The northbridge chip cooling fan of the Asus A8n SLI Deluxe
motherboard has always been problematic, very noisy at best and prone
to failure. I had two fail in the first month of use in a new computer.
Frustrated I replaced the motherboard with the Premium version with
a passive cooling solution. Other than the fan problem the board was
highly rated and performed well for me. Not wanting the board to go
to waste laying around I decided to build a decent computer for my
kids. This is what I did to solve the fan problem.
The culprit. A noisy, early failure
prone Asus OEM northbdge chip fan on the A8n SLI Deluxe motherboard.
The only major drawback to an otherwise great board. The Board must
be taken out of the case to snip the fan mount push pin tips off
on the underside to remove the fan unit.
The plastic heat sink mount slides on between the pins
from the top.
The heat sink with its fan mount.
The replacement 40 mm Scythe fan.
The main concern with replacement fans and heat
sink is size. In this case the footprint was fine and the mounting
holes matched but the height was a concern. Most OEM solutions are
designed low enough for the PCI-E video card to go over the top.
For this Asus board as far as I can tell there were only two good
options, this Enzo Tech SNB-R1 Rev A and the Swiftech
MCX159-CU. The Swiftech came with a fan and had a slightly
smaller footprint but cost quite a bit more. With the Enzo Tech
even with the cost of the fan I still saved about $10.00. The good
point with these units is that the fan can be replaced easily by
unscrewing two screws instead of having to take the motherboard
out from the case. It also appears that the copper heat sink of
both models being quite substantial can be used without the fan.
The PCI-E video card I used was the Chaintech
Gefore 8600 GT 256 MB DDR3. I picked it because it's short
(about 7") and cheap ($79.00 plus $30 rebate). Not a card for
hardcore gamers but fine for everyone else.
As you can see the video card just fits. Most higher performing
cards being longer and fatter would not have fit with this heat sink
fan, which is fine because the motherboard is already out of production
and "retro" building can be an expensive proposition. However
the "value" system built around it with the socket 939 Athlon
4000 cpu at $43 is just fine for listening to music and general use
for my kids and they're happy.
Antec 4480 case + 380 watt power supply $58
AMD Athlon64 4000+ 2.4G 939 $43
Chaintech Geforce 8600 GT 256 MB DDR3 $49.00 (after rebate)
Arctic Cooling Alphine64 cpu fan $9.99
Corsair 2x1GB DDR400 memory module $68
Enzo Tech Heat Sink $16.50
Scythe 40 mm fan $3.99
Masscool 80 mm case fan $1.99
LG DVD Burner $26.99
Seagate 250 GB SATA2 hard drive $59.99
Windows XP Home OEM $79.99
Of course I already had the motherboard and I didn't include shipping
(I always look for free shipping within my parameters).
