How do i know if my northbridge needs an aftermarket heatsink?

chico1st

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Oct 17, 2009
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How do i know if my northbridge needs an aftermarket heatsink.

It is hot to touch and the heatsink that comes with the motherboard is compact.
chipchill.jpgImage here


Do i need to buy a special heatsink?

Nothing seemed to be going wrong in my system, but when I game I get some crashes, could the northbridge be causing that? (usually the error is, memory something error)
 
Northbridges do tend to get hot in use, not normally hot enough to cause issues though, (Sidenote, dont touch it)
if your error messages are mentioning memory, I'd be inclined to pursue that avenue of investigation first,
download memtest and run each of your sticks a couple of hours, see what that tells us
Moto
 

chico1st

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Oct 17, 2009
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i ran memtest for a weekend and got 2 errors in 38 passes, which I imagine is an acceptable rate.

ive looked at some NB heatsinks... are the mini towers with heatpipes over kill?
 
depends how heavy your going with overclocking tbh, most people wont need them though,
and errors are errors Im afraid, any weakness in your sticks is bad, its just a case of when they fail, I'd look to getting some fresh ram for your rig, and I'm betting that will sort your random crashing,
how are your sticks configured? try playing with one stick of ram, see if either one causes the issue particularly
Moto
 

rubix_1011

Contributing Writer
Moderator
^Agreed.

With RAM/memory errors, you typically have an issue with an unstable OC or you have bad memory. If you aren't overclocking, move on to focusing on RAM itself.

Try Memtest with each stick, one at a time, in each DIMM slot to see what results you get.

I'll be honest, I've actually had times where a bad NIC (prior to onboard LAN) or soundcard was causing the issues. So, that being said, pull as many components as possible that aren't required for your system to run, including DVD drive(s). This helps eliminate variables in testing that you might not be aware of.