Cooling the VIA Chipset?

[Cube]

Does it really make any difference to try and cool the northbridge chip? Right now it's got a heatsink on it, but I think I have an extra HSF that is of similar size that I could try to put on..

Would that help me increase the FSB, or is that limited to the processor?

[funnyperson1]

yes, on many motherboards it helps a lot, and even if it doesnt, it doesnt hurt....

[3DMike]

Cooling your northbridge more can certainly make a differenve to how fast teh FSB will run! Depending on your motherboard and chipset of course.

The usual little piece of junk you get on the northbridge is often held down with a smear of dried up silicone paste. Get rid of that right away! Clean the chip surface carefully then look for a better heatsink. This one looks good, but there are others.
http://www.overclockers.com/articles474/ (http://)
I've not tried it yet but as we all know copper is a better conductor of heat than Al. Stick it down with some AS paste, or AS epoxy if you cant use the clips.

On my board I've cut down an old heatsink from a PII and put a thicker fan on it. This helped me get the FSB up to 160MHz, from 143MHz before! A pretty good deal for a little bit of work.

Good luck and clock on!

Mike

[Cube]

Cool, thanks for the info all :)

[Intraveinous]

I couldn't get over 143 with my KK266 until I pulled the lil green meanie off there, cleaned it and the chip real good with IPA, then slathered a bit of AS2 on there and put a 50mm fan on it. I got it to boot @ 170FSB after that. Not stable, but that's 27MHz difference, and it was stable at 165-166... So yeah, it makes quite a difference. I eventually got an old PII Heatsink and hacked it up and epoxied it on with the same 50mm fan haven't had a chip that will go past 103 since that tho. :(
Peace
John

[ozzy0627]

can you post more links...that link did not work for me. I need a chipset cooler also

[batboy]

Cooling the northbridge chip gets very important as you exceed 150 FSB. If you're on a tight budget, remove the greenie heatsink (usually have to pull the mobo out to get to the back side), lap it, then reinstall with Arctic Silver (or other good thermal paste), and finally, add a 40mm fan (like an old recycled 486 CPU fan). I went to a hardware store and found some sheet metal screws the right size and screwed the fan down onto the cooling fins. Works good. Alternatively, if you can spare a few bucks, get a good aftermarket chipset cooler. Here is a pic of my old SE6 mobo. Red arrows indicate my cooling mods. I also added a greenie heatsink to the southbridge and a small wing finned sink to the ICS clock generator.

http://www.fiero.nl/uploads/mobo-mods.jpg

[ozzy0627]

Can you recommend a good chipset cooler? I like the titan chipset cooler on overclockers.com homepage but i cant find where to buy it...........i dont want a blorb becuase i want something that will line up with pin holes, i do not want to epoxy it . Do you know any coolers that would fit via 761 chipset? that is better than the stock one??? Thanks ron