# Northbridge temperature question



## Black Panther (Feb 27, 2008)

The last time I ran my pc with the side off, I touched the NB heatsink and nearly burnt my fingers.

Is it normal for it to be so hot?
Is there a program which can be used to measure NB temperature?

I'm afraid that perhaps it's over-volting. When I oc'd this rig like 8 months ago, I had left the NB volt in the bios on auto. And it's been like that since.

I have no idea what voltage I should put it for my P5B. I was afraid to meddle with the voltage since I didn't know.


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## Rapid (Feb 27, 2008)

If its on auto the BIOS might have volted it up to a level that it thinks is ok, but perhaps operating a little too hot ( I cant tell without a temp reading  ). It might be worth you trying to lower the voltage if you think its operating too hot, or if its all working ok, perhaps buying a fan for it? or a better fanless solution, I did similar to mine, it burnt my fingers also so i bought a 60mm fan and plugged it into the NB header on the mobo and it runs nice and cool now.

At the end of the day if its running all smoothly with no crashes or errors then its obviously operating within acceptable limits. But to my mind it depends on how long you want the board to last. The more heat, the less time it will last (Generally..)


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## Mediocre (Feb 27, 2008)

i THINK the default is 1.15? Not sure. The last few boards i've been through have had the NB hot to the touch. Asus PCPRobe will give you a motherboard temp, not sure if thats the northbridge.
Even with a chipset block in my loop, my still runs mid 30's idle to mid 40's load...into the 50's during the summer.
I fried a recent asus board by running 1.75V through the nb. That lasted about a month


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## phanbuey (Feb 27, 2008)

erm... i used to have a p5b and they do get really hot (as do the Gigabytes)... for better OC i used double sided tape on the little piece of the heatsink that says "ASUS" on it, and just stuck a 80mm fan on it, worked wonders.

You dont wanna mess with lowering the voltage as it may make ur rig unstable, and the heatsink will heat up anyways, all it will do is take it 5 mins longer to reach the same temp.  Just use some mounting tape and stick an 80mm or 60mm on it.


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## Rapid (Feb 27, 2008)

phanbuey said:


> erm... i used to have a p5b and they do get really hot (as do the Gigabytes)... for better OC i used double sided tape on the little piece of the heatsink that says "ASUS" on it, and just stuck a 80mm fan on it, worked wonders.



Exactly what i have done to my gigabyte  well with a 60mm fan


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## Black Panther (Feb 27, 2008)

Phanbuey: I liked your suggestion very much. However there's one issue which I realised as soon as I had a quick look - my zalman. As you can see it pretty much covers part of the NB. There's no way I could squeeze a fan in there...


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## intel igent (Feb 27, 2008)

a 40mm x 10mm/20mm should fit on there nicely. i have 1 on my N/B (p4p800 but its the same HSF) and it does help 

might have to remove your cpu cooler to access the N/B


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## jbunch07 (Feb 27, 2008)

i had to put an 80mm fan on my gigabyte chipset that was hot! but i didn't put it rite on it i just mounted it to my hd rack so it blows directly on the heat sink....

@ intel igent
your avatar is fin hilarious i crack up every time i look at it!


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## TUngsten (Feb 27, 2008)

I have a p5w dh mobo, and I replaced the stock NB heatsink with a huge copper one. 

The Asus 775 boards run really hot on the NB.
If you're in the mood you would benefit from at least taking the existing sink off and replacing the TIM with some good fresh AS5 or similar. The stock material asus uses is crap.


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## intel igent (Feb 27, 2008)

TUngsten said:


> you would benefit from at least taking the existing sink off and replacing the TIM with some good fresh AS5 or similar. The stock material asus uses is crap.



that would also be a good idea


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## trog100 (Feb 27, 2008)

i have a via chipset 939 amd board.. one thing i noticed about via is the chipset dosnt get even slightly warm.. a similar nvidia chipset board is too hot to keep your fingers on.. just an observation..

one of the main differences between cheap and expensive boards is the expensive ones come with heat pipe cooling the cheap ones dont..

how much the fancy heat pipes are like go faster stripes.. more for show than function i dont know..

too hot to keep your fingers on seems normal thow without the fancy cooling.. older boards used to come with noisy little fans.. they have gone out of fashion now.. 

trog


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## craigwhiteside (Feb 27, 2008)

on my P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe, the northbridge was hot enough to fry an egg on :shadedshu
but i bought a nice little blue led fan and stuck it on top, works like a charm


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## ntdouglas (Feb 27, 2008)

Get it off auto. I have mine set to one below the max. I think its 1.55v. Mine just runs warm.


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## Black Panther (Feb 27, 2008)

Well I dunno.

I re-checked the bios and the vcore NB options I get are:
1.25
1.40
1.55
1.70

I put it on 1.25 and I loaded windows and got on here to make this post. No stability test run so far.

I'll see how it goes tomorrow. The other day I reduced my ram voltage from 1.9 to 1.85 and my pc behaved normally. The following day it wouldn't boot. It booted only after putting the ram voltage back at 1.9V....

I've also got the SB vcore and the ICH voltages set to auto.
I have these options in the bios:

SB vcore
1.5
1.6
1.7
1.8


ICH 
1.057
1.215

I'm still unsure if I should be leaving them on auto or test them out like I did with NB. Tomorrow when I have more light I'll finger-test the NB and if my pc still runs orthos stable and tat, and I get less of a finger-burn I'd be happy. Then I'll try out the other components' options as well. Any ideas welcome!

Edit: going to run tat now for some minutes to see if the NB can support min voltage.........


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## intel igent (Feb 27, 2008)

your owners manual should outline exactly what the voltages are using the AUTO default

in BIOS you should set them manually to default settings and go from there


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## ntdouglas (Feb 27, 2008)

Black Panther said:


> Well I dunno.
> 
> I re-checked the bios and the vcore NB options I get are:
> 1.25
> ...




I have my s/b and ich set to auto, never messed around with them. I've read upping s/b a little sometimes helps with stability when running high fsb.


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## phanbuey (Feb 27, 2008)

You can face your zalman up no? or you can get a tiny fan << but these tend to be loud and annoying.  Also. you can cut the extra plastic off around the fan, so it is just the fan... to save alot of space.  ive had these fans like this for over 6 months, the longer they stay stuck -- the more stuck they are, so they wontfall off..  my NB is at 1.55 for a quad at 1628FSB, and its only slightly warm after an hour of folding/gaming.  the ram is at 2.3v and i have WC so i also need to cool MOSFETs... so 3 silent fans in total.  A little bit of air in the right place makes a HUGE difference.


















sorry for the crappy camera-phone pics.  At stock voltage you should be fine, the fans are only really needed if you OC, but if its hot enough to actually burn your fingers than even a teeny fan is not a bad idea.  Trog is right: the cheaper boards tend to suffer from this the most as, in your case, you only have a piece of passively cooled aluminum on it.


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## Black Panther (Feb 28, 2008)

I put the NB vcore at its lowest - 1.25
So far so good. No stability issues.


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## NONYA (Feb 28, 2008)

This is what I use...


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## King Wookie (Feb 28, 2008)

If you're not adverse to spening a little cash, Thermalright do a nb cooler with an offset mounting system. It works either passively, or you can add a fan. 

If you could fit it, it should work hundreds.


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