GA-MA78GM-S2H Northbridge

[Mystiq]

Im looking for help finding a suitable replacement for the utterly useless northbridge "cooler" that Gigabyte has mounted on the rev 1.0 motherboards.I was able to mount 80mm fan next to the northbridge so the temperature is around 80C on idle, which is still too much. At least i have not found anything that looked like it could fit to this motherboard.

Any ideas/thoughts about this is much appreciated!

 

[dzigi]

Before you spend money on new cooler, you may want to try and remove/clean/apply better TIM/re-seat your heatsink. I've done the same for friend of mine and added couple of 40mm fans on top.

 

[Mystiq]

I thought about doing that but i doubt it will make enough difference. Simply the heatsink is too small and which is why they have changed it in rev. 1.1 with different one. The heatsink is doing what it can, its already too hot to touch.

So if im going to strip it apart, i might as well put in something different altogether. My problem is that i have not dealt with these types of "long" heatsinks. Not sure how people usually go about changing NB heatsinks like these? Do replacement for these even exist? Only had to deal with the old ones that were really easy to change.

So in sort, any pointers or even examples people dealing with these kinds of heatsinks would be nice.

 

[Toaster Oven]

Thermalright HR-05/IFX fits

Thermaltake CL-C0034 Extreme Spirit II Northbridge Chipset Cooler works as well

Personally I think the Thermalright HR-05/IFX paired with a Noctua NF-R8 is the way to go for best cooling and silent operation.

 

[Mystiq]

Nice, thanks! Exactly what i was looking for. I checked the Thermalright HR-05/IFX earlier but i was not sure about the mounting. I actually took apart the stock northbridge cooler because i wanted to see how/what it is cooling. I thought because it was longer than what ive had to deal with that there might be some other components as well under the heatsink that needs cooling. There isnt and im glad.

Thanks for those awesome pics again!

PS. Hows the temperatures with those coolers?

update:
Cleaned/changed the "TIM", i used Arctic Silver 5, and it did not make much of a difference. lowered temperature by about 1C on idle. Also as i mentioned before i have one nexus 80mm fan installed directly on top of the heatsink, its about 4cm (1.2 inch?) away from it. All in all these only drop the temp about 5 degrees, which is not much. Hopefully it will stay alive until i get something better to replace it, fortunately the computer is not used for anything heavy so it should stay at 80C most of the time.

 

[Toaster Oven]

Well the problem seems to be the TMPIN3 sensor is faulty, reading about 20C too high. As well it exhibits some type of floor as no matter the cooling everyone is reporting around 80C idle. So keep that in mind when looking at your own temps as well as others.

Anyhow, people with the HR-05/IFX are reporting idle temps around 80C and load temps around 82-83C, even with heavily overclocked IGP. However HSF is cool to the touch under max load, as opposed to stock HSF which will burn you

 

[Mystiq]

Well the problem seems to be the TMPIN3 sensor is faulty, reading about 20C too high. As well it exhibits some type of floor as no matter the cooling everyone is reporting around 80C idle. So keep that in mind when looking at your own temps as well as others.

Anyhow, people with the HR-05/IFX are reporting idle temps around 80C and load temps around 82-83C, even with heavily overclocked IGP. However HSF is cool to the touch under max load, as opposed to stock HSF which will burn you

Yea the stock HSF will burn you, i tested it myself.

Anyways, i was hoping that the Noctua NC-U6 would fit but in their website they specifically list this motherboard as incompatible, shame really. The cooler looked quite effective. Anyways, HR-05 one seems really nice too and is bit cheaper.

Off topic: Does anyone know if Gigabyte has "official" way of monitoring the temperatures? I did not find anything on Gigabytes site but perhaps ive missed it somehow. At least Speedfan is giving me numbers that are hard to "decipher" exactly.