Which northbridge Heatsink?

Keitaro · Post by **Keitaro** » Sat Dec 20, 2003 10:32 am

Hey all. I want to get a northbridge heatsink, but I am completley lost. Right now I have the one standard on teh Abit NF7-S rev 1.2 and I want to replace it. The only problem is, in 100F+ ambient temps, will a passive solution be good enough? Any ideas or suggesstions??

Also i heard that using a passive solution significantly increases system temps. Is this true?

echoes · Post by **echoes** » Sat Dec 20, 2003 1:08 pm

I also have the Abit NF7-S 1.2, and I replaced the stock northbridge HSF with the Zalman heatsink, and it has worked perfectly fine for me, even when overclocked. I should mention that my CPU HSF is the SK-7, which exhausts some air right onto the northbridge, which might help a little bit.

I used AS3... be careful though because when using this for a CPU, you of course want a very thin layer. But with a northbridge or GPU, the surface isn't nearly as flat so you typically need a thicker application. I would recommend applying it, installing the heatsink, and then removing it to verify that the whole base of the heatsink got exposed to the thermal compound.

Post by **MikeC** » Sat Dec 20, 2003 1:22 pm

Also i heard that using a passive solution significantly increases system temps. Is this true?

If you're referring to ONLY the NB chip, if the on-board temp sensor is located close to it, and if you have poor case airflow, I suppose "system temps" could go up. But... the on-board sensor does not really read "system temp" -- that's a rather vague way of thinking about it: It's just one temp sensor in one spot on the motherboard.

Rules of thumb:
1) The total heat generated by a system changes only if you change the heat producing components.
2) fans can change overall internal case ("system") temp only if they blow hot air out and pull cooler air in.
3) A fan on the NB chip only cools the NB chip -- a bit. It has no (or very little) effect on overall case temp, which is the real "system temp".