Northbridge cooling help please...

Sumanji · 18 Sep 2015 at 19:17

Hey,

So I'm playing around with my old C2D setup, and noticed the chipset temps are really high (around 55 C at idle, and from reading around it should be under 40 C). I'm going to replace the thermal grease, as it is around 8 years old at this point (!!).

However, I noticed the pushpins for the NB cooler are very loose, so the contact pressure is poor - this is probably the main problem. Can anyone recommend a good metal bracket replacement that might work please? Board is DFI LP X38-T2R.

Also, I want to put a 60 mm fan on the NB to further reduce temps - what fan make/model would you recommend that is vaguely quiet at 7V please? Alternately, a 60mm to 80mm fan adapter that works with metal fan clips would be awesome! [edit] Just thought, I could just ghetto-mod some cable ties for the 80mm fan, right...?

Cheers,

Su

P.S. Pic of how tight things with the CPU cooler (although I have now moved the GPU down to the 2nd PCI-E slot):

Nickolp1974 · 18 Sep 2015 at 19:44

If this is an old set up and your just "playing" around why bother with a quiet fan??? Just get one of the EK vader's( the fastest one!) great fans at full speed and quiet once tonned down. As for a bracket, cant you just make something up?? Or buy some sticky heatsink things??

Sumanji · 18 Sep 2015 at 21:51

Haha, by "playing around", I meant that I'm nosing about in the BIOS etc. - it's still my main desktop gaming rig, so I would like it to be quiet

I suppose I could just get some small screws and nuts... ghetto, but I guess more effective than the pushpins. The X38 has an IHS iirc, so I would be doing well to crush it with a wonky mounting

Cheers,

Su

pastymuncher · 19 Sep 2015 at 15:26

I had the X48 version of that board and can remember almost burning my finger on the NB heatsink it got so hot. I ended up watercooling mine. If I remember right quite a few removed the pushpims and attached it to the board with bolts for a better contact. Don't forget to put some fiber washers between the bolt and the board to avoid shorting.

Sumanji · 20 Sep 2015 at 03:59

Haha, yeah it's definitely the toastiest part of the rig!

I ordered some waterblock bolts with thumbscrews, so should be able to clamp that sucker down nice and tight. Combined with an 80mm fan + cables ties, that should work ok.

Any suggestions for TIM please? Ket on XS recommended Grizzly Kryonaut, as apparently that's best for Aluminium heatsinks?

Cheers,

Su

P.S. My goal here is to get this E0 Wolfdale to 4.33 GHz for 24/7 use... can you believe I never overclocked this thing?!

pastymuncher · 21 Sep 2015 at 19:52

I think I was using MX-2 on mine back then. I use Gelid GC-4 Extreme these days. I had a E8500 to 4.5Ghz 24/7 on my X48 (Asus P5E X38 before that too) and then a Q9550 to 4.13Ghz. Also had a play around with various cpu's and got a E2160 (1.8Ghz) to a impressive 3.6Ghz prime stable!! I can have a look for my E8500 settings if you like?

Sumanji · 22 Sep 2015 at 05:21

Yes please mate, that would be super helpful, thanks

The GTL stuff is somewhat confusing, amongst other things...this DFI board always had a pretty ridiculous bios though

Nickolp1974 · 22 Sep 2015 at 07:53

pastymuncher said:
I think I was using MX-2 on mine back then. I use Gelid GC-4 Extreme these days. I had a E8500 to 4.5Ghz 24/7 on my X48 (Asus P5E X38 before that too) and then a Q9550 to 4.13Ghz. Also had a play around with various cpu's and got a E2160 (1.8Ghz) to a impressive 3.6Ghz prime stable!! I can have a look for my E8500 settings if you like?

Or how about a E2160 with a 177% OC @ 4982mhz http://hwbot.org/submission/2954276_

pastymuncher · 22 Sep 2015 at 16:16

Nickolp1974 said:
Or how about a E2160 with a 177% OC @ 4982mhz http://hwbot.org/submission/2954276_

LN2 though. I only had mere watercooling.

Sumanji said:
Yes please mate, that would be super helpful, thanks

The GTL stuff is somewhat confusing, amongst other things...this DFI board always had a pretty ridiculous bios though

Quite agree. My DFI had the most bios options I had ever seen. I was afraid to touch most of them in case something fried. This Hero I have now is almost as bad!!

Found my settings although I believe they were for my P5E X38. I did just copy them over to the DFI when I got it though.

E8500 E0 @ 4.5Ghz
CPU ratio - 9x
FSB - 500
FSB/NB strap - 400
Dram Frequency - 1000 (1066mhz ram/PC 8500)
Vcore - 1.425v bios (1.4v actual)
CPU PLL - 1.64v
FSB Termination Voltage - 1.38v
NB Voltage - 1.63v
SB voltage - 1.150v
SB 1.5v - 1.55v

There's also a big thread over at Xtreme Systems on the X48 DFI boards that may be of use to you. Most of the settings should be similar to the X38.

Sumanji · 23 Nov 2015 at 05:46

Ok, so my ghetto mod is complete!

