hi, The P43 chip on my motherboard (Asus P5QL) is passively cooled, most chips are these days. The motherboard temperature (measured by PC Probe) is about 27 degrees Celsius, cpu about 30 under idle conditions. Under these circumstances the cooling element of this chip is so hot, I can held my finger no longer than a few seconds on it. Is this normal? Thanks, Kristian
Intel p43 northbridge 27c is perfectly normal. but you could be getting a false reading. try using speedfan and check the results you get match that of pc probe. If the results match then you can rule out it being a false reading. But if they don't you should consider investing in a chipsetfan or new NB heatsink such as the Zalman NB47J Zalman MB Northbridge Chipset HS ZM-NB47J. | Cool PC Inc. DBA Coolerguys.com Univeral fit also use some good thermal paste such as Artic Silver5.
From Speedfan, I get the following temperature readings: System: 29C CPU: 31C AUX: 25C HD0: 31C Core0:33C Core1: 35C As expected more or less, but the P43 chip cooling element is probably around 70C (judging my finger), so the chip is even hotter. No sensors for this chip appearantly. The Intel ICH10 element seems not to be very hot. It is a bit cynical that from the boxed Intel processor you had better get rid of the stock fan and replace it with something else (Arctic Freezer pro 7 in my case), and the cooling element on the motherboard needs also be replaced with something better. Why does ASUS sell a motherboard with such a lousy cooling element? The question is if the Zalman element would really make a difference, hope it helps. I am not interested in another ventilator in my pc. Three should be sufficient. Thanks for the advice.
Me personally I don't like Asus had one of their motherboards in the past failed almost instantly. Intel chipsets normally run quite cooler probably the best out of all the other brand of chipsets such as Nvidia Nforce now they do run hot. Just go ahead with the Zalman NB, I've use it before but on the SB on my old motherboard it was running at 67C idle but the Zalman NB47J dropped it down to 42C which was alot better, so should make quite a big difference. And is very cheap too.
