Nowadays, every second person has a computer. And everyone wants to get more performance for less money. But how to do that? Of course, I’m talking about overclocking/overclocking, a simple example: why buy a higher-frequency processor if you can overclock a lower-frequency one to its frequencies. Everything would be wonderful, but there is one “BUT”, this “BUT” is proper cooling of the intra-system space.
How to organize it better? Which system components should I install it on? I will offer you my method of upgrading some computer devices. I did not touch upon processor cooling, since the Internet is full of various comparisons and tests of various coolers. For this reason, I decided to write a guide on how to easily and painlessly upgrade your motherboard and your video. I would also like to say that this article is intended to help beginners and doubters rather than adepts in such a difficult task as overclocking.

I will also provide data about my system (it is 100% stable):

Pentium 4 [email protected] (Step. DO) (264*12) (1.6V) (Northwood)

Zalman CNPC7000Cu (2000rpm)

Kingston DDR400, (2.5/3/3/5) (2.8V) 512 mb*2 (Dual Channel)

Motherboard -Asus P4P800 Gold

Video-ATI Radeon 9800@Pro (324/580@410/710) (3.2ns Samsung)

HDD Maxtor Diamond 9 Plus 160 GB

PSU 300W Powerman

Additional fans: 1-exhaust (80mm), 1-intake (80mm), 1-on the hard drive electronics, on the side 92mm Zalman - all of them are connected via Thermaltake Hardcano 9

WinXP SP2 (build 5100), the system is installed on local drive C, 15GB in size, everything, unnecessary services are disabled.

The temperature of the video card was measured using a thermocouple near the core. The following programs were also used to check the temperature:

Asus PcProbe v2.20.07

Video Drivers - Catalyst 5.1

To warm up the memory and processor - S&M 0.3.2a

To check the video:

The article will consist of several stages:

Upgrading motherboard cooling

Video card upgrade

Motherboard

Today, I865PE/I875P system logic sets are very popular among ordinary users and, of course, overclockers. They have excellent performance and good overclocking potential.

Everyone is familiar with the P4P800 motherboard from Asus. And everything would be good in it, both the design and the overclocking capabilities, but the cooling let us down. On the board it is implemented using a passive cooler, which clearly does not contribute to overclocking. In principle, as a result of the improvements, the stability of the system should increase when operating at a high bus frequency of 285-300 MHz.

On my P4P800 rev.1.02 board this heatsink is silver. I would like to immediately note that when modernizing the guarantee is not lost, subject to direct hands. I am not responsible for damaged boards. Everything that is described here in this article, you do at your own peril and risk.

What we need:

thermal paste KPT-8, Alsil 3

sanitary sticks 3-4 pcs. + alcohol

fan from the Titan TTC-CUV2AB kit for video cards or any other 40*40mm

Super glue

paint (silver/black) or not needed at all if the valve is black

wide blade screwdriver

First stage

We remove the motherboard from the case; you also only need to remove the video card and RAM. We need to carefully remove the radiator without touching the motherboard PCB in order to get rid of the old thermal interface. To do this, take a screwdriver with a wide blade and press the hooks from top to bottom, as shown in Fig. 1:

Under the radiator is the north bridge, in my case covered with a disgusting pink substance. We wash off all this disgrace with the help of hygiene sticks soaked in alcohol or solvent. In its place we apply a thin layer of good thermal paste KPT-8 or any other, fortunately there is plenty to choose from. Also be sure to wipe off any remaining old thermal paste from the back of the heatsink. Now we do the whole operation in reverse, i.e. install the heatsink on the chip.

Second phase

When the radiator is installed in its old place, we can begin installing the fan, but we need to not lose the warranty, how to do this? There is an Asus inscription on the radiator; we paste a thin strip of tape onto it:

Next, we take the fan from the kit for Titan TTC-CUV2AB video cards, initially it is golden in color, of course, this is good, but I wanted it to be the same color as the radiator, i.e. silver color. A can of silver Motip paint was found in the storage room. The valve was immediately repainted a different color. It dried for an hour or an hour and a half. You can either paint the valve or not.

