North Bridge Coolers?

B

basher

Gawd
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Oct 26, 2004
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Been having slight issues with crashes in games, and with cod4. did a reformat and loaded the lastes chipset drivers and video card drivers and i think the problem might be heat related.

i got ati tool, not to overclock but just to use for fan over-ride controls because my x1900xtx 512mb card heats up really really fast.
even putting the fan at 100% speed, i still get crashes, so i opened the case up to just feel how hot to touch stuff was getting.
of course the card was hot, but on my 965p-ds3 board the north bridge was burning hot, i mean if you more than just glanced it, it would probably scald you.

question is, i've done some searching for a north bridge cooler, but i want an active one (with a fan) and have not been successful. anyone know of such for 965p-ds3 or are they universal?

nothing is overclocked so should i need one, and is it usual for the north bridge to get really really hot?
 
shouldnt need to buy a new heatsink if your not overclocking. whats your case and cpu temps?
 
I tend to agree with pandora's box, you have a case airflow issue. This can be veified by taking the side panel off during your next gaming session and seeing if the NB is significantly cooler.

That said yes usually a very hot MCH/northbridge is caused by high FSB speeds when OCing. But in addition to the controlling the memory the chip also routes data to the PCI-e slot for the video card. So a heavy gaming session can signifiacntly raise temps too. It is/was common practice to hot melt glue a 40 o 50mm fan to the stock heatsink and problem solved. The thermalright mentioned above is also popular if you have room for it.

Lots of info here.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1141269&highlight=DS3
 
so is it better to have the fan blowing on the bridge or sucking air away from the bridge (if one was to use a 50mm fan)?
 
I just got a Gigabyte P35 DS3L and out of the box replaced the NB with the Evercool VC-RE. My temp is 38 C idle and 39 C load. This result is wonderful, and while the 965 MCH is supposed to be much hotter than the P35's, anything is better than a passive aluminum heatsink. From the images I just looked at of the 965, it has pushpin style retention mechanism, and I bet the VC-RE would fit just fine. For 9 bucks you cant go wrong here :cool:
 
The above poster mentions an active cooler which would be a bit noisier.

A good passive solution would be the Zalman NBF47. A dollar more, but at least it won't add any noise.
 
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