Southbridge overheating

[patriot_z]

NOTE: I meant to say NORTHBRIDGE, not southbridge

 

Hey, sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this sort of thing. Recently I noticed my northbridge has been overheating an unnatural amount. I'm running now at 61C and the only reason it isn't going up constantly is because I have the case open with a fan blowing right onto it. I've gotten it down to 55 with the window open, but it is still about 30 degrees hotter than anything else in my computer. I dusted it out over and over again and it's still heating up. It goes from about 40 (when I check in the bios) to 60 by the time my desktop loads up (when I check in speedfan).

 

I'm pretty sure the problem is linked to my Radeon 5770, which I installed late January (which is strange because it didn't start affecting my system until recently). I just put an old card in there temporarily and the temperature was consistent (~46C). The 5770 (being pretty large) actually sits less than half a centimeter above the northbridge fan, covering a little less than 50% of it. I can't move my card to the other PCIe slot though because it would get in the way of the USB connectors. So basically I'm trying to figure out the cause of this overheating. It seems unlikely that the physical aspect of having a card near the chipset would raise the temperature continuously to the point of shutting the machine down. Then again, I don't know much about temperatures, which is why I came here. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Edited February 28, 2010 by patriot_z

[patriot_z]

Also, my specs:

DFI INFINITY NF ULTRAII-M2 AM2 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Windsor 2.0GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core Processor

Rosewill Stallion Series RD500-2DB 500W ATX12V Power Supply

3GB (3x1GB) of 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300)

SAPPHIRE 100283L Radeon HD 5770 (Juniper XT) 1GB 128-bit GDDR5

640GB Western Digital Caviar Blue HDD

Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit (SP2)

 

Also, I have 2 mobo fans, one over the CPU and one over the northbridge/2 case fans, one in the rear and one on the side (currently removed)

The fan over my northbridge is currently running at ~1650 RPM (if I'm reading it right)

 

Let me know if you need any other info. As you may be able to tell, I'm not an overclocker

Edited February 27, 2010 by patriot_z

[XxHellxRaizerxX]

For one I am pretty sure that chip with the fan on it is your North Bridge. Make sure that the heatsink is completely clear of dust and the fan is spinning properly. Another thing you might check is that the voltage is set correctly to your chipset and it's not too high. You can compare the rated voltage reading from the BIOS to some spec sheets on the manufacturers website most likely.

 

Edit: Upon further investigation a lot of reviews on Newegg say the chipset is prone to getting hot. They also mention the heatsink is upgradeable should you want to do it. One person mentions he used a Thermaltake CL-C0034 to replace the stock heatsink.

 

Hope this helps.

Edited February 27, 2010 by XxHellxRaizerxX

[patriot_z]

For one I am pretty sure that chip with the fan on it is your North Bridge. Make sure that the heatsink is completely clear of dust and the fan is spinning properly. Another thing you might check is that the voltage is set correctly to your chipset and it's not too high. You can compare the rated voltage reading from the BIOS to some spec sheets on the manufacturers website most likely.

 

Edit: Upon further investigation a lot of reviews on Newegg say the chipset is prone to getting hot. They also mention the heatsink is upgradeable should you want to do it. One person mentions he used a Thermaltake CL-C0034 to replace the stock heatsink.

 

Hope this helps.

Heheh, knew I would make some stupid mistake. So upgrading it is a possibility, do you think the increase in temperature is a direct result of the graphics card blocking it? It seems possible but the strange part of it to me is that it didn't start overheating until 4/5 weeks after installation. Also, I'll check the voltage, thanks.

[_TheAlexO]

before you upgrade. you said you have a fan on the rear exhausting heat. and one on the side that you currently have removed. thats not the best airflow possible.

try sticking the fan you removed from the side onto the front of the case if it will fit. you need cold pushed into your case from the front and then the hot air exhausted from the rear.

as of right now you have no air flowing over the southbridge which would cause it to overheat

[patriot_z]

Well when I say removed I mean the side panel is off right now. But yeah, thats another issue. I forgot to list my case, it's a Cooler Master Centurion 534 RC-534-KKN2-GP (link).

 

Also, is it possible that the temp sensor is just faulty? How would I know/find out?

[XxHellxRaizerxX]

Well when I say removed I mean the side panel is off right now. But yeah, thats another issue. I forgot to list my case, it's a Cooler Master Centurion 534 RC-534-KKN2-GP (link).

 

Also, is it possible that the temp sensor is just faulty? How would I know/find out?

When the bridge is running at the high temps, touch the metal of the heatsink and if it starts stinging within a couple seconds then you know it's probably around 55-70C. (of course this is subjective). That or you can get something like a laser heat gun (real name?) that can measure it.

 

Also you could probably improve those temps by jury-rigging a fan to move air across it, it's probably recycling the heat that it's expelling like ShallowBay said.

Edited February 27, 2010 by XxHellxRaizerxX

[patriot_z]

When the bridge is running at the high temps, touch the metal of the heatsink and if it starts stinging within a couple seconds then you know it's probably around 55-70C. (of course this is subjective). That or you can get something like a laser heat gun (real name?) that can measure it.

 

Also you could probably improve those temps by jury-rigging a fan to move air across it, it's probably recycling the heat that it's expelling like ShallowBay said.

Well, judging by the stinging in my finger, I'm guessing it isn't faulty. Also, is there no way to edit the topic title?

Edited February 27, 2010 by patriot_z

[patriot_z]

Interesting development:

I took out one of the USB connectors and put the card into the second PCIe slot, where it was not covering the northbridge at all, and it continued to overheat to the exact same temperature (with the external fan on it). I have disconnected things from the psu, removed some RAM, and nothing affects the overheating as long as the 5770 is plugged in (regardless of position). The only thing that stops the overheating is putting in my older card.

 

I'm still trying to figure out if this is purely a hardware issue and not software related. A friend of mine suggested that since the northbridge controls the PCIe slots (among other things) that this card is just too powerful/requiring too much data transfer for it to handle. Right now I'm just looking for potential causes of the problem.

 

Edit: Right now it is running at 78C without the room fan on. This is pretty much the idle temp, it hasn't gone up for a few minutes now. Fan still spinning at about 1600RPMS

Edited February 27, 2010 by patriot_z

[Scottike]

You might try taping a small piece of paper to the side of your 5770 and block off any openings that face the your NB. Perhaps the fan on your 5770 is pulling air away from your NB fan and not letting it get enough air to keep your NB cooled.

[patriot_z]

You might try taping a small piece of paper to the side of your 5770 and block off any openings that face the your NB. Perhaps the fan on your 5770 is pulling air away from your NB fan and not letting it get enough air to keep your NB cooled.

I'm pretty sure none of the openings are in the direction of the NB, but the weird thing is when I moved the card to the other slot it made no difference in the temperature at all. The NB was completely uncovered and had a constant stream of air from the room fan over it, and it was still sitting above 60C.

Is it possible that the strain of this card added onto a mobo whose NB already has a tendency to get hot could put it to such high temps? I've never heard of such a thing but I'm still at a loss for explanations right now.

[patriot_z]

I think at the moment we've reached the conclusion that this is a problem with the board (a bunch of people on the newegg reviews mentioned that this chipset runs hot). Now I need some kind of solution to help cool this mofo down. I'm open to all suggestions, a couple of names given in the reviews were the Thermaltake CL-C0034 or the Thermalright HR-05-SLI. My only concern now is figuring out what will fit in the case and what won't, with the brick of a graphics card I have installed. What would be the best way to figure this out?