Do all 780i chipsets get THIS hot?

[Rob Williams]

I installed the ASUS Striker II Formula this evening, and all seemed to be going well for the most part (a kit of RAM died though). I was installing Vista so that I could run SYSmark and then all of a sudden, the entire machine crashed. I checked the temps in the BIOS to make sure things were fine, and the CPU was perfect, but the Southbridge and Northbridge were ridiculous.

The Northbridge was actually reporting 80°C, while the Southbridge was reporting 60°C. Is this normal of 780i boards or something? This is something I should know, really, but it's the first 780i board I installed. There is no active cooling in there for the chipsets, but even without, it should NOT get that hot (the NB is set at 1.25v!).

To see if the temps were at all accurate, I used my type-k to verify. The hottest I could get from the NB was 60°C, while the SB was reporting 65°C. Bear in mind that those are the heatsink temps, not the actual core temps. Seems a little ridiculous if you ask me...

I threw in a 120mm fan for now, to help with the hot air exhaust, but man, it irks me that the chipsets get THAT hot. I've never seen an Intel chipset get that high. 80°C is asinine, considering its voltage was left at stock.

 

[sbrehm72255]

I've heard that they get really really hot, but what you're getting sounds a bit on the extreme side.

 

[Rob Williams]

I am going to assume for now that something was wrong with that particular board, because I ran into other problems that forced me to take the board back out and forget about it. I'll install another tomorrow or this weekend and see if it exhibits the same problems.

 

[werty316]

First thing I always do whenever I get a new baord, I replace teh stock TIM which helps quite a bit.

 

[Kougar]

I think I may know what is wrong... please see: http://www.bjorn3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21648

Notice the foam pad is slightly burnt where it was covering a corner of the chipset. He reported the same 80c temps, although not sure of his exact Nvidia motherboard.

What happened to your RAM? Do Nvidia chipsets still have a taste for RAM modules or something?

 

[sbrehm72255]

I never had a problem with ram on a Nvidia based board, but I always kept the voltage down below the cooking point and ran great air flow. But there are those that have had issues, don't know what caused it though.

 

[Merlin]

I think I may know what is wrong... please see: http://www.bjorn3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21648

Notice the foam pad is slightly burnt where it was covering a corner of the chipset. He reported the same 80c temps, although not sure of his exact Nvidia motherboard.

What happened to your RAM? Do Nvidia chipsets still have a taste for RAM modules or something?

I wont buy anything from XFX, I saw that they were the same board, and priced higher....I just smiled, they are not doing good business with customers....and it is really getting around the internet.

Merlin

 

[sbrehm72255]

I don't mind XFX, I've gotten good support from them in the past, but their RMA's do take a lot longer that the others for the most part.

 

[Kougar]

Not to get off topic, but XFX does have the better graphics card warranty in my opinion... assuming you are lucky enough to reside in North America. Their policy still sucks elsewhere.

As far as I knew XFX, BFG, eVGA all offered clones of the Nvidia reference board anyway. If ASUS also is having the same problem then all of these clone resellers are going to have problem boards...

 

[sbrehm72255]

Not to get off topic, but XFX does have the better graphics card warranty in my opinion... assuming you are lucky enough to reside in North America. Their policy still sucks elsewhere.

As far as I knew XFX, BFG, eVGA all offered clones of the Nvidia reference board anyway. If ASUS also is having the same problem then all of these clone resellers are going to have problem boards...

QFT, the only difference in their video cards is the clocks, Bios versions and everything else is exactly the same.

EVGA and XFX warranties are pretty close really, both allow changing the coolers on their video cards, but XFX does have a double life time that transfers to the second owner when the card is sold.

 

[Rob Williams]

Thanks for that link Kougar... I might have to check that on the new board I have here. I am not sure what happened to the kit of RAM, but it's the same DDR2 kit I've been using for a while. All I know now is... one stick is dead.

As for XFX... they do have a great warranty, but I agree with sbrehm, eVGA does also. They are so close, it's almost a non-issue. How valuable is a double-ownership, really. It might help you sell the card easier, but usually it's not too hard to begin with.