After all this, you take Super Glue and drip a few drops onto the place where the tape is pasted and place a fan on top of it. So, what did we get as a result? The temperature dropped by about 3-5 degrees, and installing additional cooling had a positive effect on overclocking my processor. I managed to raise the bus by another 5 MHz, so now I have 264*4 for a total of 1057 MHz. In practice, we see an increase in speed after simple manipulations. More about testing conditions. After all this, I really wanted to know if the temperature had really dropped that much. To check, the S&M utility was launched for 5 minutes, before and after the upgrade. The table contains data on the temperature of the north bridge and processor. By the way, I wanted to say that my southbridge is not bare; it has a small passive radiator on it, covered with adhesive thermal paste. Actually, here is the diagram:

I think comments are unnecessary. Even a seemingly simple mod can increase overclocking potential and lower temperatures. Now let’s turn our attention to the video card, as another “heating device” in your case.

Replacing the cooling on the ATI RadeOn 9800 @ Pro video card

So, I purchased an ATI Radeon 9800 128MB video card, made by Sapphire, but apparently it was from the first series, so the ATI sticker on the cooler was not even replaced. The board represents a completely reference design from the manufacturer. The only thing that disappointed me was the relatively slow memory with a cycle time of 3.2 ns made by Samsung. Here she is:

The older sister differs from mine in that they usually have faster memory with a response time of 2.8 ns, which ensures operation at 700 MHz.
Thus, the frequencies of the “Pro” version are 378/680 MHz, and mine are 325/580. I think you get my idea? Yes, yes upgrade the 9800 to 9800 PRO. But to do this, you need to upgrade the cooling of the chip and memory, because you won’t get far with native cooling:

One distinctive feature of this cooler is its excellent compression to the core, due to the small bump on its back. Let's not forget that there was a protective frame around the core of the entire older generation of Radeons. It can be easily removed, but then we would lose the warranty, which is extremely undesirable. Where is our experimental processor cooler? This will be GlasialTech Igloo 4100GE for Pentium 4:

A very good cooler, with gold plating, and a quiet fan. It was decided to subject it to light processing and install it on a video card. Light processing is a modification to suit the profile of the video card. Here are some characteristics and data about the experimental cooler:

Maximum Cooled Processor Frequency – Pentium 4 3.0Ghz

Dimensions 83x69x53 mm

Weight (with fan) 357 grams

Thus, we had to cut the radiator on a lathe where the capacitors of the video power system abutted it. The frame, which should, in theory, press the cooler to the central processor, had to be removed and the fan screwed onto self-tapping screws directly between the radiator fins. A thread was also cut on the back of the radiator for two standard holes, and pieces of the radiator were cut here and there for small parts, such as capacitors, etc.:

The cooler is pressed perfectly against the video card. The bolts were equipped with rubber gaskets to avoid damage to the PCB. Between the core and the cooler a thin layer of KPT-8 thermal paste was spread. A thermocouple was also installed between the fins of the radiator and connected to Hardcano. As a result, we get the following monster:

But that’s not all, we still need to install radiators as a keepsake. But where can you get them?
There was no cooler at hand, but there was a silent cooler from Zalman ZM80D-HP, made with two heat pipes. I tried to install it, but personally, it seemed to me ineffective for overclocking, because it played the role of a frying pan in the case, everything was heated from its huge surfaces... But it came with excellent radiators as a souvenir, which I used:

Actually, after all the manipulations done, the card was installed in the AGP slot, without any problems. There was a little worry because of the mass of the cooler, but everything seemed to work out. I overclocked the video with RivaTuner. With the new cooling, the board overclocked perfectly and more than covered the frequencies of its older sister; from the “native” 325/580 MHz it went up to 410/710 MHz. It was decided to flash the BIOS from the Radeon 9800Pro with Samsung 2.8 ns memory. I asked for it. Everything is fine! The drivers recognized the new video card, and I ran several tests and not a single artifact or stripe! Now let's take a look at the temperature of the card when idle and when running tests from the 3D Mark 03/05 package: the temperature of the video card in idle mode is 24°C, when loading - 41°C.

Some results of the 3D Mark 03 (default) benchmark so that we can see the increase from overclocking:

Conclusion

So, as a result of our simple upgrades, we were able to raise computer performance to a new level. Cooling the motherboard helped increase the bus frequency by 5 MHz, and accordingly the processor frequency also increased. We also upgraded the video card, gaining an increase in core overclocking: 26%, memory overclocking: 22%. In addition, now I have a 9800Pro in my case, which cannot but be pleasant

I will be very pleased if this guide helps someone do something new for their computer and improve its performance. Good luck!

