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Heat sink of the northbridge gets hot so that I can touch it only momentarily. Is this normal? I am wondering if I should do something like adding a cooling fan on the the side panel.

Just looking around, it seems heat is pretty common on 9xx nothbridges. It's only really an issue if you're seeing stability problems, but changing the TIM wouldn't hurt

It could either be paste or pad, I'd recommend replacing a worn pad with a little good-quality paste like Arctic Silver or Antec Formula 7 - assuming there's enough pressure from the heatsink tabs/screws to make good contact. You can get good thermal pads, but they're normally only available at good prices in bulk. You'll need a pad if the contact between the heatsink and the chipset is a bit loose.

Good luck!

Changing the TIM isn't going to do a bit of good if the heatsink is getting hot to the touch - heat is being transferred nicely as it is.

I agree with derFunkenstein. If you really need the chipset to run cooler, applying a fan or replacing the heatsink with one that has more surface area would help. Something like the Thermalright HR-05/IFX would be taking it to the extreme.

Fail Good point.

Two things that normally make a massive difference to the NB chipset cooler are:

1. removing an unused drive cage between the case's front intake fan and the lower half of the motherboard
2. having an open-air (rather than exhausting blower) graphics card cooler.

I know some graphics cards will kick out warm air rather than cool air, but airflow is more important than absolute temperature, especially if the NB is very hot.

Chrispy_ wrote:

1. removing an unused drive cage between the case's front intake fan and the lower half of the motherboard

The drive cage is unfortunately not removable. I placed the hard drive(only one used) at the bottom part of the cage to maximize the air flaw from the front intake fan.

2. having an open-air (rather than exhausting blower) graphics card cooler.

Does this mean a fanless heat sink?

Temperature of the graphic card(HD7750) heatsink with a cooling fan is about the same or lower than my body temperature(36.5 C) under room temperuture of 24 degree C (75 degree F). CPU(FX6300) heatsink temperature is about the same.

Chrispy_ wrote:

I know some graphics cards will kick out warm air rather than cool air, but airflow is more important than absolute temperature, especially if the NB is very hot.

This applies also to the tower style CPU coolers which have become so popular. Unfortunately, these can raise NB temperatures since the (warm) air from the CPU cooler blows directly at the case rear exhaust, resulting in less airflow along the motherboard's surface. This can raise VRM temps too.

A side intake fan may help.

Something else I often do is put a vented PCI slot cover in one or two of the PCI slots, to get more air moving across the lower half of the motherboard; I typically have negative case pressure (more exhaust than intake), so cool air gets drawn in through the vented slots.

churin wrote:

Chrispy_ wrote:

2. having an open-air (rather than exhausting blower) graphics card cooler.

Does this mean a fanless heat sink?

No, I guess the 7750 is too small to really generate any extra airflow over the motherboard.

Some of the larger graphics cards like this or this do a pretty decent job of keeping air moving over motherboard components, because half of the fans output down onto the motherboard.

Chrispy_ wrote:

Some of the larger graphics cards like this or this do a pretty decent job of keeping air moving over motherboard components, because half of the fans output down onto the motherboard.

Second one looks like the bottom (towards the motherboard) part of the heatsink is mostly blocked off.

'tis a trick of the perspective. The tips of the fans (where most of the airflow actually is) overhangs the heatsink by quite a long way, IIRC.

The windforce coolers always struck me as a great cards for small cases that don't have through-flow cooling, since they "leak" a lot of air upwards (since the graphics card is usually upside down) towards the exhaust fan and aid the internal airflow of bottom-front to top-rear.

Chrispy_ wrote:

'tis a trick of the perspective. The tips of the fans (where most of the airflow actually is) overhangs the heatsink by quite a long way, IIRC.

Ahh, OK. Pic makes it look like they hang over quite a bit at the top, but not the bottom.

I personally wouldn't use a recirculating graphics card over one that exhausts outside of your case. It may move more air around, but that air is going to be much warmer then a graphics card that shoots it out the back. Also consider that such a graphics card will pull air over your northbridge and push it out the back, exhausting warm air. Your front case fans should take care of pulling air in then.

