When we get to the subject of ABIT and northbridge coolers I have something to contribute.
Late November 2005 someone posted the following question in a Usenet newsgroup.
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>
>> Where Can I Get a Chipset Fan for Abit KR7A? I'd appreciate any
>> suggestions.
>>
To which someone replied:
>And I'd get a passive cooler too.
And I then wrote:
Definitely!!!
After corrupting three hard drives I concluded my ABIT KR7A-133R was somehow flawed. I bought an ABIT AT7MAX2 which after eight months would not boot any more. I received three!!! replacement (repaired/refurbished) boards which all failed to boot after a short while. Although well within the warranty period out of pure desperation/frustration I then bought a Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2 rev2 which does OK ever since although moving my completely installed OS's to this board gave rise to extensive problems. Mainly caused by a later by Microsoft admitted defect in (my language version of) Windows XP which meant that I could not perform a Repair Install. This turned out to be fixed in the SP2 edition and they sent me a copy of this version. That one worked fine. Problem solved (@#$%^&* morons).
However... during all the testing of the AT7MAX2 boards I had the need to test components in another main board so I used the flawed but not completely defective KR7A-133R. I then discovered that the northbridge cooler did not spin up. ABIT sent me a replacement and I started using the board again in a non-critical configuration. The board functioned perfectly for three or four months when the cooler began making squeaking noises when the computer was turned on. Same problem again. ABIT sent me another which did the same after a couple of months. Being fed up with this after three!!! coolers and ABIT not having a passive cooler replacement (they did not even know whether this was possible for this board) I did some research and among others came across this review of the Zalman ZM-NJ47J .
http://www.myworldhardware.com/v4/ar...D=75&Page_ID=1
Read it and do as I did and buy one of these. You'll see in the test that on an ABIT board it outperformed the standard cooler.
It's been on my board for 1/2 to 3/4 year now without any problems.
(That was then. Now it's been in use for about 2.5 years. It's in the computer I now use the most - for accessing the Internet - and on which I am typing this now.)
I have spent months on all the problems with the boards that replaced this one when in the end it turns out all of this was unnecessary. If only ABIT had fitted this MB with an adequate cooling option or, when I reported the problems with this board, if they only would have had the knowledge to recognise the problems as possibly being related to this cooling issue. It would have saved me so much time and frustration and money. If I'd tell the whole story it would take several pages - suffice it to say that currently I am not on speaking terms with ABIT.
Good luck.
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My advice.... Go for a passive cooling option whenever possible.
No moving parts so less complex so less that can go wrong and therefore so much more reliable.
