Desktop motherboards usually don’t require any active cooling, as their chipsets do not run that hot. In recent years the increasing clock speeds and number of integrated devices are pushing these chipsets harder, making them hotter. Most motherboard’s North Bridge takes the brunt of this work, as it handles communications between the main CPU and other devices. Motherboard manufacturers have turned to active cooling as their motherboards have become more powerful (especially overclocking-friendly motherboards), but they still use cheap materials or other cheap options to keep production costs low. Most people won’t really care about chipset heatsinks, but the performance crowd will want to squeeze out every bit of performance (or extend the life of their hardware), by using higher-perfirmance quality third-party heatsinks.
Thermalright is one aftermarket cooling supplier that have catered to performance enthusiasts for years. Thermalright makes some of the best air-cooled CPU and VGA heatsinks in the market. Thermalright entered the chipset market with the introduction of the NB-1 and NB-1C, which showed amazing performance and won the loyalty of many PC enthusiasts.
Based on their relatively new High-Riser series, the HR-05 is the first Thermalright Chipset cooler utilizing heatpipe technology.
Thermalright HR-05 Northbridge Heatsink Specifications
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Like Thermalright’s other products, the HR-05 is shipped in a thin brown cardboard box. Opening the cardbord box reveals that the heatsink is well protected, as it is wrapped in a thick plastic bag, and nestled snugly into custom-cut foam. The heatsink is not extremely delicate, but is protected so well that you receive it in mint condition.
The HR-05 comes with two different mounting clips, a few hooks, and plastic pushpins, so it should be compatible with the different mounting mechanisms manufacturers use. If you have holes in your motherboard (instead of hooks), then just use the appriately-sized retention clip with the spring-loaded plastic pushpins.
To prepare for installation, you need to keep in mind how long your video card is, and if the PCIe slot is in the northbridge’s line-of-sight. Depending on your configuration, you may be able to position the HR-05 vertically (so it fits snugly between your cards), or horizontally (so it runs perpindicular to your cards. Mounting it horizontally may allow the HR-05’s fan to blow air over your cards.
Once we removed the passive heatsink, we see that nVidia’s northbridge is a “flip-chip” design, so the silicon is exposed without any protection. I am very wary of this, as I have nearly ruined several Pentium IIIs, and a few Athlon XPs with nothing more than normal maintenance… copper will happily scrape and chip those delicate corners very easily, even if you are very careful. To offer extra protection, Thermalright includes a thin rubber square to be placed around the edge of the chip, which should help prevent damage from sliding and tilting.
Doing the installation is a bit tricky, but thankfully can be done without removing the motherboard. First, place the thermal grease of your choice (we used Zalman’s silver thermal compound) directly on the chip and a little on the heatsink. We then rub the compound into the heatsink slightly with a cloth, and place firmly on the Northbridge. The appropriate retention bracket is then placed into position (between the two heatpipes and under all the fins), and fits into a grooved half-sphere in the center of the HR-05’s base. It is easier to position the clip without the pushpins in place, else you’ll have to twist the clip in weird ways to get it through.
After the clip is positioned, place the spring-loaded pushpins through each end of the clip and then through the mounting holes on the motherboard. Be sure to keep constant pressure on the heatsink to keep it from tilting. After a few pushes, the heatsink is mounted.
Once mounted, we did notice that it slid around an awful lot, and it tilts very easily in all four directions: those pushpins definately won’t crush your chip, but don’t keep them safely secure, either. Any movement is sure to cause damage to the exposed chip underneath. I found myself easily bumping and accidentally twisting the heatsink by doing normal maintenance (cable routing, drive upgrades, and just plain normal installation).
Even if you don’t mess with your computer very much, you should still be worried about this installation. If your motherboard is vertically mounted, then gravity will surely pull on the heavy heatsink, creating torque, which will pull the pushpins out of their sockets. This very thing happened to me, my computer suddenly crashed from overheating, and a little investigation revealed that one of the pushpins came loose, and the HR-05 was half-cocked. If you transport your PC to LAN parties you need to be extra careful. If you are going to ship your PC, you should probably uninstall this heatsink first.
Our home theater system was so cramped, that we were unable to remove our optical drive without removing the motherboard, and the motherboard could not be removed without uninstalling the HR-05. I found myself cringing and sweating every time I had to do any maintenance, because of the obvious damage the HR-05 was doing to my poor chipset. The inevitable finally happened, though… the HR-05 finally destroyed my chip, resulting in one dead Asus A8N-SLI motherboard (the original test machine). The white scrapes and chips on the edges of my northbridge were obvious evidence of this homicide.
If you’re going to install a beefy third party heatsink such as the HR-05, only use it on a northbridge encased in plastic or ceramic. You can easily damage your hardware. A secure mounting method (like Zalman’s products) would address all of these mounting issues.
One of our Home Media Center PCs uses nVidia’s nForce 4 chipset, which is notoriously warm due to the passive heatsink Chaintech has placed on their motherboard. Overclock-friendly boards have active cooling onboard, and we have reached a brick wall when overclocking this board, so it is a good candidtate for an upgrade. Our test system includes:
- Chaintech VF4-Ultra motherboard (nForce 4)
- AMD Atlon 64 X2 3800+
- 1GB DDR-400 memory
- Soundblaster Live!
- Hauppauge Win-PVR-250 MPEG capture board
- ATI X1600 PCIe video card
- Sony DVD-RW drive
- 2x Seagate Barracuda 250GB 7800.8 HDDs
As our test data shows, we obtained impressive results with the Thermalright HR-05 chipset heatsink. During idle, the HR-05 bested the stock heatsink by a whooping 20ºF which kept the Northbridge chipset below 100ºF. While the stock heatsink suffered at full load, the HR-05 kept it cool at just 103ºF. Since the HR-05 kept the Northbridge temperatures below 100º at full load, we decided to overclock and over-volt the Northbridge to 2.0V at 250MHz. At overclocked setting, the HR-05 held itself at just 98ºC during idle and 106ºC during full load.
Thermalright HR-05 Performance Analysis
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Overall, the Thermalright HR-05 achieves impressive results. The extra mass and high-quality workmanship of the High-Riser series translate into one of the highest performing chipset heatsinks. The main problem with this heatsink is its flimsy retention mechanism, which can easily let go of the heatsink, causing damage and destruction.
Because of its size, it might make your computer a little more cramped, which means more steps or extra care when performing maintenance. The HR-05 can be purchased for $25, which is a good price considering other lesser chipset coolers cost $20 and don’t even have 1/4th the material. The thin 80mm fan is good, but the mounting method seems like an afterthought (requiring zip-ties). If you want to cool your Northbridge (or Southbridge for that matter), then the HR-05 will provide THE best performance, no doubt. Unfortunately, it may destroy your PC in the process.
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