northbridge on a P45 supposed to get THIS hot?

[BlahBlahYouToo]

if i touch the northbridge hs, i'll have to pull my hand back within 3 seconds unless i want to burn my fingers.
is it normal for it to get this hot?

motherboard: gigabyte ep45-ud3r
cpu: q9400 (have not overclocked, yet...)
hsf: arctic cooling 7 freezer pro
gfx: gtx 260
ram: 4 x 2gb g.skill4 x 2gb g.skill
psu: enhance 500w from hd forums
case: antec 900 with the psu at the bottom

reason i link the ram is because the heatspreaders are tall and actually touch the fan on the AC7. perhaps it's restricting airflow?
the AC7 has bent fins at the bottom to redirect some air over the surrounding areas.
could this be it?

should i get a tiny fan and strap it onto the nb?

 

[corkyg]

Northbridge temperatures were discussed two days ago - read this thread:

NB

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

well, there's hot and then there's scorching hot and mine is the latter.
sitting there idle at stock speeds/voltages and burning the skin off my fingers within 3 seconds doesn't seem normal to me.

it's understandable if it was due to OC and when under 100% load...

 

[somethingsketchy]

No offense, but why exactly are you placing your fingers/hand directly on the heatsink and holding it there? Criticism aside, northbridges do get hot, but in your case, probably the heatsink or the thermal paste/pad is old and no longer useful. If you can you could remove the heatsink, replace the thermal paste/pad and reapply the heatsink.

Another alternative would be to install a fan that pushes/pulls cold air from any intake fans and towards the heatsink.

 

[TC91]

My P5Q vanilla does the same, it's scorching hot when i put my fingers on the NB heatsink. It's temperature reading used to be 64-70c with my dreadful 4870 1GB (reference card) installed but with my new GTX 285 (also reference card) the reading has gone down dramatically to only 46c.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

Originally posted by: somethingsketchy
No offense, but why exactly are you placing your fingers/hand directly on the heatsink and holding it there? Criticism aside, northbridges do get hot, but in your case, probably the heatsink or the thermal paste/pad is old and no longer useful. If you can you could remove the heatsink, replace the thermal paste/pad and reapply the heatsink.

Another alternative would be to install a fan that pushes/pulls cold air from any intake fans and towards the heatsink.

i'm not doing it for fun obviously. it's a new build and i "feel" around to make sure things within spec. manually checking temps with my hand, making sure nothing is loose, the fans are spinning etc.

and like i said, it's a new mb so the paste/pad underneath is not the issue.
regardless, wouldn't that mean that the paste is [b/working[/b] since it's effectively transferring the heat?

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

wtf are the temps in OS?

 

[BehindEnemyLines]

Originally posted by: somethingsketchy
No offense, but why exactly are you placing your fingers/hand directly on the heatsink and holding it there? Criticism aside, northbridges do get hot, but in your case, probably the heatsink or the thermal paste/pad is old and no longer useful. If you can you could remove the heatsink, replace the thermal paste/pad and reapply the heatsink.

Another alternative would be to install a fan that pushes/pulls cold air from any intake fans and towards the heatsink.

If it's extremely hot, then maybe the thermal paste/pad is actually doing an excellent job conducting heat ONTO the heatsink from the bridge? You would think that old thermal paste would result in cooler heatsink, unless my logic is wrong somewhere.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: BlahBlahYouToo
hsf: arctic cooling 7 freezer pro

This.

Chipset heatsinks are typically designed to take advantage of the air coming off the stock CPU fans which blow down towards the motherboard. The problem is that the typical enthusiast heatsink does not do this.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

Originally posted by: BTRY B 529th FA BN
wtf are the temps in OS?

dunno.
i didn't let the system run long enough to install any temp monitoring software.
i strapped a 40mm nb fan to it and now it's running at 43C.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: BlahBlahYouToo
hsf: arctic cooling 7 freezer pro

This.

Chipset heatsinks are typically designed to take advantage of the air coming off the stock CPU fans which blow down towards the motherboard. The problem is that the typical enthusiast heatsink does not do this.

the AC7 has the bottom fins bent downwards to direct the flow of air to surrounding areas. but it's really tight around that area, esp with my tall sticks of RAM restricting air flow.

my cpu temps are good though. 36C on a quad core, not bad imo.