What's on your chipset?

[zhotfire]

If you've ever taken a heatsink/fan off of a mobo chipset i'd like to know what you found, or didn't find. Was there a thermal pad? Goo of any kind?(no, you pervert!) TIA!

[randycw]

I have a EPOX 8KTA3 board, it had a HSF combo on it. I took the thing off cuz I was curious too. It had thermal paste on it! A little TOO much, but it had it!

[TGC]

I usually find that there is that hard bubble gum looking sh*t that acts like more of an insulater rather than a heat transfer agent, or nothing at all under the heatsink. So that is one of the first items I change when building a system.

BTW a good area to discuss as I would tend to think that most people donot realize the importance of cooling the chipset and the crap cooling that the manufacters provide.

[Wing]

KT133a chipset with just a greenie sitting on top of it was the original config, now I have a KT133a with an Alpha HS and an 80mm fan (would have a 120 but it wouldn't fit in there with the alpha and 120 on the CPU)

/me is ducting freak.

[Dustin]

I always take the HS, HS/fan off and put paste in between before I even install a board.

Usually I find nothing under the HS on a stock MB.

[Martyn]

KT7aR, comes with a small heatsink/fan, some usual white silicon goop under - swapped it out for a dolop of AS and a waterblock ;)

[dnar]

Originally posted by randycw

I have a EPOX 8KTA3 board, it had a HSF combo on it. I took the thing off cuz I was curious too. It had thermal paste on it! A little TOO much, but it had it!



Nice mobo :D Me too.

Chipset: From factory, a ton of white paste, heatink and fan. Now removed most of the goop, just the necessary quantity now.

CPU: I removed the bubble gum from my FOP38 and used "white goop". Hit the CPU and Heatsink with an angle grinder to smooth it out. (only joking, wet and dry / mirror).

Anyone find that GlobalWin bubblegum tastes kinda funny ???

[zhotfire]

Jeeze dnar, you're supposed to take the wrapper off! :D

[dnar]

Originally posted by zhotfire
Jeeze dnar, you're supposed to take the wrapper off! :D

Give me a brake! I'm new to this AMD stuff. Those old Intel chips I was raised on didn't require any bubblegum at all. Heck, only 2 years ago I used my first sugar-free Processor, the Celery, it only needed a window open in the room to cool it! :D

[zhotfire]

Just yoinked the little buggers off my KT7E & KT7A-R.
The KT7E had a little dab of paste on it, only covered 1/5 of the chip.
The KT7A-R had a bit more paste on it, covering about 3/4 of the chip.
Great quality control ABIT... not! But i still like the board! :D

[dnar]

You will find that the chipset is not very flat (unlike CPU's) and requires a reasonable quanitity of paste. My EpoX came with about 1 or 2mm thick!

You just need enough so the H/S is not seperated from the chip by air.

[zhotfire]

LOL! Just noticed your location dnar! You really need some sleep!;)

[SonnyJim]

Just checked under the HSF of my Asus A7V133 board and there was no paste or anything. Grease is now applied. How critical is the cooling of the chipset because the HSF that came with the mobo is pretty cheezy.

[zhotfire]

I'd say the higher the system frequency(FSB) the more cooling you require. The northbridge is a very active part of the system. It can affect stability more than you know... you might think you have a ram or cpu problem when in fact it's the chipset that's overheating. :mad: If you're shooting for above spec speeds i'd go for a bit better cooling. I seriously doubt that phil's or tril's systems running at 150fsb would be rock stable without the extra cooling. Course, if you have good airflow in your case you're that much farther ahead. I've got 4x30 cfm fans in a full tower... 2 in the lower front blowing in, 2 in the upper back blowing out. My system temp is showing +1c ambient(running 133fsb). It kinda has a nice whoooooosh to it!