Fan on the south bridge

madmat

Soup Nazi
That's the northbridge and to pull it you have to just yank out the pushpins. Thermalright makes a slick heatpipe cooler for the DFI SLI/Ultra mobos that should fill the bill quite nicely.
 

Tech-Daddy

Tech Monkey
And if you did not want to purchase anything, you could very likely contact the DFI support dept. Tell them your chipset fan is failing. If they are anything like Asus, they will ship you a replacement. All Asus asked me for was my address. (THere was a bad batch of fans on some of hte Asus mobo's, and Asus just took it on the chin and shipped out replacement fans to anyone that needed one).

Check with DFI and see what their policy is. Obviously you dont want to ship the mobo back to replace the fan (something you could do there at your house...)

Good luck!
 

Rory Buszka

Partition Master
I say, go fanless with whatever chipset cooler you get. I personally select motherboards with fanless northbridges now, because the fans on my two Asus A7v motherboards both failed in about a year. The board I've selected for my new personal rig is the ABIT KN9, which uses a heatpipe to transmit the heat up to the VRM area, where a single heatsink cools both the VRMs and the motherboard.
 

b1lk1

Tech Monkey
You cannot go fanless on a NF4 chipset if you overclock at all. As for DFI's RMA policy, good luck. They are brutal and require original receipts and such. Easiest thing to do is to buy another chipset cooler. As everyone suggested, that HR05 is perfect for the job.
 

Rory Buszka

Partition Master
Oh, you can always go fanless, as long as you have enough heatsink surface area and aren't otherwise resisting the flow. Forced convection is used only to reduce the package size of the cooling solution. The ABIT solution uses a rear I/O panel design that creates a small airflow short-circuit with the main case fan, which creates some airflow over the heatsink without ruining the overall effectiveness of the case fan or adding an extra source of mechanical noise and failure. The Thermalright HR-05, fanless, should be fine for most applications even with a decent overclock. Just make sure that its large size won't interfere with your video card.

If it's the noise that's bothering you, though, and the fan isn't making the grinding sound that tells of impending failure, I remember that the DFI boards had controls in the BIOS for fan speed. That should be enough to tone down the noise, if the chipset itself isn't running very hot.
 
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b1lk1

Tech Monkey
If you have VERY good airflow, then you could maybe passively cool the NF4 chip. Otherwise, they run hot and when overclocked, they run nuclear hot. I would not expect a long life out of it with almost all passive coolers. That Thermaltake unit is about the best since it has heatpipes and sticks up nice and tall. Most other units are just not up to the task at all. You can turn down the fan but I would recommend putting a quiet 25CFM or so 60/80MM fan blowing over that area just to be safe.
 

madmat

Soup Nazi
With the design of his mobo (nb hsf under vid cards) I'd say running it fanless is a quick trip to trouble-ville. That little hs has hardly any surface area.
 

madstork91

The One, The Only...
Its a no go on the fanless heat sink. The 7800gt's i have running simply hog up too much space for me to run that under one and squeeze it between the two.

I *may* contact DFI and see if they will ship me one. If not... **** them. Besides that, i dont think the fan is really all that important. I may pull it and see how it changes performaces. As is ive literally had a slurpee straw stuck in through the side of my case to stop the fan and ive had no problems heat wise.
 

madmat

Soup Nazi
Stork, if you turn that with the pipes exiting up the rad part of the heatsink will be over the top 7800 and under the CPU HSF.

Use your head ol' buddy.
 

Greg King

I just kinda show up...
Staff member
You will ruin your computer if that fan is removed. It wont happen immediately but it will happen. You can find many low profile coolers. I have an evercool on mine. Just dont run it without any cooling at all.
 

madstork91

The One, The Only...
Use your head ol' buddy.

I do... and a long shaft with it. 0.o TO breathe and eat... jeez get your head outta the gutter.

All sexual joking aside... The following is a picture of my mobo with nice colored boxes to give you an idea of the layout with the 7800 s in them.

Im not really sure how you plan on running those pipes under anything as it would apear to curve up right about the point that top card is occupying.

Now use youre head! it called me and told me that it was tired of rosey and her five friends.
 

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madmat

Soup Nazi
I do... and a long shaft with it. 0.o TO breathe and eat... jeez get your head outta the gutter.

All sexual joking aside... The following is a picture of my mobo with nice colored boxes to give you an idea of the layout with the 7800 s in them.

Im not really sure how you plan on running those pipes under anything as it would apear to curve up right about the point that top card is occupying.

Now use youre head! it called me and told me that it was tired of rosey and her five friends.

The pipes would be on the upper side of the card, the rad would be on the right hand side of the NB as your pic shows. Thermalright lists your mobo as compatible fully with the unit so I'm sure that they've tested it in single and SLI settings.
 

Rory Buszka

Partition Master
At Sidewinder Computers, they have another model of fanless northbridge cooler with its heatpipe exiting to the side and at an angle, for the purpose of not interfering with long video cards. Take a look at that one -- it may fit the bill.
 

madstork91

The One, The Only...
mat, you'll notice that their recomended setup it towards the left of the card. Not right. It may be compatible for a single and not a SLi.
 

madmat

Soup Nazi
Here's what I'm talking about, the blue where the sink is is the base of the HR05, the blocks to the right are the heatpipes with the circles being the tops of the heatpipes. The rectangle the heatpipes terminate in is the rad for the heatpipes. Yes it's over that molex but that molex isn't needed for vidcards with PCI-e connectors, it's there for the people that use lower range vid cards without PCI-e power connectors on them. Besides, the rad is far enough above that plug to not block it.
 

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madmat

Soup Nazi
Well, crap, I was not looking at the vid card list, that's a hokey way of mounting it, the illustration I show would work with no issues but having it at an angle is useless. WTF is up with that shiz?

edit: here they install it the way I'm saying, I can't see why it won't work that way in SLI.
 

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b1lk1

Tech Monkey
It is made to work that way and it will work great if you give it a chance. Runnng no fan or passive on that chipset is going to kill it. I do not care what other people say. The NF4 chipset gets very hot in single card and SLI makes it that much hotter. It will not last longer than a month with no fan, most likely less.

And I should add, you can use that Thermaltake cooler passive if you have decent case airflow, but the stock unit could never ever in a million years be run passively.
 
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madstork91

The One, The Only...
well for those of you unfamiliar with my problems in the past with this case... airflow is lacking.

I may try to replace the fan. The back mounted heasink doesnt too an incredible job at cooling my other video card :( The chip set was less of a concern. Have you had trouble with this chipset before b1lk1?
 
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