Passive cooling of NForce 4

Recently I've upgraded to AMD 939 Sempron system. Everything was excellent, except noise. I've replaced CPU cooler to Thermaltake Sonic tower (excellent cooler for not-very-hot CPUs like Sempron). But the main source of noise was chipset cooler. It was small and extremely noisy.

So, I’ve decided to make a new cooler from old 939 one. Of course it’s too big to be set on chipset. So I’ve sawed it on 2 parts. Then I’ve glued this radiator instead the old one.

After modification it worked fine. It was silent, and not so hot. But your chase should be ventilated well. Also, you may put very slow fan (900 rpm and lower) on it.

Please note, that new cooler is glued to the chipset – you will be unable to reverse the operation. Also, you will lose you motherboard warranty.

Here some photos of the process:



System before operation. You may see orange source of the noise.


The “raw material” for the new cooler – old 939 cooler.


Clean it


Remove redundant parts.


Ready for the saw!


It’s not very easy


After 10-60 minutes...


This is NForce4. The area of the chip is similar to old Socket A Sempron processors.


Check the resistance of the thermo-glue. If it would not be infinite, you will destroy your main board.


This is the source of the noise. The last photo.


Put that much thermo-glue. You will be unable to reverse this step.


Place new cooler. Check that it will not block video-card. Put something on it (weight ~0.5kg) and leave for several hours.


Voila, the system is ready. Aluminum kingdom