Hi all.

I have an Asus P5AD2-E Premium motherboard with an XP-120 on it.

I'm trying to figure out which northbridge heatsink would be the best for it, or if I should just leave the current one from Asus on it.

Trying to figure out if I should go with Zalman or Thermalright... if they fit.

Thank you

I have a P5GD2 premium and I never thought about putting a new heatsink on the northbridge. I have an xp-120 also. I can hold my finger on it for a little while - its hot but not very. I'd just leave it alone. - FG

Ok.

Just out of curiosity, what are your case temps like?

Thank you

I have no idea. My cpu temps at idle are about 37C which seems good to me. I look at the hard drive temp. and I have a sensor on the intake side of the psu. The heatsink is partially under the xp-120 so I don't think anything else would fit. It seems to be standard practice to replace the heatsink on the amd boards, but I've never seen a post recommending it for a P5GD2. Of couse your have a different chipset and I guess you will have to use your own judgement, but since mine is getting a little air from the cpu fan, I don't think its adding much to the case temps. - FG

Really, I never thought of it so maybe I'll should look into it.

Ok. I'm just wondering because I know my case temps right now are really bad, in essence of 38-40C.

This causes my idle to be around 50C for my CPU. Load for it is 60C+.

I also have a temp sensor on the heatsink, near the middle, of the Northbridge. It reads a hefty 50C, and when I overclock I know it goes up to 55C... but then I seem to get stability problems. So I think that its overheating...

Guess its time for a new case after all...

Thank you

I guess you've done all of those case things like remove restrictive grills, make sure you're wiring is out of the way for better air flow, have preferably 120mm fans. Also you might try undervolting your cpu. I can't do it on my asus but maybe you can. Anyway look up the article/review on the pentium 570 with a soltek board?. He has some reasonable temperatures. - FG

Asus boards are notorious for having inaccurate cpu temps so you may want to consider calibrating. There's an article somewhere that explains the process. I should probably do that too. You should be able to find these articles with the search feature.

Frank,

No, I haven't gotten rid of my case grills... but I don't want to even mess with that. I know it sounds lazy, but I would rather get a new case (which looks even better IMO), the Antec P180.

As for undervolting... I know what the word means, but does that mean I lose clock speed too? If there is an article about it, I'll read it... going right now to read your suggestion too.

Thanks

I'm sure the P180 will improve your case temps without cutting.

Ok, I looked at that article... very interesting.

Here's the question. If I undervolt the CPU, will I lose performance? If I use Prime95 or even HotCPU to test the CPU... if they show no errors, can I assume that I have the same performance machine, just with a lower heat output?

Thanks

Yes, that's exactly right.