970 chipset gets insanely hot

Oh and forgot to mention. Before returning the fx8320e, I popped it into my friend who is using my old 970 ext3. Putting the chip through its paces via prime95 for a 20 minute test made the northbridge warm, no scorching. The stupidly hot nb heatsink must have been a problem with MSI being as bad as you guys say, and asrock being adventurous and making their matx 970 version.

Infinite66...

...there is always a problem with asking in a forum for help. You get answers thrown at you where you know what you wrote was not even read. You get answers from people that don't know shett. You get some answers from people that have been around and seen a lot. All kinds of answers usually.

Well I am glad you tested and reported back to us. Why? Because there is next to NO way any of us here in the forum that that try and help would ever own any of the motherboards you have tried for FX-8 core cpu. What we have done is run these FX 8 core processors thru the ringer. We bought what we thought would be okay medium level AM3+ motherboards and got bitten every time we really tried to push the cpu. So that has given fair (not perfect) insight into what it really takes to run the FX-8 cores fairly reliably. Then most of us read, read, read and did I say read other forums. We look around and when users in the MSI forum do not recommend anything much less than the 80 series of MSI board for real overclocking, that sort of tlips us off. Not that everyone will have problems, but that the table is laid out for some or even many to have issues.

Most of what we do is to try and guide/steer users away from problems. Do as much as we can when they are in the midst of crap due their hardware and other than that we have to rely on our gut to give help. That is it. I would almost always suggest that say an Asrock user check the Asrock forums first. See if anyone is having the issue they are experiencing. Most of the time more than one has the same problem. A mATX board is an issue looking for a place to rear its ugly head. Too many other forums have posts in them from people wanting to know why there are n0 mATX boards for FX processors and nearly universally, I have heard the refrain that the mobo companies fear not enough real estate around to manage heat issues. True or False? You now are in a better position to perhaps answer that. And again I thank you for reporting back to us what you found after your double checking. Overall, I hope you can get a board that is relatively inexpensive and holdup in your server. Good luck and thanks again.

RGone...

Infinite66 said:

Oh and forgot to mention. Before returning the fx8320e, I popped it into my friend who is using my old 970 ext3. Putting the chip through its paces via prime95 for a 20 minute test made the northbridge warm, no scorching. The stupidly hot nb heatsink must have been a problem with MSI being as bad as you guys say, and asrock being adventurous and making their matx 970 version.

Click to expand...

I have theory of Hot NB temps.

The NB (core) voltage should be 1.1v stock. Often times also called chipset voltage. This is a different voltage from CPU/NB voltage and the chipset or core NB voltage will directly effect that heat output you claim.

We can only imagine what the board is posting the core/chipset voltage while perhaps overclocking ram frequencies. Sometimes leaving voltages on auto becomes a bad thing, may be only directly related to 970 chipsets, maybe not. research here would be required.

Another idea is the heat sink it'self. Location, size, even amount of mass in comparison to other heat sinks of more stout boards, it is kind of small.

NB located above a hot back side of the video card also helps to increase temperatures. theory is heat rises. Video cards easily can run 80c, idle 40c or more, depending on make and model.

In my professional opinion, if the heat sink is hot, it's doing it's job, has good contact but poor dissipation from lack of fresh air flow.

Actively cooling hardware is a must in some circumstances. IE: I have a AM2 server board that suffers from heat. Even the bios chip and PCB gets warm/hot.

Determining WHY it gets hot is simple. It's turned on, power is being passed through in the way of voltage wattage and amps if you will.

Oh me oh my, how many dells and HPs have I come across that ran "hot" for years on end. all stock, just runs hot.

If this was mine, I would be sure to manually set NB core/chipset voltage to 1.1v and see if there would be a change in temperature. Physically monitoring it besides watching software that may or may not be accurate.

And yes, you will get many opinions and facts. Only you can decide what's what and make use of the information provided.

GLHF.

RGone said:

...there is always a problem with asking in a forum for help. You get answers thrown at you where you know what you wrote was not even read. You get answers from people that don't know shett. You get some answers from people that have been around and seen a lot. All kinds of answers usually.

Well I am glad you tested and reported back to us. Why? Because there is next to NO way any of us here in the forum that that try and help would ever own any of the motherboards you have tried for FX-8 core cpu. What we have done is run these FX 8 core processors thru the ringer. We bought what we thought would be okay medium level AM3+ motherboards and got bitten every time we really tried to push the cpu. So that has given fair (not perfect) insight into what it really takes to run the FX-8 cores fairly reliably. Then most of us read, read, read and did I say read other forums. We look around and when users in the MSI forum do not recommend anything much less than the 80 series of MSI board for real overclocking, that sort of tlips us off. Not that everyone will have problems, but that the table is laid out for some or even many to have issues.

