The Northbridge Stock Cooling

[tofumonster]

There's this really tenacious "crap" on the bottom of my northbridge heatsink. When I was replacing the TIM for better heat transfer (used ceramique) I just used alcohol to clean off the pink stuff. Then I realized that the pink stuff wouldn't come off. I tried to scrape most of it off with a credit card (but then it started to get uber messy). In the end, I used some alcohol and a lens cleaner to get off the dust and plopped it back on with a super small amount of TIM.

Is this ok? or should I go back and re-do the heatsink/(I didn't even bother with the actual northbridge chip, too delicate. But I DID do a few passes of a cloth+alcohol)

 

[zagood]

Get all that crap off. Heat it up with a hair drier, it'll soften it up then credit card/spatula/whatever plastic thing you've got laying around.

-z

 

[Team42]

Hi Tofumonster

You can safely clean the northbridge chip with isopropanol alcohol (IPA) and a cotton bud (that's a Q Tip for any colonial cousins who are tuning in...) with a final wipe-down with a lint free cloth and a touch of the alcohol (minus the diet coke, ice and a slice). The IPA is a solvent and should disolve the pink goo quite readily However, it takes patience and a lot of clean cotton bu....sorry, Q Tips, to do it properly. Both surfaces should be totally clean and flat and clean and smooth and....you get the picture. Don't even get a fingerprint on the finished article.

The instructions for ceramique can be found on the Arctic Silver web site. It only takes a small amount of the TIM to work properly and the pressure of the heatsink spreads it as appropriately. However, AS recommend applying a small amount of the TIM first, spreading it around, then wiping it off, to fill the microscopic voids in the CPU IHS.

I'd re-do it. I've done it myself having re-mounted both the CPU and NB heatsinks (I replaced the stock Gigabyte H/S with a Thermaltake HR-05) using ceramique. My temps were still too high under load, because I used too much TIM having applied a very thin layer to both H/S and chip faces (should have read AND understood the instructions first....). Doing it correctly provides noticeable results.

Good luck.

T42

 

[Zepper]

The pink stuff is probably a Honeywell TIM - use lighter fluid to remove it then rinse with alcohol.

.bh.

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: tofumonster
There's this really tenacious "crap" on the bottom of my northbridge heatsink... I just used alcohol to clean off the pink stuff.

Heh!

The old frozen bubblegum thing, eh? Sometimes it's blue... 😉

 

[DerwenArtos12]

Originally posted by: VinDSL

Originally posted by: tofumonster
There's this really tenacious "crap" on the bottom of my northbridge heatsink... I just used alcohol to clean off the pink stuff.

Heh!

The old frozen bubblegum thing, eh? Sometimes it's blue... 😉

just don't put it in your mouth, it does not taste like bubblegum. Please don't ask how I know that.