So far I've oced this card to 515/682. the ram won't go higher without glitches, but the core can. With that new mobo, I gained abut 1000 pts in 3dmark. now I'm at 11600 and 3900 in 3dmark03. The only thing that scares me is the southbridge. It's so hot that I can't leave my finger on it for more than 10 seconds. The card's hsf is quite small but is not that hot so I guess it's ok. How would I go about putting a heatsink on the southbridge ? How will it hold ? Only with thermal grease ? What heatsink should I use for that ? Is the southbridge hot because of the oced card or is it normal ?
You could take an old Pentium heatsink and use something like Arctic Silver epoxy to glue it on. Cooler Master sells some RAM heatsinks made of copper with 8 in a pack for about $10USD. That might help if your worried. I suspect the reason it's hot is because of the level of integration in the MCP (southbridge). Having any sort of cooling on the southbridge won't hurt, but at this point in time, it's very rare to see any type of cooling on the southbridge, and most likely because it doesn't need it to function, despite the amount of integration these days. Faster speeds will generate more heat, so in that respect, it could affect the southbridge, but more than likely its because of reasons above. If you've got poor ventilation, which I don't recall you having, that can add something. Most people don't really worry about the southbridge being to hot.
funny 'cause on amdmbforums it seems to be an important thing to do if you're gonna' overclock in a mad way. They usually take off the hs of the nb, put it on the sb and put a better one on the nb. I was just concerned with the heat, but if you tell me it's normal, then I'll leave it as is. Of course, I'm not gonna' overclock in a mad way. I'll get a barton 2500+ and run it at 200*10 and I'll be happy with that. None of those 240FSB for me...although it would be nice I just don't have the money to put on such good memory. Speaking of memory, I think I'll buy 2x256 of Twinmos with Winbond CH-5 chips (DDR400) for $54 each. Apparently, they work great with the nforce2 chipset. My temps are actually great if you ask me. My volcano11@4400rpm gives me 43C idle, Prime95 for 1h30 gave me a temp of 50C (fan at full speed of course) I don'T know if that board reads the temps differently than my previous one or if I did a better job at putting the paste on the cpu (I did take more time this time though), but my temps dropped by 3-4C, which is a lot considering it'S the same paste/hsf/cpu ! maybe not right now but I'll buy 3 vantec stealth (2 exhaust, one intake (actually this one is gonna' push the air towards the back, it's not really gonna' take air from the outside of the case)), which is gonna cool things down way better. And to finish, I've decided to ease up on the ocing for my card. I dropped it to 501/335 as I was experiencing lock-ups in ut2k3 and windows (2-3 times a day).
I haven't used Twinmos, but I've heard decent things about them. With that Soltek being a pretty good overclocker, you should have some decent amount of room to play with. I guess the only thing to be disappointed with is that Soltek has a single channel NForce 2 board that does pretty well against the dual channel nForce 2!
Im really surprised your southbridge is so hot! It doesnt control any of the components which overclock so it rarely gets hot at all. The most significant thing it controls though is sound. If you run your sound off your motherboard soundcard you will find out how the southbridge is doing. If its sketchy or crackly (normally caused by static) its too hot. You should be able to touch the thing for as long as you want without it hurting. It will probably run ok but heat isnt a great friend of computers. Also, id overclock that barton all the way! Ive not looked at any reached speeds yet but I bet it will a long way especially with temps like yours! Thats cooler than my pentium!
I had answered all of your posts but my computer froze AGAIN (I'm talking about that in a new thread called: "My computer froze AGAIN". Anyways...I'll be brief and to the point. BigB: If I had read more, I would have probably bought that NV400. But when looking back, I still think I made the right decision because: - Even though it's an evolution of the current chipset, it may still need to mature a bit before being considered as great as the ultra 400 - The cost is lower but not by much, so I did not lose that much money. The board is app. $10 cad less. There's also the memory thing but I've considered buying only one stick of 512 instead of 2 of 256. So if I buy only one, it won't cost me that much more ($10 actually). Ok the performance may not be as good but it'll be quite close since DC is not that much more faster unless you have the IGP instead of the SPP. I certainly hope they will have an onboard video version of that board (if they don't already) since it seems it'S directed at the budget class of PCs, even though it's a great performer. Zeus: I was surprised too, considering I don'T overclock and also that I use an add-on sound card (SB Live), not the onboard one. but anyways, we'll see once I get my new cpu as the FRN series of boards was known to have problems with Palominos. The problem was that it was simply not working (quite a small problem !), but maybe I'm experiencing an other kind of problem, but anyway, we'll see. The 2500+ has been known to overclock up to 200*10 quite easily, and 200*11 is very realistic, beyond that it's the luck of the draw, plus the perfect combination of hardware. I've seen 2.5ghz+ and 230+ FSB with that chipset, this is very impressive. It even beated the legendary TbredB 1700+ in the heart and mind of many people. As for my temps, I'm very impressed considering I have a cheap case ($70 cad) with only one case fan, AND a Palomino. So I think that Barton will feel right at home with me Right now the die temp is 46C idle @3100rpm (max is 5200 rpm). Once I get some Vantec Stealth and that Barton, it should be quite cool in there (not that brief after all...)
