Hello again Silent folks...

I'm an owner of an Asus P5N-D with Intel Q9300 chip (2.5 core 2 duo), with a Zalman Reserator One Plus going to the CPU & GPU. Temps are nice and stable. I don't think the CPU ever gets to 50c even when pushing it hard. I'm about to overclock to about 3.0 - 3.4, and from what I've read, the northbridge -- particularly on my board -- tends to get very hot. I have the stock heatsink on there now -- was thinking about buying the Zalman ZM-NB47J Fanless Northbridge Heatsink. Instead, tho, I could buy the Zalman NWB1 and route my watercooling to it. If the latter, would this addition to the watercooling loop adversely affect the temps on the CPU? Obviously yes, it would affect it -- but by a negligible amount? I'd consider getting a secondary reserator 1, although it wouldn't be convenient, nor do I wanna drop the loot.

Any takers?

Why not use a thermalright northbridge cooler. It even has room for a 92mm fan if you need it (you probably won't).

deleted

Why do u recommend Thermalight? I'd like to stay away from fans if possible... One review of the Zalman heatsink said that it left the NB just 1c hotter than his fan. Pretty good!

I recommended the thermalright northbridge cooler You jwill not need a fan... it is basically a small tower cooler. It is large enough to accept a 92mm fan... and is able to do so...but you will never need it. There are even two versions in order to make it easy to place the fins in the draft of a tower cooler.

You want to cool a Northbridge... it is the only good solution. It is the most muscular clooer you can get for the Northbridge (Noctua and Xigmatic used to make sort of similar ones... but nothing as muscular as these two Thermalright ones.

I've used Zalman's NB47J in the past and I'm currently using Thermalright's HR-05 SLI on my southbridge.

The Zalman was a great improvement over the stock heatsink, but the Thermalright is even better. I haven't put a fan on it because it doesn't need one, it's cool to the touch when my comp's idling.

thermalright hr-05 user here too. i thought about putting a fan on it, but then i saw my temps and laughed at the fact that a fan was even considered.

Thanks much for the replies, guys.

Any idea what hot northbridge temps I should "watch out for" on my Asus P5N-D? I have an Asus hardware monitor on my desktop, so I'll be watching my northbridge temps. There is a stock Asus heatsink on there now -- I'm assuming that I'll need something better once I get the overclock to work, but maybe not.

Also Fire-Flare, u mentioned u have the Thermalright HR-05 SLI on your southbridge... I'm a noob, but isn't the southbrudge much smaller than the northbridge? So the cooler is much more oversized than the SB itself? I've never heard of people cooling their SB's. I have a smaller stock heatsink on there now. I don't think that I can monitor my SB temps.

Here
http://www.thermalright.com/products/in ... d=8&id=106
and here
http://www.thermalright.com/products/in ... d=8&id=107

They both have a 30 x 30 mm base. Select the one that with pick up the most airflow from your CPU cooler. They both, I think, can be used to cool both the Northbridge and Southbridge (do they still have these?). If you are using them to cool either, you don't need to bother reading the chip temperatures. If you can touch them with your fingers they are cool enough. If you can't, cooling them with one of these, there is something wrong with the chip.

I believe that's a matter of personal preference until 90c. I don't recall seeing any recent motherboards that let you set the alarm any higher.

Not necessarily, both chips have been the same size on my AMD boards for the last few years, but the NB runs at a higher clock rate than the SB because it's linked to the 'fast' components while the SB is in charge of the 'slow' ones.

Regardless, my SB reports to be at room temperature while my NB is currently 65c with a http://www.enzotechnology.com/cnb_s1.htm that gets almost zero airflow under my CPU cooler.

Thanks FF and ces for the posts and links. I'll report back with results when I get the OC working!

I can't touch my NB (using Asus stock sinks), it's too hot. The SB is hot, but touchable, can touch it for 5-10 seconds but that's it. Under heavy loads after about an hour, my CPU peaks at 42 and motherboard peaks at 47. Wondering if I should buy the Thermalright HR-05 at these temps. I WILL BE overclocking in a few days (from 2.5 to say 3.0-3.2), so I expect NB/SB temps to go up (no idea how much tho). What do u think?



R u saying that 90c is tolerable for most boards? Can't be...

I think my test is the lowest most conservative text and Fire-Flare 90C is at the other end of the bell curve.

The thermalright is all you probably need. But if is isn't enough, you can always add a fan. But it is not plausible that you will find the need to add that fan. In any event, there is no reason to water cool the southbridge or northbridge.

Thanks for the wisdom, ces. I dropped $48 with tax and shipping included for the Thermalright HR-05 for the NB, and to be safe, got the Eznotech CNB-S1L for the SB. I'm very excited for both! I physically added 4GB of RAM today, so now at 8GB, and it raised my MB temps by 3c, so even more reason to get rid of these stock ASUS heatsinks. Plus I will be OCing. Will post back with temp results!

Just a shot in the dark -- anyone know the max safe MB temp for my Asus P5N-D? Just want to have the mental gauge ready. I wrote to Asus, hope they get back to me.

I do not. But from recollection I seem to remember examples of it being perhaps 5C to 10C less than the CPU. But it seems to me it would vary a lot depending on how you measure it.

I would say that if you can touch any of your board, CPU and chips and hold on to it while tolerating the heat input, you are OK.

Those metal coils with copper windings don't count. They will always be too hot to touch. You can't do anything about it and shouldn't bother attempting to.

Asus responded right away, great straight-forward service. The max safe temp on the P5N-D is 55c. Thermal shutdown is somewhere between 60-70c. So you can push beyond 55c, but don't do it regularly or prolonged, etc, or else u risk long-term type damage.

You would think that with northbridge chips doing less and less actual work these days (they no longer house the memory controller, and more recently the integrated graphics), they would produce less heat relative to their speed.

Aye, that's true with the new ones, but the P5N-D uses one of the nForce chipsets, last of the truly toasty consumer-grade motherboard chipsets . The HR-05 is certainly a good idea with a chipset that prone to toastyness.