Rampage Formula Heatsink

[ragsters]

Has anyone removed the heatsink an reapplied the TIM to the NB and SB? Is it worth it? What are your results?

 

[ausch30]

I did and after reinstalling my NB and SB temps went up. Asus uses a thermal pad under both heat sinks, it's about a millimeter thick (fragile, soft and rubbery; seems to be made of silicon). If you could find a similar, but higher quality, thermal pad then it might be worth it. The NB heatsink screws down but the SB heatsink just uses pins and there isn't enough force on it to make tight connection just using thermal grease. I thought about thermal adhesive but I wanted to make sure that if I decided to take them off again I could. I ended up reapplying AS5 and tightly screwing down the NB sink (so much so that the board has a slight bow to it) Temps really aren't any better than the were originally and I bought a Antec Spot Cool to direct air toward it. I'm still looking for a high quality thermal pad, something with adhesive on both sides would be best. Long story short, unless you have a thermal pad to replace the one that's on there I would say that it's not worth it. The problem I found was that most of the high quality pads were only available for industrial use, I couldn't find anyone that sold to end users.

 

[ragsters]

Which board do you have? In all the forums I have read the rampage formula has thermal pads on the mosfets and thermal paste on the NB and SB. What people usually do is leave the pads and replace the TIM with AS5.

 

[ausch30]

Rampage Formula. They all have the same gray pads. If you look at the heatpipe coming off the NB and follow it up to the little extra set of silver fins toward the upper back of the board, you should see a gray pad in there where they are sitting on top of another heatsink. That's the same pad on the NB and SB.

 

[ragsters]

I don't see the pad you're referring to but the only reason I brought this topic up is because I called Asus complaining about my NB temps and the tech guy is the one who suggested for me to replace the paste with new paste.

 

[ausch30]

Unless they started putting paste on them after I bought mine. I have a feeling he misspoke. I assure you that all the heatsinks on my board had the same thermal pads under them. As I said before though, I bought a Antec Spot Cool and pointed it at the NB and that took care of my temp issues.

I just checked and my NB temp is 36c and the SB is 38c, what are your temps?

 

[ragsters]

I bought an Antec Spot Cool a few days ago as well. The only problem is that there is not enough room in my computer, running CF and a huge cooler, to direct the fan close to the NB.
By the way what are your NB and SB idle and load temps if you don't mind me asking?

 

[ausch30]

The temps above are pretty much idle. The only thing I have running right now is a browser window and utorrent. Load temps are about 48c for the NB and 50c for the SB. NB voltage is 1.26 and FSB is clocked at 1600.

 

[ragsters]

That sounds a little better than me. My NB Voltage is 1.33V with a temperature of 24c above ambient. I am also clocked at 1600 FSB.
My temps used to be a lot higher until i did this.
http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&id=20081117023325500&board_id=1&model=Rampage%20Formula&page=1&count=14

 

[ausch30]

The Spot Cool dropped my temps by about 15c, if you can fit it you should give it a shot. I have a TRUE CPU cooler and a GTX260 and kind of wedged it in between them. It's all plastic so I'm not worried about it touching anything and shorting something out.

 

[ragsters]

I have a X-fi Titanium sound card which is using the pci-xpress 1x so it blocks that area.

 

[ausch30]

Yea that could be an issue. Another option would be a fan I had on my previous board
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102824&tab=summary

It doesn't list the CFM on the site but I remember it was quite a bit higher than any fan of it's size specifically designed for computer use. It's also low profile so it fits under CPU sinks that hang over the NB.

 

[ragsters]

That is what I have done. Check out the link i gave you a few post before. The temps I gave you are after the fan mod.

 

[ausch30]

Nice clean look buy I think you would see better temps with a higher CFM fan. I also think you could drop you NB voltage a little which should also help your temps. I have a Q9650, overclocked to 3.6, FSB 1600 with my NB at 1.26v. I had a E8400 before I bought the Q9650 and was running it at 3.8 on this board with my NB at 1.26v.

 

[ragsters]

That sound like a good idea. Oh and the picture of the fan on top of the NB is not mine that is just what it looks like. I got the idea from him. Besides the fan mod and a few upgrades this is my computer.
http://www.techpowerup.com/gallery/1924.html

 

[ausch30]

Very nice system. How do you like the Cosmos? I love my case (Cooler Master RC 832) but since I bought it they've released some nice cases. I paid $260 for mine though so I can't justify switching. Also I was wondering about your Crossfire scaling. I was going to go with a 4870 but when I bought my video card the GTX260 was cheaper and performance wise it's pretty much a wash. I was thinking of going Crossfire when the new ATI cards come out. My old system had 2 8800GT's SLI'ed and I wasn't completely happy with the scaling but that may have been due to my shitty 680i board.

 

[ragsters]

I am completely happy with the scaling. I get 17500 on 3Dmark 06 with my current overclock of 3.6Ghz from 3.0Ghz on my e8400. With my e8400 overclocked to 4.0 I get over 19000. In terms of games I can play every game I have on max with my screen resolution of 1680 x 1050. That includes crisis. Oh, and I love my cosmos. After all the work and money I put into it for cable management, 7 new fans and powder coating the mobo tray, it is going to be a while before I switch.

 

[ragsters]

Oh, I took out that fan I had on my NB heat sink and put the Antec spot cool fan in there instead in an orientation similar to yours and my NB temp dropped 1c but my south bridge temp dropped about 3c.

 

[ausch30]

Good, glad to hear it