Unless the fans are directional on a open air graphics card, they wont do much for moving air over the top of something else that's on the motherboard unless it's directly adjacent to it. And even then the graphics card will radiate heat to nearby slots and the ambient temp of the case on top of it will really raise the temperature of whatever is next to it.

Open air coolers are great at keeping graphics cards cool when they're sitting on a open test bench, but not at keeping your case temps cool or other things located next to them when they're in a stuffy case.

Yeah, the north bridge on 900-series motherboards usually run hot. No problem though, they can take a lot of heat. Made with more than double the process node of the CPU, temps at 70 C is no problem. On my 900-series motherboards, the NB heatsinks are always to hot to touch. In this system, the thermistor for the NB reports 35 C at idle, and my IR thermometer reports 60 C on the heatsink. Under prime95 load the sensor reports about 50 C and the metal is over 70 C. According to Gigabyte, the NB max temp is about 80 C on my 990FXA-UD3 rev 1.0. I've never been close to that IIRC.

Pholostan wrote:

Yeah, the north bridge on 900-series motherboards usually run hot. No problem though, they can take a lot of heat. Made with more than double the process node of the CPU, temps at 70 C is no problem. On my 900-series motherboards, the NB heatsinks are always to hot to touch. In this system, the thermistor for the NB reports 35 C at idle, and my IR thermometer reports 60 C on the heatsink. Under prime95 load the sensor reports about 50 C and the metal is over 70 C. According to Gigabyte, the NB max temp is about 80 C on my 990FXA-UD3 rev 1.0. I've never been close to that IIRC.

Your thermistor must be mis-calibrated then. Or it is measuring something other than NB temp.

Unless you have some sort of active heat pump (e.g. compressor-based chiller or Peltier) the heatsink cannot be hotter than the chip it is cooling.

The sensor on the NB could be miscalibrated too, which is what I thought he was pointing out.

Bensam123 wrote:

The sensor on the NB could be miscalibrated too, which is what I thought he was pointing out.

That may or may not be what he meant (I thought it wasn't), but it is in fact what I said.

(Thermistor vs. thermometer. I trust a commercial thermometer more than a motherboard temp sensor.)

just brew it! wrote:

Your thermistor must be mis-calibrated then. Or it is measuring something other than NB temp.

I don't know. I do know that my IR thermometer is miscalibrated though. It works best on dark organic materials, which aluminium heatsinks are not. The thermistor might be under the chip, or it is a computed number. You are right that thermistors are not thermometers, and I have always taken their output with a grain of salt. Many of the CPU:s I've used have almost always reported lower core temperatures than the motherboard CPU sensor temperature. And after a BIOS update, things might be very different

Anyway, the motherboard has been like this since it was new. Never a hitch, stable 24/7.

Thanks everyone resoponding. It appears that high temp of the northbridge is so by design and nothing to be concerned about.

Is there a software utility that can be used to determine the Northbridge temperature?

Try HW Monitor

You try Gigabyte's utility?

My Johnson wrote:

You try Gigabyte's utility?

I asked Gigabyte how to determine the temperuature of NB and their response was to use third party utility. No specific utility was mentioned.

Which of the three temperatures as shown on the snap shot is supposed to be that of the Northbridge?
The TEMP0 appears to be of the CPU. The northbridge temperature is much higher than my body temperature(36.5 C) but TEMP1 and TEMP2 are lower than TEMP0.

Yeah, none of those look right. Maybe try SpeedFan or, as a last resort, an Infrared Thermometer.

i have noticed this too i have the sabertooth 990fx r2 and it runs fairly hot (i touched it by mistake once i dont plan to do that again) and i have a thermaltake xaser vi supertower with 5 140mm fans and 2 120mm
there is plenty of airflow still it runs pretty hot

Found this post a while back:
http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php?topic=7075.0

Re: GA-990FXA-UD3 temperature sensors
« Reply #1 on: October 14, 2011, 08:28:12 am »
Hi there,

TMPIN0 = Sytem (Motherboard) Temp
TMPIN1 = CPU Temp
TMPIN2 = Northbridge Temp

Thank you for the info.
My qualitative measurement by using my finger, it appears way higher than 40C.