680i owners: Have yo re-thermaled the SB and NB?

[kendellrt]

For those of you with a traditional 680i chipset NB and SB heatpiped cooling solution, how many of you have removed tham and applied higher quality thermal paste? If you have, how do you go about getting it off, and what benefits have youseen?

[swifty11212]

For those of you with a traditional 680i chipset NB and SB heatpiped cooling solution, how many of you have removed tham and applied higher quality thermal paste? If you have, how do you go about getting it off, and what benefits have youseen?

I've left mines @ stock

[kendellrt]

Me too, so far.

[ccokeman]

The ABIT IN9 ( Left it alone cooled great) XFX ( cooled Fairly well) DFI ( you need to apply paste since the heatsink comes in a box ,not on the board) so for me it would be

No

No

Yes!

[kingdingeling]

You really got me in the mood of messing with my rig again, I need to put some proper thermal paste on my bridges on this DS4, it's BOILING!

[andrusk]

I haven't messed with the south bridge, but I have removed the northbridge cooler and replaced it with a tharmaltake extreme spirit II with some arctic silver 5 :thumbs-up:

[kendellrt]

The NB and SB cooler on the 680i, except for the new DFI, as far as I know are connected by a heatpipe and need to both be replaced if you choose to replace them. Someone asked me a while back if I had replaced the crappy thermal paste on them, but I have had no problems. It just led me to beleive that most people replace the thermal paste.

[andrusk]

On the ASUS 680i boards the north and the south bridges are not connected by heatpipes. They are connected by heatpipes to the mosfets around the cpu socket, but not to eachother. So I just took off the heatpipes on the northbridge and the mosfets to the left and put little mosfet heatsink on the mosfets and put the extreme spirit II on the north bridge.

 

 

 

 

that's neither here nor there though. I have noticed that my motherboard temperature has dropped from 40c to 35c after I removed the crappy heatpipes from the northbridge. Quite a considerable decrease

Edited June 13, 2007 by andrusk

[wildabeast]

I have a EVGA 680i board, and removed the original thermal gum. The gray gum was extremely thick on the northbridge and southbridge. I was getting temps of 60+ degrees C before I removed the stuff. I then applied Artic Ceramique to my northbridge and southbridge to bring the temps down to around 48-54C. So putting better paste down does help. It also allowed me to check to make sure the heatpipe was straight. I have read where many people with extreme temps came from the heatpipe being slightly bent. So the base of the southbridge was not making good contact to the chip. Then after that I just changed out the cooling all together. On my northbridge I have a HR-05-SLI, and my southbridge I have a Evercool copper VGA cooler. Now my temp hang around 35-40C.

[Missile Maker]

I replaced the TIM on the NB and SB of my IN9. The mosfet cooler is connected by heat-pipes to the NB and SB, and Abit uses a Thermal Tape on the mosfet HS. The gap between this HS is a little wider than between the NB and it's HS and the SB and it's HS, so you need to fold this tape in half to double the thickness (seems other mobos with the multi-HS / HP set up are similar). Also, you need to do this before you run the mobo for long or OC, as the Thermal tape melts after operation, and if you remove the HS/HP assembly then, it can be pretty difficult to get off and reuse (you essentially have to clean it off and replace it with a couple layers of TIM). As for doing it, on the IN9 it was easy as the whole assembly is attached to the mainboard with spring loaded pushpins (on the SB HS ,on the NB HS, and one on each side of the mosfet HS). I removed, cleaned the TIM off the NB, and SB, folded the original thermal tape on the mosfet HS, then applied AS5 to the NB and SB. Reinstalled. Done. I added a 10x10x40 mm SilenX Fan to the NB HS, and my CNPS9500 blows toward the case back, which has an ADDA 120mm exhaust fan, so lots of air going over the mosfet HS. I think the SilenX on the NB does more to keep the mosfets cooler though, as the heat from them goes through the HP to the NB, and the NB fan runs @ 5400 rpm (inaudible;SilenX are awesomely quiet!).

MM

[kendellrt]

So has anybody done theis with the EVGA 680i SLI, or one of the other reference board layouts?

[romeo55]

So has anybody done theis with the EVGA 680i SLI, or one of the other reference board layouts?

 

You probably could. I haven't done it to mine cause it is a genuine pain to reinstall my Si-128 onto the motherboard, the last time I took the thing off, it took 45 minutes using a metal bar as leverage to put the pins on.

 

I am thinking about it though. The way my SPP temps are, it could sure use a 5C drop (With everything OC'd and the SPP at 1.6v) is about 67C. I'm tempted to get a new NB and SB cooler, but once again, the Si-128 is hanging over the SPP so I'll have to get a new heat sink. I wish I had never bought the thing.

 

But yes, I believe it's a good idea. Reseating and replacing the stock thermal paste with AS5 or AS Ceramic has always yielded lower temperatures. Reseating my 8800GTS shaved 4-5C off max load.

 

EDIT: AFAIK, the pins that secure the cooler are your standard plastic pins with punch out tabs on the end to prevent it from falling out. Just squeeze the tabs on the end on the back side and push it through the hole. See a picture of mine for a clearer understanding. It's extremely easy to do this.

Edited June 16, 2007 by The Unforgivin