Thermaltake Extreme Spirit II chipset cooler on Abit AW8D 975x motherboard

[eva2000]

Funny with all this conroe/DDR2 talk, had an itch to see if i can figure out the issues with AW8D and fsb limits.

Folks say NB chipset cooling for LGA775 is the key to high fsb, so decided to try a Thermaltake Extreme Spirit II chipset cooler on the NB chipset. Bought 2 of these coolers from i4memory.com sponsor Mittoni.com.au http://www.mittoni.com.au/extreme-sp...er-p-2318.html

Fits just right for video card, and Swiftech G4 Storm waterblock and even has allowance for Maze4 GPU waterblocks' mounting bolts which extend out by ~25mm from the back of the video card. The orientation pictured below will allow the Maze4 GPU waterblocks' bolts to extend out without touching the chipset cooler

Full pics posted at http://i4memory.com/reviewimages/mot...SpiritII/html/

Preview pics:

The Thermaltake Extreme Spirit II cooler on top of existing Abit AW8D heatpipe passive heatsink to show how it would look in it's place. Also seems the stock heatpipe heatsink's TIM doesn't even properly contact the chipset core or is it meant to be that way ?

Please note, this Abit AW8D is an early engineering sample so might not reflect the final retail product.



The larger heatsink connected to the heatpipe located near IO connectors is covering some mosfets. So removing the passive heatpipe, you would need to find another heatsink to cover these. Luckily, I found just the right heatsink off my old Asus P4G8X chipset heatsink measuring 42mm x 42mm. Even luckier is the fact I have double sided TIM adhesive tape which measures nearly the same size too!





Thermaltake Extreme Spirit II chipset cooler even comes with a circular foam piece for smaller chipset cores to prevent crushing the core! Here's it fully installed on Abit AW8D.



Haven't booted the system up yet so will find out if it helps higher FSB as well as lower temps