Holy crap my northbridge is hot

[legoman666]

Its a GA-X38-DS4 motherboard, so it's the roasty x38 chipset. I'd estimate that it's about 160-170F. It's passively cooled with almost no airflow since my machine is watercooled. Should I be worried about this? Or should I start worrying when I touch it and get a blister?

 

[jaqie]

Yes. above 50C is when you feel pain from heat... so that much would do long-term damage to the chip.
If I was you, I would either water cool it, or get a higher capacity heatsink for it... Ive seen some that are 3 inches tall, if they will fit that may do it, I also bought myself a swiftech HR 05 SLI for an older mobo NB but am no longer using it, it is heatpipe based and works well.

 

[manimal]

HR05 would be cheaper than modding your loop. I run one passive on my IP35 and with a 80fan on my 680i.

 

[legoman666]

Originally posted by: manimal
HR05 would be cheaper than modding your loop. I run one passive on my IP35 and with a 80fan on my 680i.

x38 is not listed in the compatibility list: http://www.extremeoverclocking...t_HR-05_SLI_IFX_2.html

I wish I had a way of knowing how hot the sink actually is. I might just stick a 50-60mm fan on it if I can scrounge one up...

 

[Binky]

Point a small fan at it. Problem solved.

 

[jaqie]

Then check out the HR 01, different position. The compat list is quite generic, as well, many will fit that are not listed - and my mobo was listed as incompatible, but I just had to sacrifice a single pci slot to it - that's it. many of those compat lists are filled by a single user emailing in to either say yes or no, and end users cannot be trusted to this kind of thing.

 

[lenjack]

Stick a 40mm fan on it. Tiny drops of superglue at corners of fan. Easy to remove if desired. You can 7 volt these if you like, with good results.

 

[Brunnis]

Originally posted by: jaqie
above 50C is when you feel pain from heat... so that much would do long-term damage to the chip.

What kind of logic is that, if I may ask?

 

[v8envy]

Rule of thumb. Every 10C increase (over room temperature or so) halves the expected lifespan of your silicon. So a chip reasonably expected to fail in ~3 years at 80C might live 6 years at 70C, and 12 years at 60C, 24 years at 50C and practically forever at 40C or lower. From that standpoint 50C is doing long term damage to the chip.

Can't cite the source ATM but I remember reading this in several unrelated places at different times.

 

[jaqie]

Originally posted by: Brunnis
What kind of logic is that, if I may ask?

not logic, fact as far as several biology experts have told me when I asked. may be a wrong fact, but IMO it's good enough for home testing when no measuring equipment is available, and IME has been fairly accurate.

 

[Brunnis]

Originally posted by: jaqie

Originally posted by: Brunnis
What kind of logic is that, if I may ask?

not logic, fact as far as several biology experts have told me when I asked. may be a wrong fact, but IMO it's good enough for home testing when no measuring equipment is available, and IME has been fairly accurate.

Biology experts should not be consulted regarding the temperature tolerance of silicon chips, physicist and electrical engineers should. Temperature tolerance increases as frequency and voltage goes down. The fact that chipsets are generally very low frequency and resonably low voltage (compared to CPUs made on the same processes) make them very tolerable to high temperatures. I even believe many of them have a specified operating temperature of close to (or even above) 100C.

The finger test is in many ways a ridiculous test that probably originates from the presumption that it seems reasonable that a temp that is harmful to you is also harmful to the chip. Sure, lower temperatures are always better, but some 50-60 (or even 70) degrees is highly unlikely to have any meaningful effect.

 

[jaqie]

I was talking about feeling pain at 50C. I decided myself that 50c is the limit of what I will allow my components to run at.

 

[Brunnis]

Originally posted by: jaqie
I was talking about feeling pain at 50C. I decided myself that 50c is the limit of what I will allow my components to run at.

Your statement pretty much read "It hurts me and therefore it must hurt the chip.", which is a dubious connection. That was all I was trying to point out.

 

[jaqie]

That may have been the way it was read by you, it was definitely not intended that way. If you had looked at what I was replying to instead of taking my post out of context, you would see I was replying to the OP stating that from touching the heatsink for a split second he got blisters, which is definitely well over 50C.

 

[legoman666]

Originally posted by: jaqie
That may have been the way it was read by you, it was definitely not intended that way. If you had looked at what I was replying to instead of taking my post out of context, you would see I was replying to the OP stating that from touching the heatsink for a split second he got blisters, which is definitely well over 50C.

Touching it for >1 second with the back of a finger leaves a red mark. I can hold the bottom (?) of my finger on it for ~4 seconds before pulling it away.

I now have a 80mm fan point at it until I can find a smaller one. Has to be one somewhere around here.... *mumbles*

 

[Brunnis]

*Nevermind*

 

[VirtualLarry]

What I'm concerned about is WHY the chipset heatsink is that hot. Does the x38 run that much hotter than the P35? The chipset heatsink on my P35-DS3R doesn't seem to get that hot.

I was looking at getting the EX38-DS4 board for overclocking a quad-core, but if the chipset heatsink gets this hot, I may look elsewhere. I wanted a board that would run cool and last a long time.

 

[jaqie]

then you will have to look at aftermarket cooling. I have made a few rant articles about this before, cooling on mobos included is just plain insufficient and crappy and needs a major overhaul.

 

[JKing76]

Originally posted by: jaqie
Yes. above 50C is when you feel pain from heat... so that much would do long-term damage to the chip.

How can that be taken out of context? 50C will not do long-term damage to the chip.

 

[jaqie]

if you would fscking READ the original post and title, he was talking about getting blistered from touching the thing, I was using 50c as a reference and saying his which was much hotter then that was doing long term damage.
Some people here just can't seem to read too well.

 

[Morbid666]

Brunnis - you are such a dork...

 

[Brunnis]

Originally posted by: Morbid666
Brunnis - you are such a dork...

We were talking about different things and I misinterpreted jaqie's post. It wasn't that hard to read it in such a way, despite the context. Things like this happen when you communicate with the written language and if that makes me a dork then so be it.

I understand what jaqie was trying to say and don't have anything more to add, so why don't we just leave it at that now?

 

[jaqie]

Agreed it was all just a miscommunication.