nforce2 ultra 400 cooling question

[DeathCrush]

greetings all, i have a question regarding the nforce2 ultra 400 mobo chipset. i have to replace the heatsink on it and was actually wondering how hot the chip really gets. i've found a few mobo/vga chipset fan/heatsinks out there, but none are really all that big and the heatsink that came with my mobo (epox ep-8rda3+) is actually a bit bigger than what is out there.

i was thinking about just sticking the vantec copper Iceberq VGA/chipset cooler or even the vantec Iceberq 4 Pro cooler on it, but they're both still smaller than the heatsink and fan that is on there now and i'm not sure how effective they'd be at keeping it cool.

i'm not doing this to get cooler temps on the chipset, just replacing it with something smaller but still effective as the stock heatsink. thanks a ton, if there is any more info you need from me just ask.

[DaveW]

Hmm...i think that most PCB use the same way to mount fans and heatsinks, which is a 2 hole mounting mechanism. So they should fit in theory. The heatsink might be large, but it's not size that matters in a heatsink. Surface area is the main thing: the more, the better. Some chipsets have strange decorative heatsinks, i've seen some in the shape of the ASUS symbol. These aren't really effective coolers, they're more a decoration; they might look good but their surface area is much smaller than that off a standard heatsink. The other problem is how air flows over the heatsink. Does it interact with all of the surface area? In the decorative ASUS heatsink, it's terrible at that as well. A fan will force air into all corners of a heatsink, allowing the manufacturers to reduce the size of the sink. As a rule of thumb, your average heatsink and fan combination is much more effective than any passive cooling solution.

The chipset doesn't get that hot, especially compared to the big spenders like your CPU and GPU. In fact, it runs pretty cool. The problem is it's pretty frail, so when it gets hot, it get pissy. You can help keep this to a minimum by providing a way out for heat. Hence, cool chipsets (North & South) mean better stability.

Tada!

-Dave