heatsinks on northbridges/chipsets

[eccerr0r]

Has anyone messed with the heatsink/fans on northbridges?

Well, they're there for a reason but anyone know what kinds of reversable/unreversable damage can happen when the heatsink or thermal compound fails?

And which NB have you had experience with?

[shadow]

Re: heatsinks on northbridges/chipsets

Not too sure what you are looking for. However I used to own a AMD Athlon based system (Socket A) and the motherboard included a small tiny 40mm fan that squealed (since it ran so fast to push the little air it could). I decided to disconnect and remove it. Nothing bad happened to it, I did make sure the chipset was not overheating at the start. I had decent airflow and as such I never had an issue. The motherboard was a Gigabyte GA-7VA. The chipset was a VIA KT400. Later revisions of the same motherboard ended up having passive heatsinks on the chipset.

[mariushm]

Re: heatsinks on northbridges/chipsets

Northbridges usually consume about 8-12 watts and they dissipate about 2-4 watts of heat.
The chipset dissipates half a watt to a watt through the motherboard and the bga balls but they usually need heatsinks to dissipate the rest.

Some chipsets needed actively cooled heatsinks because they had integrated video cards but generally no fan is required.

As for what consequence you'd have for not actively cooling? Chipsets usually have thermal protection so you may get system shutting down.. if not, you may get corrupted transfers between cpu and video card or other cards ... corrupt transfers between northbridge and southbridge (which handles sata, ide etc)...

[SuperDuty]

Re: heatsinks on northbridges/chipsets

I would put an active heatsink over any nVidia based chipset, as they're notorious for overheating. A large heatsink that gets a good airflow might do the trick as well.
And yes, most chipsets with integrated video will run hotter.

Some very old chipsets didn't need any cooling, I have some i815 boards like that. But the i815EP (with video) all have passive cooling.
I don't think any chipsets younger than Pentium III have no heatsink actually.

[ratdude747]

Re: heatsinks on northbridges/chipsets

I usually recompound the heatsinks on any lower quality boards... I never did on my workstation boards...

[Topcat]

Re: heatsinks on northbridges/chipsets

^
It still dries out.......scrape that older crud off and butter them up with arctic silver....that'll last the life of the board. I've scraped plenty of dried out compound off high end boards....they still use the junk goop.

[eccerr0r]

Re: heatsinks on northbridges/chipsets

I have that Gigabyte board (with a large passive heatsink on its northbridge) that seems to crash randomly or consistently hang in BIOS (cold boot too). I was wondering if the heatsink compound in it ended up drying up causing hangs, and whether or not redoing is worth it, or has the damage been done - no heatsink fixing would bring the board back to life. Plus whether or not this was the problem with the board to begin with...

[ratdude747]

Re: heatsinks on northbridges/chipsets

^
It still dries out.......scrape that older crud off and butter them up with arctic silver....that'll last the life of the board. I've scraped plenty of dried out compound off high end boards....they still use the junk goop.

great... looks like another AS5 party at RD's...

[Sweet & Spicy]

Re: heatsinks on northbridges/chipsets

great... looks like another AS5 party at RD's...

Hey, if it's a party, can I join you?

[ben7]

Re: heatsinks on northbridges/chipsets

Yeah I'd say they need a heatsink, though sometimes they don't, depending on how hot the chipset is allowed to get before being damaged, and how much power it dissipates. Some are rated up to 125C, some are only 70C.

Oh, and be careful on the ones with the exposed silicon die, be gentle with those, especially when taking the heatsink on and off.

[momaka]

Re: heatsinks on northbridges/chipsets

All of the i865 heat sinks I've seen on Dell PCs are inadequate. With the case sides closed, those things can go as high as 60C, or possibly even more. Good thing most of them used leaded solder. I usually put a small 40 mm fan running at 7V. It's virtually silent at that voltage and the temperatures always drop by at least 10C.

The ATI Southbrdiges that come with the Xpress 200 NB are often left without heat sinks by some motherboard manufacturers, and they usually run about 50C idle. On those, I always add a simple heat sink when I can. That usually brings down the temperatures by at least 5C. If there is good airflow in the case, it can be as much as 15C.

And when the motherboard seems to have way too many hot running parts (be it chipset heat sinks or MOSFETs or coils) I just mount a 120 mm fan pointing at the motherboard and that takes care of everything.

[kc8adu]

Re: heatsinks on northbridges/chipsets

i remember in the abit bx days when i would recap the board some were still a bit twitchy.
the heatsinks turned out to be anything but flat.a dab of compound would get them 100% 24/7/365 stable.

[c_hegge]

Re: heatsinks on northbridges/chipsets

Some of the new B85 and H87 boards also have pretty miniscule heat sinks on the chipsets. On some, it's basically just a thick slab with no fins The chipsets get too hot to touch, even when the PC isn't doing anything.