NForce2 Southbridge Heatsink Removal?

[niral622]

Hi everyone,
My DFI NFII Ultra Infinity comes with a southbridge heatsink already installed but I want to upgrade that with a different one. Has anyone removed an already epoxied southbridge heatsink before? I'd rather not go in there and start prying and have the southbridge come right off with the OEM heatsink

 

[MDE]

What's your reason for upgrading the heatsink? Truthfully, you don't need one at all, but it can't hurt.
EDIT: Welcome to AT!

 

[niral622]

Well I felt it and even at a FSB of 170MHZ it is hot enough to burn my finger which in my opinion isnt cool enough...i'm hoping to push the system to 180mhz and maybe more but i'm afraid it'll crash because of the southbridge overheating

 

[MDE]

The southbridge has almost nothing to do with your bus speeds, the northbridge is what you want to worry about in that situation. The heatsink I stuck on my Abit NF7-S's southbridge gets roasting hot as well.

 

[niral622]

ohh alrighty then....you can obviously tell this is my first "real" overclock

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: niral622
ohh alrighty then....you can obviously tell this is my first "real" overclock

No problem at all. If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to ask, but search first to appease the dinguses that like to yell repost at everything.

 

[Operandi]

So is it the north or south bridge? Upgrading the northbridge cooling can yield improved overclocks but like MDE said; upgrading the southbridge cooling will get you nothing. For whats its worth the southbridge heatsink on my Aopen AK79D max (nForce2) gets mildly warm.

 

[PliotronX]

Originally posted by: MDE
The southbridge has almost nothing to do with your bus speeds, the northbridge is what you want to worry about in that situation. The heatsink I stuck on my Abit NF7-S's southbridge gets roasting hot as well.

That's true in general, however the NF2 platform is a strange beast. The link between the NB and SB is incidentally increased along with the FSB. This can cause issues at higher FSB's such as sound cutting out, LAN drops, etc. but this is mostly with APIC enabled and at FSB's over 220MHz. It never hurts to enhance cooling though.

Niral, I just swapped my Infinity's SB sink for a Zalman NB32J with a mixture of Arctic Alumina epoxy and Ceramique so that it's possible to remove it later whereas full-strength is for all intents and purposes permanently stuck. Luckily, the stock heatsink is only applied with double-sided tape, and it is very easy to remove with a twisting motion.

 

[iwantanewcomputer]

don't remove it until you know you can't get to the speed you want. and i'm pretty a hot southbridge won't affect higher fsb settings`

 

[niral622]

alrighty then, thanks for all the responses...at least now I know it's possible to remove it if I have to (southbridge heatsink)...i'm thinking of getting the microcool northpole cooling kit for $30 since it comes with a very nice northbridge heatsink cooler along with 8 smaller heatsinks for the PLL's and voltage regulators near the northbridge. what do you guys think of that? I read some reviews and they seemed pretty good (the fan is pretty quiet too and moves 10cfms)

http://www.cluboverclocker.com...s/microcool/northpole/

 

[Tiamat]

If you southbridge gets too hot, you may get "crackling" sounds when you play music, or games. I have an Abit NF7-S ver2 and the bare southbridge was burning hot. I put a sawed up, filed down old p2 heatsink on it and it is fine. If your northbridge gets too hot, your OC ability will diminish. If that is the case, a Zalman NB cooler (the blue one) will work. It works even better if you have a 92mm cpu fan blowing near or on it.

good luck

 

[Jeff7]

Just FYI, if the heatsink is hot, this is in a way a good thing - it means that the heat is being effectively transferred to the heatsink. One site on Epox's 8RDA+ board showed that while the northbridge's heatsink was fairly cool, the northbridge chip itself was roasting. All the heat was staying trapped in the chip, while none got through the poorly applied thermal pad into the heatsink. Once replaced with decent thermal compound, the heatsink was able to receive the northbridge's heat and dissipate it.

 

[niral622]

very true....well the good thing about this is that i'm not using the onboard audio since i have an audigy 2zs and i'm not using the onboard lan since my school uses fiber optic gigabit ethernet I even have the onboard sound disabled in the bios which makes me wonder even more why the southbridge gets so warm...i think my two new case fans should solve a lot of my heat problems - as it is now, i have the thermaltake silent boost on a barton 2500+ and it runs at around 45C under full load (and its overclocked to 1930mhz too!). I also have the stock antec 120mm fan on the rear but it doesnt seem like its moving too much air so I ordered an Enermax 120mm which moves 95cfms@30db and a 80mm Vantec Tornado which moves 85cfms@55db which is pretty freaking loud but I got it under the premise that I would only run it at max speed when playing games and when i play games, i wouldnt even notice the noise

 

[lobadobadingdong]

If you're wanting to be fanatical about dropping your southbridge temps, you should be able to mount one of these to it, it's still passive, but it's huge in comparison to the stock heatsink. Your case cooling seems more than adequate to remove the heat from it as long as there is some airflow in that general area of the board (you should be since you have a 120mm fan in the rear)

 

[niral622]

Originally posted by: lobadobadingdong
If you're wanting to be fanatical about dropping your southbridge temps, you should be able to mount one of these to it, it's still passive, but it's huge in comparison to the stock heatsink. Your case cooling seems more than adequate to remove the heat from it as long as there is some airflow in that general area of the board (you should be since you have a 120mm fan in the rear)

yeah, I was thinking of using one of those if it becomes a problem when I start overclocking...i'm at 1930 right now and i dont have any problems and thats with just the one fan so we'll see when i get the two high airflow ones...btw thanks for all the responses