Alright I have a little bit of an issue with the cooling setup on my ASUS P5N-E SLi mobo. I am trying to use my Zalman CNPS7000B as my cpu cooler but the stock north bridge heat sink is getting in the way. My question is what should I replace it with? I want to use the 7000B so I can adjust the speed with a FM2 so I don't want to buy another cooler. I have a smaller north bridge cooler with a fan, also copper, that I used on an nForce2 board; I'm sure it will allow the 7000B to fit. The only thing is that I don't know how much heat the 650i throws and I'd hate to find out the hard way. Any suggestions?

a lot of ASUS motherboards have a heat problem with the north bridge so if u are going to do that, make sure u have enough fan on it to keep it cool, especially if u are intending to overclock at all.

above 1.4-1.45 v the nb gets hot enough to need either a fan or more heatsink with fan.

I have a ASUS P5N-E SLi mobo and that is how it gets although I have not done any thing to it yet, I have thought about putting a extra fan on the north bridge even not overclocked, (1.4-1.45) I assume u are meaning for cpu voltage and honestly that is pushing the voltage on any of the newer processors.

The fan/sink I wanted to try is significantly smaller than the stock heatsink, but it is pure copper and not aluminum. I'm not real sure how fast the little fan spins but it seems to keep the northbridge chip on my nForce2 board cool. I'm sure the 650i, being the more powerful chipset, takes a lot more to cool but I can't use the stock sink with my CPU cooling setup. I'm gonna try to find some information about the little copper nb cooler and see what i can find on how much heat can be dissapated.

[UPDATE]: I found the Northbridge cooler I have and want to use on Newegg...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835425007

I'm seeing some people have stated that they are using these little coolers on their SLi boards so maybe I guess I'll give it a try. I will just run the stock voltages and see what happens. All it says as far as specs are concerned is that it can be used on a wide variety of products and spins at 5600rpms so hopefully I'll be okay.

If the heatsink will fit, that should be a good cooler for the north bridge.