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AMD Northbridge Heatsinks

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Doner

Registered
Joined
Mar 1, 2014
Location
Missoula
So I think the Northbridge heatsink on the AsRock Fatal1ty 990FX is junk and is causing other temps to be affected and would like to replace it.

I was looking for help, either threads, or links to solutions.

Here is a link to the board: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157479

I am looking at the picture that shows the back of the board. The heatsink for the NB has two offset screws. Finding a heatsink that works has proven to be difficult.

Edit: Blaylok provided this thread from another thread: http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7497410&postcount=27

Hopefully he finds this thread and can chime in on what NB chipset he has and whether is will work on mine?
 
We really haven't seen but one user of the Asrock Fatal1ty 990FX KILLER board in the forum. I have the Asrock Fatal1ty 990FX Professional board and the sinks look similar and I have had zero issues with the NB temps even when over 5.4Ghz.

I will say this though and most of us that run an 8 core FX processor have found that when we have moved to Water Cooling that the loss of the overflow air from an air cooler cpu cooler has necessitated that we get air flow back on the VRM mainly and some back toward the NB heat sink. The heat from the VRM is what has been the big booger bear for all of us. I have a 90mm fan blowing on my VRMs and of course some gets to the NB, but it was cooling the VRM after moving to W/C that did me the very most good.
RGone...ster.
 
Doner, did you try mounting a fan to the existing northbridge heatsink/socket area yet?
 
Doner, did you try mounting a fan to the existing northbridge heatsink/socket area yet?

I did. Johan45 showed me a picture of his 50mm fan on the backside of his socket. So I put one there AND on the Northbridge. The fan sits on the graphics card and is twist tied in place!! The result wasn't as good as I wanted, but the socket temp stayed below 70C.
 
The after market HS I've used on a couple different rigs now is the Deep Cool NBridge8. Deep cool has many other products but this one was available from my local Microcenter. Whats good and bad about the NB8...

Good
Dual heatpipe
Fanless
adjustable mounting(I rotated mine 90deg and super glued the arms)
copper

Bad
adjustable arms(can be a pain to get just right)
large tower(depening on config might interfere with CPU HSF and or GPU)
when installing on MSI 970A-g65 NB8 felt loose so I had to fabricate plastic spacers to get proper holding pressure.

That heatsink looks sick and I'd love to put it on my board but I haven't been able to find it for sale!?
 
I saw that one hope it works.

I'm planning on it NOT working. I can already see the holes don't line up and I'm envisioning some pretty nasty hack jobs to get it to stay in place. I'm already dreading this. I don't think I'll have time until this weekend.

I'm planning on removing the H100i but leaving it mounted to the board. I just need to remove the board enough to remove those two screws from the heatsink and mount the new one.
 
Well I couldn't wait. It wasn't too bad an install. I made every mistake and still got her done in under an hour. There was no thermal paste on the heat sink but a grey thermal pad.

The end result: Suck!! Its like I didn't do anything. I don't have a NB temp so I can't see if that went down but I can tell that no temp went down. Now its off to a new Mobo.
 

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The after market HS I've used on a couple different rigs now is the Deep Cool NBridge8. Deep cool has many other products but this one was available from my local Microcenter. Whats good and bad about the NB8...

Good
Dual heatpipe
Fanless
adjustable mounting(I rotated mine 90deg and super glued the arms)
copper

Bad
adjustable arms(can be a pain to get just right)
large tower(depening on config might interfere with CPU HSF and or GPU)
when installing on MSI 970A-g65 NB8 felt loose so I had to fabricate plastic spacers to get proper holding pressure.
I tried using something similar one time and stupidly was the only time I ever shorted out a Mobo and killed a system.

:bang head

Was more my fault than the HS with the mounting screws, just be careful how you mount those things.

It's actually a pretty nice little Thermaltake copper I've never used after that with a mounted fan, I used screws that were too long at the time and it shorted to the mobo first start up, felt it might have a curse on it so I never tried it again, he he.
 
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Well after a 20 Minute Prime95 run the socket only hit 68C!! So maybe I gained a C but it could totally be a decrease in ambient. I'm still calling it not worth it.

So is there a quick consensus on the overclockers board of choice for the FX 8320? Sabertooth over Crosshair V? Or can I get the AsRock Extreme and save some money?
 

