[geeks] Gigabyte MB question

[velociraptor]

On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 11:14 AM,  <nate at portents.com> wrote:
>> As for cooling, I have a Zalman 9700 in mine, and it's overkill by a
>> long shot.  I'm swapping it to a Zalman 7700 with red LEDs (my new
>> case has a side window) since I find the 9700's blue LEDs annoying
>> (and they don't match :-).  Any decent cooler should work fine, though
>> if you want something quiet, go with a 120mm fan.  Zalman's all have
>> the hardware to use on both Intel and AMD sockets (whatever the equiv
>> of the 775 is on the AMD side) and have a very nice two piece mounting
>> plate for the mobo.
>
> I'm not fond of heatsinks that have proprietary fans (Intel OEM or third
> party like Zalman), so my most recent purchase was a Xigmatek Nepartak:

I will agree with Nate on the point about non-standard fans.  As I was
building a second box, and I liked the ease with with the Zalman went
on, I didn't have any issues with buying a second and swapping the two
on my builds.  There is an aftermarket seller offering replacement OEM
Zalman fans in case of failure.  And most folks in this crowd are
savvy and handy enough to hack something up if necessary.

If I was going to start over, I'd probably choose a different cooler.
Though, since I got both at ~$20, it'd need to be close in price to
convince me.  The 7700 is one of the flatter flower types, so it'd be
more appropriate to a low-profile case, and that's the audience to
which it's marketed.

In any case, if you go with a non-stock cooler, check the cooler's
measurements against your motherboard for component clearance.  Any
motherboard with additional heat sinks can be a PITA--and not just for
CPU coolers.  The UD3P has the South Bridge heat sink immediately to
the rear of the PCI slot closest to the CPU.  No PCI-X/PCI card will
fit in that PCI slot due to the additional length of the PCI-X portion
of the card connector.  Good thing my SATA cards are multi-lane. :-/

=Nadine=