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#811 - Noctua NC-U6 Chipset Cooler |
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Written by Zach Jeffers
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Tuesday, 24 April 2007 |
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Page 4 of 5
Installation and Testing:
For testing of the Noctua NC-U6 passive chipset cooler, we used the following hardware:
Enclosure: Ultra
Aluminus (Noctua NF-S12 fans intake/exhaust)
Power Supply: Ultra
X-Connect X2 550watt
Processor: AMD 3800+ X2 (Socket AM2)
Motherboard: ECS
KA3 MVP
Memory: Crucial
Ballistix 2gig (2 x 1gig) DDR2 PC2-6400
Video: 2 x x1600Pro 256mb DDR2 in Crossfire
Storage: Seagate 7200.10 320 GB SATA2, 7200.9 500 GB SATA2
Optical: Plextor PX-740UF PATA
Installation of the NC-U6 passive cooler is very simple. First you will need to remove your current cooler. In our case it was a simple thermal tape removal. Please remember that some coolers are permanently mounted with thermal adhesive. Forced removal of these types of systems can damage your chipset rendering your system useless. Please consult the motherboard manufacturer for the recommended removal of these types of coolers.
If your chipset does not have an IHS (Integrated Heat Spreader) like our ATI Crossfire 3200 chipset, you will want to use the supplied spacer during the mounting process to prevent the chipping of the chip.
 
Before you mount your designated retention arm to the NC-U6 cooler, you might want to pre-size the arms to the chipset. These pivots on the retention arms come very tight and you may want to loosen them up with a Phillips screw driver for easy adjustment. Once adjusted to proper spacing, you can then place the retention arm over the block at the bottom and mount it with the screw that was supplied.
  
Once mounted, you then apply the thermal paste to the chipset and mount the NC-U6 to the motherboard. In this example we have mounted to the ECS KA3 MVP’s Northbridge.
  
Below is mounting to the Southbridge of the KA3 utilizing the hook-style retention arm.
  
After both chipsets have been covered by a shiny new NC-U6 passive cooler, they make a sexy duo next to the NH-U12F.
On our test board, the Southbridge comes awfully close to both of the PCI-E x16 slots. You can see below the clearance issues that arise. If our test bed had any large video card(s) installed, the Southbridge cooler probably would not have fit. This will be different for every type of motherboard and video card combination, so please do some research first to see if this cooler will fit around your system.
 
Installation of this cooler to the Northbridge on our test board works both horizontally or vertically, but when used vertically, the cooler made contact with the NH-U12F and the mounting screws for the x1600Pro’s cooler. So testing was done horizontally due to the fact that the NH-U12 pushed the cooler off center of the Northbridge. This would have been possibly avoided with a different CPU cooler or different motherboard.
  
One last compatibility issue was found on the Southbridge. The cooler prohibited the proper use of an IDE cable with the IDE1 header. During testing, the cable had to be moved to the more southern IDE2 header.
 
Results:
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