Is it absolutely necessary to use northbridge and southbridge fans on my xfx 680iLT board?

[dug dog]

The fans on this board are VERY noisy and I'd like to replace them but, if I have a fairly hi capacity 120mm fan (the spec says 52 cfm) blowing directly on to the mother board from the side of the case, do I really need some dinky 4 cfm fan attached to the southie chip or northie heat sink?

I'd try it out and monitor the temp but I don't think my board has any sensors for those chips.

I'm running a Q6600 doing audio work, so only intermittent stress and I'm not overclocking.

Thanks a bunch.

 

[CountMike]

They put it there for a reason but fan is only one part of whole story, you may need to change heat spreader to something larger.

 

[dug dog]

Thanks for the response to what is a bit of a dumb question. There's no real way to know the answer. I was rather naively hoping that someone might say something like "Oh yeah, we do that all the time. No probs." or "I tried that once and melted my mobo".

Cheers.

 

[CountMike]

As matter of fact I usually add a small fan or two where needed, VRM and/or North Bridge, those are the ones that heat up most and can shorten MB's life or prevent proper overclock. Without them a much, much larger heatsink would be required.

 

[dug dog]

Thanks, again, Count.