nForce4 is a silent PC nightmare

26.06.'05 - 16:52 | Are you thinking of a quiet PC? Then do not buy any MOBO with nForce4.

It is confirmed that nVidia nForce4 chipset is almost impossible to cool passively. There are several boards like GA K8N Ultra-9 that has only passive heat sink on it, but do not be fooled. nForce4 has temperature 36-40C even when PC is shut off (variing with room temperature around 25C). This is pretty horrible, and things get ever worse when it starts. Temperature imediately increases to something around 70C even it is cooled with 8cm fan blowing on 1200rpm from case side directly to it. Without it I gave up on 95C. Even thought you can say temperature does not mater, it does - it indicates that the chipset has very high consumption and a lot of waste power, that is increasing temperature in your case = increasing fan speed = noise.

Update 10.12.2005: Today I found sensor that is "showing" chipset temperature is laying, in my case it shows almost all the time temperature 71C, by measurnemt with calibrated thermometer I found this si completely wrong. The temperature rasises from 56C to 95C and it is still reporting 71C.

As AMD-64 CPUs are now kings in low power consumption / their computing power, nForce4 wastes everything you save with CPU.

I have to say, that same applies for nVidia graphics cards. I bought one with passive cooling, but it is getting warm soon, doing nothing.  When under load it is also going hot quickly.

Conclusion is: nVidia products are cooling and silent PC nightmare.