Most of what we do is to try and guide/steer users away from problems. Do as much as we can when they are in the midst of crap due their hardware and other than that we have to rely on our gut to give help. That is it. I would almost always suggest that say an Asrock user check the Asrock forums first. See if anyone is having the issue they are experiencing. Most of the time more than one has the same problem. A mATX board is an issue looking for a place to rear its ugly head. Too many other forums have posts in them from people wanting to know why there are n0 mATX boards for FX processors and nearly universally, I have heard the refrain that the mobo companies fear not enough real estate around to manage heat issues. True or False? You now are in a better position to perhaps answer that. And again I thank you for reporting back to us what you found after your double checking. Overall, I hope you can get a board that is relatively inexpensive and holdup in your server. Good luck and thanks again.

RGone...

Click to expand...

Pretty much as you said. I know what to expect when asking a forum for help haha. I originally blamed the "e" series of FX chips because of how hot my matx 970 board was, and how hot my buddy's MSI gaming 970 board was. My thoughts were "There is NO WAY 2 brand new, newer chipset boards should be running this hot". When in reality, the matx was the first of its kind so there were bound to be short comings or problems with shrinking a normally only full ATX chipset down. And until this problem arose, I really didn't believe people and how bad they sad MSI stuff was but holy hell do I believe now. Finally having had the chance to sit down and look at the Gaming 970 board and Asrock 970 ext3, the MSI VRM's are actually physically smaller and even look cheaper. Handling a spare fx-4100 I had laying around, the MSI board's VRM section was still 11C hotter than the EXT3 from asrock. And the ext3 has less phases to boot! MSI, not even once.

No problem with reporting back. Glad to be the guinea pig.

ShrimpBrime said:

I have theory of Hot NB temps.

The NB (core) voltage should be 1.1v stock. Often times also called chipset voltage. This is a different voltage from CPU/NB voltage and the chipset or core NB voltage will directly effect that heat output you claim.

We can only imagine what the board is posting the core/chipset voltage while perhaps overclocking ram frequencies. Sometimes leaving voltages on auto becomes a bad thing, may be only directly related to 970 chipsets, maybe not. research here would be required.

Another idea is the heat sink it'self. Location, size, even amount of mass in comparison to other heat sinks of more stout boards, it is kind of small.

NB located above a hot back side of the video card also helps to increase temperatures. theory is heat rises. Video cards easily can run 80c, idle 40c or more, depending on make and model.

In my professional opinion, if the heat sink is hot, it's doing it's job, has good contact but poor dissipation from lack of fresh air flow.

Actively cooling hardware is a must in some circumstances. IE: I have a AM2 server board that suffers from heat. Even the bios chip and PCB gets warm/hot.

Determining WHY it gets hot is simple. It's turned on, power is being passed through in the way of voltage wattage and amps if you will.

Oh me oh my, how many dells and HPs have I come across that ran "hot" for years on end. all stock, just runs hot.

If this was mine, I would be sure to manually set NB core/chipset voltage to 1.1v and see if there would be a change in temperature. Physically monitoring it besides watching software that may or may not be accurate.

And yes, you will get many opinions and facts. Only you can decide what's what and make use of the information provided.

GLHF.

Click to expand...

I tried this, Kept playing with voltages as far as NB until I was p95 stable. Temps went down maybe 8C by manually setting voltage, but the problem was that the chipset heatsink was still nuclear to the touch and was actually starting to heat up the back of my passively cooled radeon 6450 to the point that it was idling at 55C as compared to its normal 42C. As I mentioned in a prior post, my original plan was to grab the cheapest non MSI 990fx chipset board, but ended up going with a core i3 and H97 asrock board. Encoding times have lengthened, but power consumption, heat output, and overall system noise have drastically decreased. This mini file/print server is in my room and runs 24/7 unless it's down for maintenance. No exaggeration, my room would be 82F when the rest of my house is set for 68F. FX 8 core seems too much to keep running at all times if I sleep in the same room.

Thanks alot for the input though. For sure something I'll keep in mind for future builds.

Infinite66...

Just wanted to let you see what the Chipset voltages looked like in my CHV-Z. Can hold my fingers on the heatsinks as long as I wish to do so.

Years ago I was looking at some occupational ergonomics and it was said a mechanic could only touch 140F for about 2 or 3 seconds. That would be very hot if I could not just lay my fingers on my heat sinks for about as long as I pleased.

Glad you got your situation sorted. I bet that Intel rig will be cooler and quieter in there where you sleep. Good deal man.

F-12'd my bios where chipset voltages are and will just attach for you future FYI.

Luck man.

RGone...

Scalding hot is about 65C and could be perfectly normal for a chipset because my Intel ICH7 south bridge is rated for at least 99C.

larrymoencurly said:

Scalding hot is about 65C and could be perfectly normal for a chipset because my Intel ICH7 south bridge is rated for at least 99C.

Click to expand...

This is not normal for AMD