like Jake, I bought some Zalman ZM-NB32J heatsinks. Unlike Jake, I didn't use a fan or lap anything. I had to discard the Zalman pushpins and reuse the Epox ones - I don't know if the Zalman pins are too small or the Epox board has oversize holes, but they wouldn't anchor securely.

The fastest stable FSB is now 220MHz with just a single DIMM (slightly less with a pair), and 211MHz in dual channel mode. Adding a fan took the single DIMM to 223MHz. If anyone's interested, for a CPU at 2110MHz with dual channel, Sandra 2003 reports 3184/2951 memory bandwidth (although I have little faith in this benchmark).

I estimate the ZM-NB32J covers 95% of the chip contact area, easily double Epox's effort. That's got to be worth something when you're venturing past 200MHz.

 

[Clocker]

Jake-
What are your impressions on the Thermaltake duct?

Thanks,
C

 

[CougTek]

Jake-
What are your impressions on the Thermaltake duct?

I'm curious about it too. Did you see a change in temp. with the duck installed/off? Ditto for the noise level.

 

[Jake the Dog]

it's given me a 2C measured decrease in temps which, for the money I paid for it, is good imho. two other users on Overclockers.com reported the same result. see: http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=202416

I believe the noise level has decreased a little but not much at all, if any. hard to tell really. certainly there was no immediately noticeable decrease.

 

[time]

Jake's not going to like this, but ...

I picked up a Soltek SL-75FRN2-L board. It displaced Epox 8RDA+ because:

a) I had a case without front panel Firewire.
b) It definitely uses the revised nForce2 chipset.
c) It was US$20 cheaper.

That extra $20 buys you a fair bit with the Epox:

a) English rather than Chinglish doco
b) 3-phase power regulation
c) 1394 (Firewire)
d) 1394 adaptor panel
e) USB adaptor panel
f) Gameport adaptor panel
g) Standard Intel front-audio connector

The last has me spitting. I didn't expect to encounter this sort of crap in this day and age, but I can't even tell if the proprietary Soltek connector has any switching to support a front panel socket. :x

The Soltek doesn't support asynchronous memory operation in the BIOS, or even the option of SPD timing. It also omits an AGP card latch and aligns that slot with the DIMM sockets for maximum inconvenience with long cards.

However, it does display the on-die diode temperature (unlike the Epox), and the HDD connectors are in a much better location.

And it does work as advertised. Jake tells me he took his XP2100 to 2300MHz @ 230MHz FSB, and I managed a whisker more with an XP2400 @ 233MHz FSB.

I think a 75% FSB overclock is pretty special; in fact, I can't think of any other CPU that's quite managed that, including the legendary Celeron 300A. Combined with Jake's 50% clockspeed increase, that's a formidable feat. Seeing he's going back to the dark side, keep an eye out for when he sells this beast.

Anyway, unlike Jake, I didn't change the stock Northbridge cooler. No lapping, nuffink. I strongly suspect that I'm pushing my luck at 233MHz (extra voltage allround), but that's about the usable limit of my Transcend RAM anyway (243MHz for a single DIMM, about 4% less for dual channel). In any case, the board slows slightly at any speed over 233MHz (the BIOS limit is 250).

Saucy Sandra 2003 says 3537/3266 MBs bandwidth, but she would say that. I'd guess that's nearly double KT400 at stock speeds. More to the point, it shows that the revised nForce2 is more than capable at 200MHz, a necessity for high-end Athlons, and doesn't need much work at all to support PC3700 (DDR466) synchronously.

I imagine this why holdout manufacturers like Gigabyte are jumping on the nForce bandwagon; at this stage Via can't even provide a 200MHz solution. Which will hurt Tea's customers who want to upgrade ...

 

[Jake the Dog]

great stuff time, nice work.! I spent some time playing with my system yesterday and using borrowed stick of Corsair XMS3500 mananged to get 238MHz FSB. adding VDD voltage made no diff. I had to lower my mulitplier to 9.5 as my chip isn't stable above 2340MHz.

The Soltek doesn't support asynchronous memory operation in the BIOS, or even the option of SPD timing.

it sure does time, on both accounts. you need to set the memory option to "Expert" to be able to change the SPD timing.

 

[time]

On mine, the only memory speed option is "Auto". I have already updated the BIOS, but it made no difference.

I know you can change the timing manually; I've set it to 2.5-3-3-8 after discovering that 2.5-3-3-6 seemed a whisker slower. I meant that I can't force the board to read the SPD on the DIMMs. As I said, my only option is "Auto".

 

[time]

I had a few glitches at 233MHz, as well as some CPU overheating problems. So I pulled the motherboard, refitted the CPU cooler, and changed the Soltek northbridge cooler to a Zalman ZM-NB32J.

I had to drop the multiplier because I was having trouble with high clock speeds on the CPU; like Jake, I can't get good stability over about 2330MHz. I noticed that voltages are all over the place under heavy load, and the 12V line sometimes droops to 11.34V, which is outside spec.

The 300W power supply isn't current, so I tried a different brand, but it was worse. I suspect that the Soltek board regulation may not be as good as it could be (LostCircuits commented that the parts are at or near their rated limits), and that without an exceptional power supply, it starts to fall apart with the extra demands from overclocking and overvoltaging the CPU and northbridge.

Or it could just be that Thoroughbreds tend to top out at 2300MHz, regardless of marking.

Anyway, with the new heatsink and less ambitious CPU clock speeds, I can run 'stably' with FSB and RAM at 245MHz in dual channel. At 250MHz, I can't get all the way through 3DMark, whether due to the RAM, northbridge or CPU running out of puff or overheating, who knows?

Pity, because PC4000 or DDR500 has a nice ring to it. I guess I'll just have to settle for PC3900 and DDR490.

So that FSB overclock is actually 85%! I'd like to congratulate nVidia for an impressive product, and Soltek for some fine engineering, despite my other reservations. And Transcend for their quite outstanding DDR400 modules.

While I was just staring at the thing, the bloody Zalman pushpins popped out without warning, leaving the heatsink hanging uselessly. :x Also, this northbridge doesn't have a metal contact area! I'd guess it may be slightly more recent than Jake's?

The northbridge needed fan cooling above about 240MHz. Because I don't want to use a fan, I've now wound it back to 10x230MHz=2300MHz to allow some safety margin on the CPU. Based on AMD's reasoning, it should still be roughly equivalent to an XP3100.

 

[Jake the Dog]

245MHz! nice overclock there time sounds like you could use an Antec TruePower PSU.

I had the same prob with the NB32 pins popping out.

the 1st pic of the NB chip in is from my 1st board, it was a 75FRN-L. I changed to a 75FRN2-RL a few weeks ago. the rev2 boards have the updated NB chip that officially support 200MHz FSB and and you've noticed this chip does not have the metal top that the 1st version chipset has.

 

[Jake the Dog]

time, what ver BIOS does your board have?

 

[time]

1.3 - note that the date shown at POST is wrong.

I suspect that this BIOS came with the board anyway.

Like I said though, there are no memory clock speed options - just Auto.