DFI SLI-DR Chipset cooling/noise solutions

[lambbuster]

Hello there people!

Ive had an SLI-DR for about a month now, and the chipset fan is starting to annoy me. I replaced my cpu hsf with an arctic freezer, and both graphics card fans to Zalman VF700-CU's, but the chipset fan still makes so much noise.

I set it so it only goes to full speed if over 65c, but with that setting it gets to around 57-60c which i think may be a little on the warm side.

It doesn't really affect performance, and ive had no crashes when doing encoding/transferring/burning etc but i would like it if there was a way of making it quieter.

Has anyone come up with ways of achieving less noise...or even modded a different heatsink? The obvious choice would be a zalman passive, but because there is no clearance it would have to be heavily modded

Any advice/tips would be much appreciated

Cheers,

Phil

 

[maverik-sg1]

Switch to a watercooled system?

There are more coolers coming out for the NF4 chipset most of which have offset fans to keep the profile low - the fans are largerthan that currently installed so I would hope that would be a quiet solution.

A thread has lready been started on this and one guy there modded a zalman passive cooler which seems towork really well (not suitable for a SLI enabled rig though.

There are at elast two waterblock available that will fit the DFI MOBO - although it's case of running your watercooling set-up slightly off standard to ensure there are no flow restrictions - again there is a thread on that in here somewhere.

Maybe you could remove the fan and use a larger unit (the other side of the VGA cards) to blow air onto the sink itself?

Cheers

Mav

 

[lambbuster]

Thanks for the quick reply, i shall definitely check out the other threads. Ive been considering moving back to water, as i did have that for a while. I think though, it would take some planning as before my cycle wasn't the best..lol.

Do you reckon if i used a single card (6800u or 7800GTX for example) and put it in the second pci-e slot, there would be enough room above for a zalman passive. A quick look at the board says yes with maybe only slight modding of pins involved

Cheers,

Phil

 

[maverik-sg1]

Watercooling equals some sort of paralell set-up specifically for the chipset.

In single card set-up use the lower PCI-E (but set jumper in SLI mode - that gives you some room to consider your options and by keeping both PCI-E lanes running at 8x instesd of 16x (no performance hit with 6800 or 7800 if you do this) - the chipset actually runs cooler because the shipset is not working as hard.

Cheers

Mav