New build screw up and question

[foolycooly]

Hey guys,

putting together a new system build right now and made a mistake that is going to screw with cooling severely I think. I purchased the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 pro to couple with my i5 processor on an ASUS board. The mounting system for the CPU cooler has a sort of pushpin configuration. Once these pins are in they are extremely difficult if not impossible to remove.


In my stupidity, I mounted the bracket the wrong direction. Instead of air coming into the heatsink from the front and exhausting out the back, I have it mounted so that the air comes from the bottom of the case and exhausts out the top. On first though this didn't seem bad and since it's nearly impossible to remove the pins, I could not reconfigure the heatsink's orientation. However, when I went to install the video card (just a 4670...this is not a gaming machine) I noticed that it only leaves about a 2" gap between the GPUs PCB and the intake fan. This means that it will be pulling heat directly off of the card and into the heatsink...far from optimal.

My question is, can I install my 4670 in the second of two pcie 16x slots? In my motherboard manual it says that for best performance with a single card setup, use the first pcie16x slot (the one close the the cpu). Will there be any performance difference by using the second slot instead of the first one?

I own the ASUS P7P55 LX mobo:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131604

Thanks for any help!


EDIT: It should be known that I do not plan on overclocking this PC. Maybe i'm making too big of a deal out of this since the 4670 won't generate much heat anyway?


Another EDIT to include picture.

 

[dpaul8]

What case do you have? If the case has a top exhaust fan, I would try it as it is and monitor the temperatures using HWMonitor. I suspect it will be fine in this situation.

 

[foolycooly]

I have the cm 690...no top exhaust fan included, but I planned on removing the one included on the side panel and relocating it up top as an exhaust.

 

[foolycooly]

Well everything else went smoothly and the PC posted. Now I'm having a problem with the heatsink fan itself. When I first hit the power button, the fan spins a couple of times then stops. Every other fan (case fans, GPU fan) spins just fine and the computer posts quickly.

After adjusting the RAM timings and voltages to spec, i rebooted and the splash screen flashed "CPU Fan Error!". I'm wondering if this means that the motherboard can tell that the actual CPU_FAN slot on the mobo is dead? or if it can tell that the cpu fan itself is not functioning.

Is there such a thing as a 4-pin to 3-pin adapter that I can use to test the fan? or am I better off asking for a replacement from Arctic Cooling.

Thanks again.

 

[foolycooly]

system up and running with a new fan...even with the messed up orientation the i5 is idleing around 19c at stock timings. Great stuff.

 

[dpaul8]

Glad to hear it all worked out fine for you. The i5 is a great little processor, and ASUS makes great motherboards. I know you will enjoy your new computer. Good Luck!