Do Intel chipsets run hot?

All about them.

Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee

Post Reply
Goober
Posts: 41
Joined: Thu Feb 05, 2004 9:37 pm

Do Intel chipsets run hot?

Post by Goober » Wed Oct 07, 2009 2:24 am

I've been looking at some Intel motherboards and I've noticed some complaints about the chipsets running hot. This is on low end boards P31/ICH7 and higher end boards like the GA-EP45-UD3R. What was especially surprising was complaints about the southbridge. This is particullary worrisome because the only PCI-E video card I have here is the X1950 Pro with its stupidly designed extremely hot VRMs which would be pretty much directly above the southbridge. So, what I'd like to know is if the Intel chips get hot enough I should be concerned about either the video card or the chipset overheating and is AMD any better in this regard?

Ksanderash
Posts: 353
Joined: Sat Oct 18, 2008 6:30 am
Location: Moldova, exUSSR

Post by Ksanderash » Wed Oct 07, 2009 3:08 am

I have now a G41 board (got to change back to G31), and I can say that old-timed ICH7 SB is getting even hotter that NB (despite of a decent but a heatsink). Cause there is no a fan that could blew away the heated air. Then, if your card has a powerful air cooling system you shouldn't pay much attention to this issue, and this is safe to combine.

Greg F.
Posts: 372
Joined: Wed Nov 23, 2005 6:51 am
Location: Seattle

Post by Greg F. » Wed Oct 07, 2009 6:05 am

Ksanderash, may I ask why you are changing back to the G31 from the G41? If I understood you correctly. Does theICH7 southbridge definitely require a down firing heatsink/fan? I wonder if the ICH10 get as hot as the ICH7?

Ksanderash
Posts: 353
Joined: Sat Oct 18, 2008 6:30 am
Location: Moldova, exUSSR

Post by Ksanderash » Wed Oct 07, 2009 8:29 am

Just look at the Intel's specs for G41 here and here. It doesn't seem to be a cold running one, eh? And ICH10 is hotter than ICH7 -- TDP list for Intel chipsets. The chip should be under heatsink, maybe not active(fan), but as massive as possible.

Goober
Posts: 41
Joined: Thu Feb 05, 2004 9:37 pm

Post by Goober » Wed Oct 07, 2009 2:40 pm

Ksanderash, does your board have a heatsink on the ich7 and exactly how hot does it get? Is it too hot to touch?

Ksanderash
Posts: 353
Joined: Sat Oct 18, 2008 6:30 am
Location: Moldova, exUSSR

Post by Ksanderash » Wed Oct 07, 2009 3:31 pm

You can see it here. A regular G31 board heatsink, they have it all the same. And it is so hot that my finger can't bear. It's normal for a semiconductor chip, btw. They can be heated up to 115C :wink:

P.S. I did a voltmod, then it isn't so hot but this is very particular practice. I haven't heard on the net about south bridge undervolting to drop down a watt or so.

ascl
Posts: 279
Joined: Tue May 05, 2009 1:15 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Post by ascl » Wed Oct 07, 2009 5:48 pm

I have a GA-EP45-UD3L, and the southbridge sits at about 40c, ambient is 30c, so I don't think it gets very hot. The northbridge has no sensor on it (annoying!), and it does get pretty hot to touch... but hasn't caused any problems.

Goober
Posts: 41
Joined: Thu Feb 05, 2004 9:37 pm

Post by Goober » Thu Oct 08, 2009 3:55 pm

Hmm, sounds like the older SB chips get hotter even though they use less power. Does anyone know how the AMD chips compare? I'm most worried about the SB because it sits right underneath the video card.

sonic6k
Posts: 101
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2009 9:59 am
Location: Home

Post by sonic6k » Sat Oct 10, 2009 2:19 am

Goober wrote:Hmm, sounds like the older SB chips get hotter even though they use less power. Does anyone know how the AMD chips compare? I'm most worried about the SB because it sits right underneath the video card.
Older motherboard designs did not utilize heat pipes. Even though on an older motherboard the southbridge consumed less power, there was nothing provided to take the heat away except a simple heat sink, which (let's be honest) does not make even the slightest difference. Nowadays with better cooling implementations the southbridge and the northbridge may be cooled effectively thus also allowing high power components to be used without much fear of overheating.

