Cooling Asus P5B Deluxe Northbridge with fan ?

[Defenestration]

I've been readin up on some articles about overclocking in preparation for when I've got all my components and am ready to give it a go myself. I was reading the following article and the author mentions in the comments that he knackered his mobo due to increasing the voltages of the Northbridge which caused NB temps to rise to 120C. After switching back to stock volts for the NB, temps were 80C at full load. This still seems a bit high IMO, and so I'm considering suspending an Akasa Amber 120mm (or maybe smaller) over the NB to help cooling.

Is this a good idea and is it better to have it blowing air onto the NB, or sucking air away from the NB ?

FYI, I'm going to be using an Akasa Eclipse 62 case with 2 x Akasa Amber 120mm fans (1 at front, 1 at back).

[IAmATeaf]

The NB does get very hot, it sort of reaches roasting temps on my DS3P and I'm thinking of plopping a 40mm fan on it, blowing air down onto it should be the best.

[Clunk]

The thing that you have to remember with Asus boards that have the heatpipe coolers is that they rarely make contact properly with the northbridge when you get them, and usually need bending slightly, or even replacing. If you have one that isnt touching properly, and you start overvolting the NB, it will quickly heat up, but I havent ever seen one hit 80c when the cooler was sat properly.

Something like a zalman passive heatsink, and a set of zalman ramsinks will do the job of the Asus heatpipe cooler easily, and will only need a bit of a breeze over them.

[this_is_gav]

40-50c should be the max you'd see on any correctly fitted P5B northbridge when overclocking. 35-45c without overclocking. Any more, and it's a dodgy heatsink fitting, as Clunk said.

The P5B Deluxe comes with a fan that you attach to the mosfets heatsink (connected via a heatpipe to the northbridge), so you if it's getting a little toasty, simply attach that. I've never needed to on mine (northbridge has never gone above 46c @3.3GHz, though I've never ran it in summer), but it's got to help.

[IAmATeaf]

I tried removing the NB HS from my DS3P and even after I'd popped out the push pins the damn thing wouldn't budge so gave up in end with the arguement that if it's that securely stuck on then it must be making good contact. The NB on the other hand flew off the board after popping out the push pins but the indention showed good contact so I just put it back on as was.

[EtheAv8r]

40-50c should be the max you'd see on any correctly fitted P5B northbridge when overclocking. 35-45c without overclocking. Any more, and it's a dodgy heatsink fitting, as Clunk said.

The P5B Deluxe comes with a fan that you attach to the mosfets heatsink (connected via a heatpipe to the northbridge), so you if it's getting a little toasty, simply attach that. I've never needed to on mine (northbridge has never gone above 46c @3.3GHz, though I've never ran it in summer), but it's got to help.

As a point of information, how do you determine the temps of these ancillairy components??

[this_is_gav]

By checking what's stable and what's not, as you would when overclocking.