Remounted the stock HSF with some watercooling standoffs (had to double up on springs to get the required tension, but seems sturdy)
Used an Akasa thermal pad rather than paste, as it turns out the chipset heat spreader is pretty concave (no contact in the centre at all with previous thermal paste!)
Zip-tied an 80mm Sharkoon Silent Eagle to the side; spinning at a tame 500rpm, but ramps up to 1000rpm with temp

_

At ambient 72F / 22C:

Before: Idle 48C, load 66C
After: Idle 38C, load 47C

Not quite apples to apples, as I also switched to a bigger case with better airflow, but that's a great improvement... now time to start upping the volts

Cheers,

Su

pastymuncher · 23 Nov 2015 at 11:06

That's much better. With care you can lap the chipset ihs but it's a right pain to do.

Sumanji · 23 Nov 2015 at 17:57

Yeah, I tried lapping once and it didn't quite go to plan... #neveragain

Man, I miss doing stuff like this... need to get back in the game properly. New PC early next year?!

Su

Doogles · 23 Nov 2015 at 18:31

Can I ask why you have a rather powerful GPU with this setup? Doesn't it get massively bottlenecked?

Sumanji · 23 Nov 2015 at 22:11

Doogles said:
Can I ask why you have a rather powerful GPU with this setup? Doesn't it get massively bottlenecked?

You'd be surprised actually - I recently played through Alien: Isolation, and at stock my machine drove a fairly consistent 60fps at 2560x1080, with all settings maxed.

There are some games that bring the CPU to its knees (Metro 2033 Redux benchmark runs poorly at around 25fps average, on both low and higher qualities). I'm hoping to take this chip comfortably above 4.0 GHz, so we'll see how much that helps... but, for what I need it to do, it's still perfectly adequate.

Why did I buy an R9 380 in the first place? Upgrade itch, but didn't want to do the whole PC

Sumanji · 10 Dec 2015 at 06:09

pastymuncher, do you have any advice for dealing with one core that isn't very good please?

The second core is needing a lot more voltage to get stable at a certain clock speed - it will fail Prime within seconds, while the first core keeps going. I really wanted 10 x 433, but even with 1.4 V the second core fails. I don't really want to go over 1.4 V for daily use, so did not bother trying higher.

Is there anything I can do to stabilise that core, like adjusting GTL perhaps? I might try raising VTT, but I don't think that helps with core stability right? (I tried Prime blend with 8 x 433 and it was fine for a few hours, so I don't think VTT is the issue).

It's been running Prime 95 small FFTs for an hour with the following settings:

10 x 420 = 4.2 GHz

VCore in BIOS: 1.245 x 109.92% = 1.369 V
VCore in Win7: 1.360 V

VMCH: 1.360 V

VTT: 1.155 V

Strap 266:667
RAM @ 1052 MHz

Cheers,

Su

[edit] Since the board seems to like FSB, and the chip tops out at 4.2 GHz at my target VCore, maybe I should try and hit 4.2 GHz with high FSB - 9 x 466? I would have to shift onto the 333 strap, but the much higher FSB should offset that? The RAM is cool up to 1150 MHz.

pastymuncher · 10 Dec 2015 at 14:25

You can try playing around with the GTL Refs but it didn't really make any difference to mine if I remember right. My E8500 also didn't like the 10x multiplier which is how I got to 4.5Ghz with 9x500. You couldtry and give it more vcore but you need to be careful with that as that's how I killed my first E8500 (original stepping at launch).

Sumanji · 10 Dec 2015 at 15:27

Ah, do you mean 9.5x? I've read that the half multi can be a bit iffy on certain boards.

Prime failed over night - that damn second core again, kicked it after 5 hours

Does this mean the core just won't do 4.2 GHz at that voltage at all, or that it might be able to do it a different way (e.g. 9 x 467 instead of 10 x 420)?

pastymuncher · 10 Dec 2015 at 18:32

Yes, sorry, it was a long time ago now. Looking at my notebooks mine liked a higher fsb more than a higher multiplier. 9x500 was rock solid yet 9.5x and anything over 450 and I just couldn't get it stable. You may just need a extra one or two notches of vcore to be stable. Higher fsb means more performance anyway.

Sumanji · 18 Dec 2015 at 06:36

Dude, I don't suppose you remember what tRD setting you used please? Might have been called "performance level" or something similar in the BIOS. If you have any EVEREST memory benchmark numbers that would be super helpful also

I'm Prime stable at 4GHz now (albeit at an awkward 8.5 x 471, lol), but apparently tRD is pretty crucial to getting big memory bandwidth gains, so I am toying with that at the mo.

Cheers,

Su

pastymuncher · 18 Dec 2015 at 11:06

The only benchmarks I have are the ones I used in my E5200 performance comparison when I tested several different cpu's against each other.

I just found an old notebook that points to the trd being set to 7. I believe stock for my memory (Gskill PC8500) was 8 looking at my figures but I have no memory bandwisth tests that I can find. Sorry.

In the same notebook I found that my CPU GTL was set at 0.63x and NB GTL was set to 0.67x.