P.S. For comparison, I am attaching a photo of the old video card cooler and the new one:

Kibis
23 /02.2005

Modification of the cooling system on the ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP motherboard.

This short review is devoted to modification (improvement) of the cooling system on the ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP motherboard. Improving the cooling system only makes sense if you want to overclock your processor well, i.e. if you don’t plan to overclock the processor at all (then why buy such an expensive motherboard?), then you don’t need to read this article and don’t improve the cooling system, since without overclocking the motherboard works very stably and doesn’t need to change anything! I bought this particular motherboard because after reading many reviews and tests, including foreign ones, I realized that, in my opinion, this is currently one of the best motherboards for overclocking Intel Core 2 Duo processors. Even the fact that it is on this motherboard that new quad-core Intel processors of the Kentsfield family are tested and overclocked speaks volumes. By the way, to support new quad-core processors with this motherboard, you just need to update the BIOS to version 0706 and later.

Let's move on directly to improving the cooling system of the ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP motherboard.

1) Replacing the thermal interface on the north and south bridges.

The first thing I decided to do when I took the motherboard out of the box was to remove the heatsinks from the north and south bridges, clean off the factory thermal paste from them, and also clean off the thermal paste from the north and south bridge chips.
To do this, we will need several cotton swabs, some ethyl or isopropyl alcohol, tweezers and a flat-head screwdriver.
Turning the motherboard over, we will see that the south bridge radiator is attached to it with two clamps, we can safely press them out with tweezers and carefully remove the radiator. It may not be easy to remove, since it is most likely stuck tightly to the south bridge chip. To remove it, you either need to apply a little force, but only carefully, or pick up the heatsink with a screwdriver and unstick it with it, but again everything must be done carefully so as not to damage the contacts and microcircuits on the motherboard! You absolutely also need to do everything with the northbridge heatsink, but you need to take into account that a heat pipe goes from it to the mosfets, which connects to another heatsink and this whole system is removed together, that is, you need to be even more careful there!
After we have removed the radiators from the north and south bridges, we need to remove the factory thermal paste from them. To do this, take a cotton swab, moisten it in ethyl or isopropyl alcohol and remove the paste from the radiators. This may take some time and you will have to change more than one cotton swab, since the factory thermal paste has dried quite strongly to the radiator.
Next, if your radiators are more or less even and well sanded, then you don’t need to do anything else with them, but if they are poorly sanded and not very even, then you can level their base using sandpaper, and then sand it using GOI paste and oils (the corresponding methods are on the forum and I will not present them here).
Now you need to remove the thermal paste from the south and north bridge chips. To do this, use a cotton swab pre-soaked in alcohol to carefully wash off the factory thermal paste; do this slowly, so as not to damage the chips themselves and other microcircuits of the motherboard.
After we have freed the radiators and north and south bridge chips from the factory thermal paste, we need to apply some other more effective thermal paste. For this purpose, I chose the most affordable, and, in my opinion, very good price/availability/thermal conductivity ratio, KPT-8 thermal paste, purchased at Sunrise in mid-September 2006. The paste was in a 125-gram tube, it was white in color and had a slightly thick consistency; by the way, its shelf life indicated on the tube was 3 years.
Squeeze a small drop of KPT-8 thermal paste onto the south bridge and spread it over the entire surface of the chip in an even thin layer. I smeared the drop with the help of a fingertip, quite conveniently I must say. You should also apply a very small drop of thermal paste to the south bridge radiator itself to avoid the formation of air bubbles from possible unevenness or roughness of the radiator. Next, carefully press the heatsink onto the south bridge chip and snap it onto the back of the motherboard. On the north bridge we do everything similarly to the south bridge, except that the north bridge chip is smaller and correspondingly less thermal paste is needed. Don’t forget to also apply just a little tempopaste to the northbridge radiator.
The thermal interface on the north and south bridge of the ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP motherboard has been replaced.

In principle, we could stop there, but for those who plan to push the processor very hard and may need to increase the voltage on the north and south bridges, as a result of this they will begin to get very hot. Moreover, in normal mode, even without replacing the thermal interface, the north and especially south bridges get very hot. Without replacing the thermal interface and even without overclocking, the temperature on the south bridge was up to 50-55 degrees during long-term computer games. The North Bridge initially heats up less, since it has a more massive radiator. But in order to improve the processor overclocking performance when the voltage on the north and south bridges increases, as well as to properly cool the north and south bridges, we proceed to the second part of improving the cooling system on the ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP motherboard.

