Yes! ...while you put considerably more effort to the topic with even (IMHO) destroying the beauty of the case itself. Without any real need to do so, as nortbridge-chips are known hotrunners and should easily take temps around 70ºC for extended periods of time without any danger of dammage.
But, as you said: to each his own.
Does this look hamfisted ? Ugly ? Unattractive ? Non-standard ?
Current case ambient temp is 34°C / 93.2F. Northbridge diode is at 58°C
Regardless of the Northbridge chip's published operating temperatures 70°C plus is too hot for such a confined space and results in an overall temperature increase around the CPU A area.
The SATA powered fan I have installed is an
Ainex OMEGA Typhoon CFZ10-6010S mm x 60mm x 60mm and is angled down towards the NB heatsink.
It is rated for 3,500 RPM @ 16.14 CFM and is silent due to it's magnetic bearing design.
The 4,1 / 5.1Northbridge diode heatsink's nylon spring retaining rivets surely don't like being at 70°C + for extended periods eg: 10 years for the 2009 4,1. and by comparison the 4,1 / 5,1's heatsink is much, much smaller and therefore much less efficient than the 2008 cMP's heatsink.
2008 cMP Northbridge heatsink
============================================================
The LED drive activity light is extremely useful. It runs from my Samsung 970 EVO ( boot disk ) M.2 PCIe adaptor.
It shows me when the 970 EVO is actually doing something, especially at boot up.
DVD drive doors taped open :
I use an ASUS external DVD drive powered by TWO usb cables standard. Therefore I no longer need internal DVD drives. I have removed the DVD drives housing - a SanDisk Ultra 3D SSD drive now lives in there Velcro taped to the case rear wall. the result is a greatly increased airflow to the PSU fan.
The stock PSU incidentally also seems to run hot despite having been torn apart and thoroughly de-dusted.
My 4,1>5,1 cMP is now ready for `whatever summer 2020 can throw at it.
I RE-ITERATE .. the side cover shown above is from a 2,1 cMP
NOTE 1 : If the weather is extremely hot I use a
VL805 2 port PCIe USB 3.0 card ( supported by Mojave 10.14.6 ) to power two other USB powered fans - one is for the Samsung M.2 970 EVO. The other is for RAM banks 1 ~ 4 in front of CPU A. As summer has peaked here in Japan I m not using them at the moment.
NOTE 2 Since may 2019 I have done exhaustive research and testing of the available options leading to substantial, effective Northbridge diode operating temp reductions. Gradually I came to understand that there are two main factors.
1. De-dusting not only all the case plus fans but also
ALL of the cMP 'cheesegrater holes" as well.
2. The stock 4,1 / 5,1 Northbridge heatsink was '
shoehorned ' into the CPU tray and appears to be a 'space
saving compromise by Apple at the time. It could have been designed to work more effectively.
There
IS space available to extend the heatsink heat dissipation fins.
Consider what 10 years ( 2009 cMP ) of
70°C plus does to the Northbridge heatsink NYLON rivets ?
Also, if one
DOES have to replace one or both ( better) rivets then the CPU heatsink must be removed and it's retainer bolts correctly tensioned . . not for the faint heated I wholeheartedly assure you.
Currently I consider this " cooling" project 99.9% successfully completed. My 41>5,1 now runs cooler in every area in hot weather.
The only future change I will be making will be to replace the current Apple PSU fan with a
Noctua NF-A12x2 120mm fn with the
Noctua NA-FX1 inline PWM power controller. I will make a separate thread regarding this process in the near future.
The naysayers obviously have yet to have their dual cpu tray fail for whatever reason.