Gew
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Oct 12, 2009 4:41 am
Location: Kingston, Jamaica.

Let me add..

Post by Gew » Mon Oct 12, 2009 4:46 am

That line containing the sentence "semiconductors can handle temps up to 115c" was really comforting. Found this thread via Google. Got my neat ASUS T3-P5G31A Barebone system yesterday. CPU/MB temps are fine, but one sensor (only accessible via 3rd-party-utils ie. Speedfan/Everest/HWMonitor) shows 82c on idle, on heavy load / stress tests it's maxing out on 90c. Nasty, huh?! Guess it's the same deal we're talking about. Intel ICH7 + G31 for chipsets! ;P I've installed a passive Zalman heatsink with paste but it didn't do any difference at all. Guess it's normal, nothing to worry about! :-)

ntavlas
Posts: 811
Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2007 2:35 pm
Location: Greece
Contact:

Post by ntavlas » Mon Oct 12, 2009 6:24 am

The southbridge heatsink on my p43 mobo is warm but not hot. The northbridge on the other hand does get fairly hot, I can touch it for a few seconds before it starts to hurt. It`s probably running between 65-70 degrees. It does get affected by the gpu though, it was fairly cooler when I was running a 7600gs, now using a 9600gt.

AMD chipsets have somewhat lower TDPs, especially the 780g series. It not surprising given that they`re manufactured on more advanced tech. I have a 780g board with an upgraded heatsink, about the same size as the stock heatsink on my intel board, but it`s running considerably cooler with about the same amount of airflow. The soubridge barely gets warm. I`d expect higher end amd chipsets to draw more power, but in the budget segment they`re more efficient than their intel counterparts.

As for what temps are safe, I`d expect them to handle 10-15 degrees more than common cpus being much simpler devices. Two of my older boards are equipped with the kt333/400 chipsets and reach even higher temps than their replacements (due to their tiny heatsinks). They`re still being used for at least 10 hours daily by my parents and they`ve never given any stability problems.

JamieG
Posts: 822
Joined: Fri Dec 26, 2008 10:31 pm
Location: Melbourne, Australia

Post by JamieG » Mon Oct 12, 2009 2:39 pm

Thought I'd add my $0.02.

My Gigabyte G31 board seems to have very hot NB and SB chips. I couldn't get a good reading on their actual temps, but after a few hours of having my PC on (doing nothing more stressful than watching some SD video or surfing the net) both the tiny stock NB and SB heatsinks were too hot to touch for more than a second.

I've now swapped the NB cooler for a HR-05 and the SB cooler for one of the blue passive Zalman coolers, and they only get slightly warm to the touch.

I also ended up putting a HR-05 on NB of the Gigabyte 780G board I use in my HTPC, due to how hot it was to touch. The SB seemed a little cooler, so I left the stock heatsink on for that.

Ksanderash
Posts: 353
Joined: Sat Oct 18, 2008 6:30 am
Location: Moldova, exUSSR

Post by Ksanderash » Tue Oct 13, 2009 1:28 am

There is an app called MCH Temp, that can measure Intel's NB temp by means of the chip's internal probe. The only problem is that this program has Russian interface. As I'm speaking this language, I wrote to the author, if he can introduce multilanguage support, and then add English translation. If it is not a serious problem you can try it just now. Supports: P35, P31, G33, G31, Q35, Q33; P45, P43, G45, G43, G41, Q45, Q43; X38, X48, X58.

Goober
Posts: 41
Joined: Thu Feb 05, 2004 9:37 pm

Post by Goober » Tue Oct 20, 2009 4:47 am

I was wondering if anyone knew what manufacturing process Intel's southbridges used? I found out the P4x series northbridges are 65nm and I think AMD uses 55nm for all their current chipsets but I can't find any info on Intel's southbridges.

I just can't figure out why the newer ICH10 southbridges are cooler than the older ones when the older ones take less power.

Post Reply