actually looking at his case and the fans on the side panel, I am going to stick my neck out and say the zalman passive NB heatsink will perform better than the stock NF7-S HSF IF those side panel fans are indeed pumping good cfm on the NB since the zalman has a larger cooling area than the stock HSF. Plus I think I a 120cm fan on the side is gonna push MUCH more cfm than a little 40mm fan on that stock hsf.
despite watercooling my NB, I am not 100% sold it is helping that much. Recently while reassembling my setup (epox 8rda+), I've slapped a compunurse probe (yes I know these have poor accuracy so take the readings with a full shaker of salt...) directly behind the NB and SB on the mobo. I was surprised but the NB is the hottest component in my system (well actually mosfets are steaming around 60c even w/ heatsinks on them...). The NB alone was reading nearly 54c (ambient 27c) when I had fsb up to 220 and vdd 1.87v. I figured out the problem. As mentioned by many, the nforce2 NB (even the latest ultra 400 steppings) are very concave. There was very little contact between my dangerden z-chip block and the NB in the center. I spent over a 1r sanding the NB until it was flat. Result was approx. a 7c difference. I didn't think of, but its something I should have done, is test an NB heatsink fan after the lapping the NB. I've got another mobo coming in later this week so I might get a chance to test it out.
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