North? South? Bridge what's that?

[meionm]

Can somebody explain to me what does north and south birdge do on Ic7 max 3 board, which of them south or noth is responssible for memory frequency and volts, I put a heat sink on south bridge and during tests it gets extremly hot is it normal?, if I would change cooler on northbirdge would I get better performance? I would appreciate any input

 

[daniel_dynasty]

okay.. you have all the good items but you dont know what a nb and sb is on a mobo? pentium 3.Oc 15x283-------1.7v
abit IC7 max 3
2x512 ocz 4400-----5:4-----2.5-4-3-5-----2.7v
3x HD = 440gb
antec 550 watt psu
sapphrine 9800 pro--------486/351-------1.6v

knowing that u shud. nb shud be slightly larger than the sb. shud have a hs on it.

 

[meionm]

My setting are good but I want it to be better something has to be overheating either south or northbridge when I hit 275 with ocz pc 4400 it only good for a while when is idle, it usually lasts 30min or one stage in UT2004 before it fails when I increase the voltage for memory it's even worse, I am running my memory in 5:4 setting 283 but when I do 275 1:1 it freezes no matter what I do, especially when I increase volts for memory, I was thinking on replacing abit stock heat sink with something else like water block but how do I attach it no holes, I guess wire will do


I don't know why is the south bride so hot that can burn your hand, why I am worring becase on my last board before it burned I saw smoke coming out of the south bridge although it was different maker

 

[Sjaak]

The northbridge on your motherboard is the big chip closest to the CPU and RAM slots, with a heatsink and fan on it. the NB is responsible for the traffic between CPU, RAM, VGA and southbridge. In your case, also your onboard network.

The southbridge is close to the PCI slots, its smaller and has no heatsink. The SB is responsible for all I/O traffic, PCI slots, HDD / FDD and s-ata traffic.


To come to your problem: have you tested your systems' prime stability? If not, use search on the forums to find a good guide on how to test stability.

 

[batboy]

The southbridge does get warm on the IC7, but I've never noticed mine being burning hot though. I have installed a good heatsink on the southbridge chip, plus on the clock generator chip (PLL) and on the mosfets (the Max 3 has OTES cooling for the mosfets, so you don't need to do that).

The northbridge cooling could stand to use improvement if you are running FSB above 275 MHz and/or high vcore. If you really want to watercool the northbridge, there are special waterblocks that use the wire clips. However, I have found that with good modded northbridge air cooling, you don't really need water cooling on that chip.

Here are three threads that deal with modding the northbridge cooling. The last link was how I modded my previous IC7 mobo. My current mobo uses a lapped Tiger 2 heatsink with a Sunon high speed 40mm fan (see last pic).

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=200341

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=232320

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=245363

Here is a pic of my mobo before the northbridge mod. Red arrows are mosfet sinks, yellow arrow is clock generator sink, and blue arrow is the southbridge sink.

This pic shows current mobo mounted in the case with the northbridge mod completed.

 

[Sjaak]

@ batboy

Is the NB HSF that bad? IMO it looks a good performer. Big surface, nice fan. Did the mod help you regarding temps / overclock?. Also, how did you attach the southbridge heatsink?

 

[meionm]

thanks batboy, I put a tiny heatsink which got really hot, soon after I added a fan everthing is holding together on epoxy I also put a 80mm fan in front of northbridge

 

[batboy]

@ batboy

Is the NB HSF that bad? IMO it looks a good performer. Big surface, nice fan. Did the mod help you regarding temps / overclock?. Also, how did you attach the southbridge heatsink?

There are two versions of coolers on the IC7. The first one was pretty wimpy. The second one that looked like the old orb coolers is actually pretty decent. However, for high FSB overclocking and high voltages, it's wise to upgrade the northbridge cooling. For those with something like a 3.0C Northwood, then don't bother. I'm talking 280+ FSB. Also, of the three IC7 mobos I've had, one of them had a N/B cooler that was not making full contact with the chip.

On my first IC7 that I modded with a Zalman heatsink, it knocked down several degrees load system temp. With my 2.4C, I was able to get a couple more FSB out of it as a result. Admittedly, not a lot, but when we are after every ounce of gain, it did help a little. This Tiger 2 was only good for a couple of degrees drop.

I attached the southbridge sink using Arctic Silver epoxy. I'm using Microcool heatsinks.

 

[Sjaak]

[....]

I had considered changing it, but after i took it off i examined it and i found it pretty good. The fan is a little noisy, but i doubt if any mod will provide much better cooling. I will do some modding on the SB and clockgenerator later this holiday.