Paraleyes

Cutting and trimming aluminum and copper is super easy. Use a circular saw with a carbide tipped blade. The more teeth, the better, but even a 24 tooth framing saw with good tips will eat through aluminum or copper like butter. Yes, literally just like butter. The easiest way is to use a table saw and to hold your piece you're cutting with a pair of pliers to eat away at the piece you're trimming or cutting. Or, just hold a circular saw and do the same thing. Just be careful and wear eye protection as those little tiny pieces of metal are pretty irritating when they fly into your eyes.

Check out these before and afters of a couple pieces I cut/trimmed:





You can check out the whole hardware mod I did in my signature link.

Anyways, I came across this thread looking for information on which of all those dozens of chips on a motherboard are worth installing a heat sink onto. Like for example, you can see the stock audio chip and the dual nvidia lan chips in that bottom picture. They do feel a bit warm when I touch them, but I still don't know if that would warrant installing a heat sink on any of them.

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UHAF 932 Prototype Concept Rig Build Log
Ultimate Aggressive Cooling Mod - How I Lowered my MB temps by 25C!
How to Modify, Cut Down & Upgrade Your Stock Heat Pipe System
Old Heat Pipes Moddded on a New P5N7A-VM Old Heat Pipes Modded on a New P5Q3

kurosu

sweet, this is the post I've been looking for!

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T3h_Ch33z_Muncha

^hahahaha what luck! Wasn't it your thread i posted in like yesterday and mentioned this?

Bumped just at the right time it seems

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Paraleyes

Yeah, you can see the actual finished mod by clicking the link in my sig if you're interested. Also, here's another mod I just did earlier this evening that required some cutting.

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UHAF 932 Prototype Concept Rig Build Log
Ultimate Aggressive Cooling Mod - How I Lowered my MB temps by 25C!
How to Modify, Cut Down & Upgrade Your Stock Heat Pipe System
Old Heat Pipes Moddded on a New P5N7A-VM Old Heat Pipes Modded on a New P5Q3

ghost2501

You guys should get the enzotech mosfet coolers if you are looking for ram bga type ones that is what I am going to get they seem to be the best sinks forged copper. I have 4 sets of thermalright mosfet coolers, I thought I could use AS adhesive to mount them on but I think that will short out since mosfets arent supposed to be toughing etc.

Paraleyes

I really like The Cooler Guys. These Zalman ones would work all over anywhere on a MB as they are plenty short enough to fit beneath any expansion cards. Only $10 for 8!
http://www.coolerguys.com/840556016526.html

These Thermaltakes are a good deal too.
http://www.coolerguys.com/840556025603.html

These Swiftechs are the $H|+! However, they would need to be trimmed down if they were going to go beneath an expansion card. I'm pretty sure 12mm is as tall as you can be and still fit between an expansion card and a chip. Actually, I take that back. When I measured, I measured over a southbridge and those chips sit up higher than most other chips such as LAN and Audio chips. And any mosfets would be clear of expansion cards.
http://www.coolerguys.com/840556021759.html

I don't think thermal adhesive would be a problem at all, but maybe I'm wrong. It would not be in contact with any metal; only sit on top of the plastic covers. Can anyone confirm this either way?

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UHAF 932 Prototype Concept Rig Build Log
Ultimate Aggressive Cooling Mod - How I Lowered my MB temps by 25C!
How to Modify, Cut Down & Upgrade Your Stock Heat Pipe System
Old Heat Pipes Moddded on a New P5N7A-VM Old Heat Pipes Modded on a New P5Q3

ghost2501

Those zalman ones probably only dissapate 1/10th the heat the enzotech ones do and they are the same price basically. You get 8 enzotech ones and they are 7 grams each of pure forged copper! the zalman ones are light weight and smaller and made from aluminum. they are still better than nothing if you have extras lying around from a VGA cooler Install.

http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/enbmfocobgar.html these ones are ~13$ you can find them cheaper sometimes

http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/enbcbmlowprf.html here are low profile ones

http://www.petrastechshop.com/enmomohekit.html They even have these super cute smaller ones!

If you guys can find better heatsinks then these let me know 7g of pure forged copper each.

Also from the post above mosfets are conductive I believe that is whay all mosfet coolers that bridge more tahn one use non cunductive thermal pads. I did email arctic silver and they confirmed. They said if I did it to try using the ceramic adhesive. I think I will be giving away my new unused as thermal adhesive since I am not using it.

Originally I thought I could get away with mounting limmitations because I was going to "adhere the cooler directly" using the adhesive. I am glad I didnt do it because even it it worked sooner or later poof I think...

Also anyone needing thermal tape or pads etc. CHROMERICS gives 2 free samples. I needed to replace my thermal tape on my zalman sinks for me vf700 and I got 2 10x2" strips of the thermattatch tape for free=) I will wont need thermal tape for years. I cut it into half inch squares using my paper cutter. I tired usign my cnc laser cutting machine but it didnt go through tthe emf screen in the middle!! lol it was funny looking.

videoman5

What? It comes with a stock VRM cooler. The Biostar, on the other hand does not. That was actually the only thing that kept me from buying that motherboard.

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mtl777

Hi, glad to find this thread! I have put tiny Enzotech heatsinks on my MOSFETs and my temps went down by 7C. I didn't use the thermal tape that came with it, though, as I have difficulty believing it would do a good job, it being so thick. So I used a small drop of Tuniq TX-2 in the middle and a tiny drop of super glue on two corners of the heatsink. I even lapped the heatsinks first. Works great!

Now for a noob question: Can someone please help me identify the other components (VRM's, NB, SB, etc.) that I could put heatsinks on? Here's a picture of my board:

Asrock M3A790GXH/128M

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Paraleyes

Okay, this is actually what I was looking for when I searched and found this thread. I was going to start a new one, but this seams to be the best location. So 1st off Dansi, I don't mean to hijack your thread here. My apologies.

Take in consideration that every board is different and many chips look very similar, so to be 100% certain of what's what, google the chip to find out. Otherwise following the buses on the back of your particular board will give away each chip's function rather quickly. And some are quite obvious when they say, "Realtek" for example right on the chip.

Think about what each chip is doing. For example, if you are not using your on board audio, don't waste a heat sink on it because it's not much more than dead weight, but if you are gaming or rendering HD or multi-channel audio for an extended period of time, definitely help that chip out.

Now it's been a few years since I got my Microsoft A+ certification, but I'm pretty confident these labels are accurate. However, I will humbly accept any corrections if they are found. I hope that helps!

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UHAF 932 Prototype Concept Rig Build Log
Ultimate Aggressive Cooling Mod - How I Lowered my MB temps by 25C!
How to Modify, Cut Down & Upgrade Your Stock Heat Pipe System
Old Heat Pipes Moddded on a New P5N7A-VM Old Heat Pipes Modded on a New P5Q3