Why bother cooling the north bridge?

donny_paycheck · Nov 28, 2001

Anybody have some hard data or personal experience to lend me? I ask because I was reading here at tom's hardware about several KT266A mobos with only passive heat sinks on their chipsets and I now am wondering why there's a fan on so many of 'em, like mine for instance. I pulled mine off when I got it and replaced the small off-center dab of white goo with as2 cuz I thought it'd help with oc'ing the bus and keeping it stable, but was this even worth the trouble? I had an old PII mobo with the venerable greenie on it but have seen nothing but fans since (mostly) and now there are all these boards with passively cooled chipsets popping up. Anybody know anything about this? Can I rip the fan off and use a passive HS?

Intraveinous · Nov 28, 2001

Had all kinds of problems getting above 143 bus with my KK266 until I pulled the greenie off, cleaned the chip & heatsink with acetone, replaced the white goop with AS II, and threw a 40mm fan on there... After all that, I was able to get to 164 Cas 2, 167 Cas 3 stable, and 170 Cas 3 marginally stable... So yeah... I'd say that active cooling does make a difference.
Peace
John

Sonny · Nov 28, 2001

Check this out. Cooling the northbridge can help you achieve a higher FSB.

proze · Nov 28, 2001

forced-air cooling on the nbridge is definitely a must for higher fsbs. the fan on my northbridge went on the blink periodically with my tbird (in my sig), and the computer would hang. fixed the fan problem with a squirt of q20, and no more lockups. i'm gonna put an old socket 7 heatsink on it when i can get round to it.

some people do even cool it actively with pelts and such like in sonny's post, and it get's them kicka$$ fsbs!

donny_paycheck · Nov 28, 2001

Yeah I was wondering....now I'm wondering why those manufacturers put the passive HSs on their northbridge chips. Looks like I'll be keeping the fan on there.

On another note, I found a cool heatsink at www.cpufx.com today. It's a 40mm cube meant for chipset cooling. Very small and very efficient with a 40mm fan. It'd work better than stock cooling and has a small footprint so it won't interfere with other parts.

That TEC setup sonny posted the picture of is nice. I'm assuming that's before the insulation is put on there or that the TEC is controlled to keep above room temperature. Otherwise that thing'd be soaked in minutes!

WyrmMaster · Nov 28, 2001

With the stock cooling i couldnt get over 145 cas2, 166 was unstable at cas3. I put a big heatsink on there, and look what it does. 166 cas 2-2-2

asmodean · Nov 29, 2001

I wonder if my KT7A would like Alpha PEP66 on the northbridge...

Sonny · Nov 29, 2001

Do you guys have any spare copper that you would like to part with? I'm thinking of making a small heatsink & use the fan of my chrome orb.

Wega! · Nov 29, 2001

Hmm, maybe I should try this on my 8K7A. Has anybody done it on this board, and what was the result?

ButcherUK · Nov 29, 2001

sonny said:
Do you guys have any spare copper that you would like to part with? I'm thinking of making a small heatsink & use the fan of my chrome orb.

www.metalsupermarkets.com will sell you a small quanitity of copper for a reasonable price. Found them while looking for Al sheet, most other places were like "all orders from 400Kg to 10 tonnes" etc.

donny_paycheck · Nov 29, 2001

"Yes I'd like a 200kg cube of 6061 Al for my GPU please."

So thanks to everybody for answering my northbridge question in about 387987 different ways. Now I'm wondering about the southbridge....should it be cooled at all? It does thePCI bus, IDE bus and all the other slow peripherals right? So this shouldn't be as critical a component should it?

ButcherUK · Nov 29, 2001

donny_paycheck said:
"Yes I'd like a 200kg cube of 6061 Al for my GPU please."

Yeah the other one I saw was for sheet it;s often sold per 100m^2 and stuff.... I bought about 1m^2 in the end and that's a lot of Al

Intraveinous · Nov 29, 2001

No where near as crucial to cool it as the northbridge, CPU, and GPU, but hey, it can't hurt right??? When I replaced the greenie on my mobo with a chunk of a Xeon heatsink, I stuck the greeny on the south bridge for giggles. Can't say I've noticed anything from it, but it's a better storage place than my top desk drawer...

At least its doing SOMETHING on the southbridge

Just stuck it on there with 4 dots of superglue and a tiny drip of ASII.
peace
John

donny_paycheck · Nov 29, 2001

I've got some passive tiny chip coolers that I got from 1coolpc a while ago....I'll try this. I got some AS thermal epoxy too....expensive ($13!!!) but it's good stuff. Super glue and AS2 in the middle....now that's an idea my man! WTF didn't I think of that??!

Sonny · Nov 29, 2001

SuperGlue in the corners & ASII is not a good idea from experience. Your goin to need fair bit of compression to get the heat to transfer properly & no matter how you try there will be a thick layer of ASII that WILL act as insulation. AS Thermal Epoxy is your best bet. If you want to remove it for some reason that I can't think of a 1:1 mix of Epoxy & ASII should do the trick.

Sonny · Nov 29, 2001

ButcherUK - Thanks for the link. The biggest problem that I have is the shipping. It's still cheaper for me to just buy a ready made one

Would have been nice to build it myself.

Intraveinous · Nov 29, 2001

Right... I used it for the southbridge cuz I didn't see it as being crucial.. Also, anything I epoxy/glue on ends up in a vice overnight, so I think it got enough compression as it dried. Plus, started with a very small dab of ASII spread out to where I was putting the superglue. I've never tried the superglue method on anything that actually makes a lot of heat so I dunno if the vice treatment alleviates the insulation of a think layer of ASII, but I think it would at least work better than someone who just slathered the crap on there and then stuck the heatsink down and let it sit for 20 minutes or somethign like that...
Anyway, disclaimers apply for the ASII in the middle, superglue at the corners method of mounting Heatsinks...
Peace
John

wolfsid · Nov 29, 2001

sonny said:
Check this out. Cooling the northbridge can help you achieve a higher FSB.

you want to Get it even colder I would put a cold plate between the pelter and chipset, cuz pelters really dont transfer heat that well... I have a 72 watt pelter on both gpu and chipset and its make a big difference in overlcocking...

hack the planet..

The Overclocker · Nov 29, 2001

i have not removed my fan on the kt133A, most of the fans on the mobos run at 5 volts and are silent. i did however replace the small dop of paste with artic silver

wolfsid · Nov 29, 2001

the overclocker said:
i have not removed my fan on the kt133A, most of the fans on the mobos run at 5 volts and are silent. i did however replace the small dop of paste with artic silver

wrong most of the mobo fan connection are 12 volt they are quiet because they are low in rpm and the fans are small... I would use either a waterblock with a coldplate and 72 watt pelter or a nice copper heatsink for the gpu or chipset...

hack the planet...

Why bother cooling the north bridge?

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