North Bridge Over Heating.

[Hans]

System Spec:

AMD XP-1750MHz
XP-333
Corsair XMS3200 256MB*2 (@ 175MHz, 2-2-2)
Alpha 8045 + 1 POS 80mm fan @ 7V (suck).
etc


This afternoon, I re-started running SETI, after 2 hours my machine locked up. I thought, that's funny coz it hardly crashes in the past. Thought it might be an temperature issue(around 48 at that time), I up the fan voltage to 12V instead of 7V then reboot. The computer still crashed after 10 min.

Then I realised that I disconnected my north bridge fan a few weeks ago. I then check on NB's temp and it's damn hot. I can't hold it for more han 5 seconds. After putting the fan back on, I never experenced any lock ups. Guess I will get a Zalman NB cooler in the short future coz XP-333's NB fan is just too noisy.

The moral of the story?? Get some air flow over that NB if you are clocking > 160 MHz.

[mird-OC]

i hear that brother :)

i've found lack of northbridge cooling can be the source of a lot of problems that are often considered "quirks".

as you might've seen i've got a h4><0r'ed celeron2 (P3) heatsink doing a very good job as a passive northbridge cooler. worth looking into especially if you've got one lying around (=$0.00 :D).

[Gh0s7 L3mUr]

Got a pic mird?

I think I have one of those HSF lying around if you want it Hans. It looks like i'll be up in ChCh for L3#6, if your interested, can let you have it for nothing (unless you got something interesting I can leach off of you... hehehe).

[whetu]

okay a few pics that go along the lines of what mird means (this is my own nb heatsink mod)
before:
http://www.geekflat.orcon.net.nz/images/blorb2.jpg
after:
http://www.geekflat.orcon.net.nz/images/newbeast.jpg
and
http://www.geekflat.orcon.net.nz/images/newbeast2.jpg
and finally
http://www.geekflat.orcon.net.nz/images/newbeast3.jpg

[Hans]

Thank you for the kind offer, Gh0s7 L3mUr. However, I have a few HSFs around the house. Just need to dig them out. :)