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So is there a quick consensus on the overclockers board of choice for the FX 8320? Sabertooth over Crosshair V? Or can I get the AsRock Extreme and save some money?
It all depends on what you want to do with it. If you're just looking for a mild OC to 4.4- 4.5ish then the board you have is fine. If you're looking to see how far the chip goes and want a board we know works, Asus Sabertooth, Asrock EXt 9 in that order. The Gigabyte 970a UD3 and 990Fxa UD3 will work also but there are problems with different revisions of them so it will all depend on which one you get. Rev 3.0 is an absolute no no on the 990FXa UD3. A CHV will work also but it's only if you plan on going to extreme cooling, ie sub ambient.
 
And what will those boards get me? Another 300 MHz? I guess now its whether another two hundred bones is worth the extra couple hundred megahertz. I wanted to eventually go to a custom water loop but if what I have is working now I guess I'll have to wait.

I appreciate everyone's help and to those who said my socket temp wouldn't be affected by lowering NB temp is right. But I guess I don't even know if I did that without a NB temp gauge. Either way my little experiment didn't work.
 
Well it's tough to answer that question yes the "boards" are powerful enough for you to push far. I know of people that have pushed the 8350's on really really good cooling to mid to upper 5ghz on the Sabertooth, here's an example, and Extreme 9 boards. The Gigabyte boards I'm sure can if you get a good revision but they are really tough to recommend because of the issues they have had.

The other issue is, will the 8320 go higher? Most likely yes but you will only know by trying. The other issue is cooling, I have seen the double radiator closed loop systems take 83xx chips to 4.7-4.8 stable but some chips need a ton of voltage when you really start pushing on them, so again you will not know till it is tried. Sorry I can't be more specific but every chip is different and some just will not do really high clocks, not saying this is the case for you, but you never know till you try.
 
The 990fx Sabertooth is basically the same board as the CHV from what I've seen, without all the bells and whistles.
 
The question in my feeble mind...

...is this. Doner's signature says this >> FX-8320 4.5GHz >> now if that is for real what is the actual purpose of a new motherboard with only an H100i as AiO cooler on an FX-8320 going to do? Where will a $180.00 ish or so motherboard get the purchaser to? A hundred Mhz more with stabillity. And everyone of those VRM tricks that most of us do to lower the socket/cpu temp; will certainly have to be accomplished to keep the socket/VRM temps down even on a good Sabertooth 990FX mobo just as I have to do on my good CHV mobo.

Now if he just wants to buy a new motherboard...have at it. Spend the money, but I don't want Doner to think it will be a magical purchase since nothing really points to that FX-8320 taking off like a rocket on something other than the Asrock 990FX Killer. It is not going to happen in real life, anymore than buying a NB cooler is going to lower socket temps.
RGone...
 
...is this. Doner's signature says this >> FX-8320 4.5GHz >> now if that is for real what is the actual purpose of a new motherboard with only an H100i as AiO cooler on an FX-8320 going to do? Where will a $180.00 ish or so motherboard get the purchaser to? A hundred Mhz more with stabillity. And everyone of those VRM tricks that most of us do to lower the socket/cpu temp; will certainly have to be accomplished to keep the socket/VRM temps down even on a good Sabertooth 990FX mobo just as I have to do on my good CHV mobo.

Now if he just wants to buy a new motherboard...have at it. Spend the money, but I don't want Doner to think it will be a magical purchase since nothing really points to that FX-8320 taking off like a rocket on something other than the Asrock 990FX Killer. It is not going to happen in real life, anymore than buying a NB cooler is going to lower socket temps.
RGone...

LMAO!

I agree and don't see myself spending the money for the slight gain in Mhz. It runs everything I need perfectly. I just get caught up in the component race and think I've hit my ceiling for now. Next build will be a different story!

And what do you mean for real? I actually was able to bump the multiplier to 20.5 and volts to 1.3875 with offset of +100mV for a 4.612 freq.

I uploaded my OC settings and the Prime95 was earlier but at 4.5
 

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FX-8320 4.5GHz = For real, now in use, does that speed stable and so forth. That is what for real means.

Looking at your capture in Post #22 above the 225 x 20.5 should actually be a speed of 4.6125Ghz which is even faster than 4.5Ghz on the FX-8320.
RGone...ster.
 
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