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I am not responsible for the damage that
could happen during modifications.
The northbridge and Southbridge
chipsets on motherboards play an important roll for
you computer. The north takes care of front side buss
communications between RAM, AGP and your processor.
The southbridge takes care of onboard components such
as : network interface, sound, serial and parallel ports.
They can become just about as hot as your CPU. The cooler
we can keep these chips, the longer your motherboard
is going to last. Also with better cooling you could
overclock your front side buss (FSB) at higher clock
rates than normal.
Let's do it:
All parts we will need:
-Motherboard
-Arctic
Silver V (Optional)
(or your choice of thermal compound)
-Rubbing Alcohol, fingernail polish or Windex
-Needle nose pliers or hemostats
-Rag or cloth
Take a look at your motherboard.
You will notice the northbridge and maybe a southbridge.
My K7S5A does not have a southbridge visible.
You may have just a heatsink like this one, or it may
just be the chip without any thing on it what-so-ever.
If you do have a heatsink
on the northbridge it could be the type like this that
just "sticks" to the NB. Or you may have the
type that uses spring loaded pins to keep it in place.
If it's just like mine and
just "sticks" to the chip, your going to have
to run your system through benchmarks, or play heavy
games for a while to make it nice and hot in order to
remove it. Once it's good and hot, just start to twist
it back and forth. This may require some force, or require
a chip puller. It will eventually "pop" off.
Now, if you have the spring loaded type, you will have
to remove your motherboard from the case to get access
to the back and squeeze the pins so they can go through:
Once the heatsink is off,
you will find the generic "thermal pad" or
thermal grease. Get some Windex or rubbing alcohol (nail
polish remover), spray it on the sink and let it soak:
While this is soaking, spray
some "cleaner" on a cloth and start removing
the "garbage" off the chipset itself.
This stuff is hard to remove
sometimes. Keep at it until both heatsink and chipset
are good and clean.
Once clean, use some Arctic
Silver V on the chipset.
Use very little and spread
it to thin layer. If your heatsink/motherboard
does not use the spring-loaded pins,
then do not cover the outer four corners:
Use very tiny drops of super
glue on the outer four corners.
If you DO
use the spring-loaded clips, cover all of it with Arctic
Silver:
Once this is done, you can
put it all back together. However, if you want even
better cooling it's time to add a fan. If you
have an extra 40mm fan and some screws laying around,
use these. There is usually some way to "jimmy"
the fan so it stays on the sink:
The right size of screws
will fit inside the heatsink's fins.
If you do not have extra
fans laying around, I would recommend the Vantec
Iceburg cooler. Instead of using your stock heatsink.
Obviously if your system
already has a nice heatsink/fan combo for your chipset,
you only need to clean them and use Arctic Silver paste
instead.
Be sure to look for the southbridge
on your motherboard as well, and give it the same treatment.
To gain better cooling you
could always lap
your sink before putting back on your chipset's.
Now get out there and
MOD!
Burke~
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