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.