2) Additional cooling of the north and south bridges.
I probably went with the simplest method of additional cooling of the chipset and south bridge.
I glued 4 radiators onto the south bridge, designed to cool the memory of the video card from the Titan kit. I used Alsil-5 thermal conductive glue as glue.

We are done with the south bridge and now we can begin to improve the cooling of the north bridge (chipset).
I glued a radiator with a fan from the same kit for cooling the Titan video adapter onto the north bridge using Alsil-5 thermally conductive glue.

With the installation of additional cooling on the north and south bridge completed, we can now begin installing additional cooling on other parts of the motherboard.

3) Additional cooling of other parts of the motherboard.
The ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP motherboard comes with a special additional fan that is placed on the radiator that cools the mosfets. In principle, it is quite sufficient if the system is overclocked.
I had to cool the air space around this radiator in a different way, since installing a Thermaltake Big Typhoon processor cooler does not allow installing this fan, because the Typhoon’s dimensions are large and the heat pipes prevent the installation of an additional fan on the radiator that cools the mosfets.
Using the same Alsil-5 thermal conductive glue, I glued a 40x40 mm Titan TFD 4010M12C fan onto a gigabit network card block - not very beautiful, but so far everything is holding together, not falling off, and most importantly, this fan blows the air space above the radiator, which cools the mosfets .

Next, I decided to cool the 8-phase power supply chips of the RIO R47 processor, which become noticeably hot after several hours of playing computer games. On them I simply glued aluminum radiators from the TITANTTC-CUV2AB RHS rpm video adapter cooling kit.

This completes the modification (improvement) of the cooling system on the ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP motherboard. Do not judge the article strictly, as it does not claim to be perfect. All wishes and comments can be sent to me via PM. or by email and also in the topic Asus P5B / P5B-E / Plus / Deluxe / WiFi-AP (Intel P965)

P.S. Happy overclocking everyone.

A fairly common problem is when the computer's south bridge gets very hot. And for nForce-based motherboards, chipset overheating is perhaps the most common cause of failure. We received a system unit based on the ASUS M2N-XE MP. Having launched the AIDA64 program, we saw that the chipset temperature reached 78 degrees:

MCP is a chipset

Many will say, “Well, what’s wrong with that? This is nForce! Yes, the nVidia chipset is a very hot chip and always got quite hot. But the colder it is, the longer it will work.

How to improve chipset (bridge) cooling

Removing the motherboard

The most time-consuming procedure is dismantling the motherboard. But in most cases this must be done in order to remove the radiator. We take out the video card, disconnect the cables and wires, unscrew the 6 bolts that secure the motherboard to the case. On reverse side of the system board, squeeze the fastener tips:

We take out the plastic fasteners themselves and remove the radiator:

Chipset (bridge) mounts

Replacing thermal paste

Now you need to remove the remnants of the old thermal paste from the radiator and chip and degrease them with alcohol. You will then need to apply new paste to the bridge.

and on the radiator:

Installing additional cooling for the chipset

We decided to take this opportunity and attach a 40mm cooler to the radiator for better cooling.

Cooler 40x40x10

We install a radiator with a cooler on the chipset. We snap the fastenings. Now you can screw the motherboard to the case, connect wires, SATA cables and install the video adapter.

The result is excellent: thanks to the fan, the bridge temperature dropped from 78 °C to 49 °C:

The temperature of the nForce chipset has dropped significantly

Thus, we protected the nForce chip from overheating and certainly significantly extended the life of the computer as a whole.

photo 1

photo 2

photo 3

photo 4

photo 5

photo 6

photo 7

photo 8

Many modern motherboards are equipped with an active chipset cooling system. Due to the fact that compact radiators have low heat capacity, manufacturers are forced to install small fans (usually 40 mm) with a huge rotation speed - about 7-8 thousand rpm. This design, unfortunately, has some disadvantages. The first unpleasant moment is the noise produced by such a cooler, the second is its rapid failure. Both one and the other problem lead to the need to replace the motherboard cooling system.

This is precisely the phenomenon that DPK editor-in-chief Oleg Danilov encountered - his home computer was built on the basis of an ASUS A8N-SLI. The fan installed on the north bridge of the nForce4 chipset in products from ASUS is known for its noise, and in Oleg’s it also stopped rotating. To ensure good cooling and at the same time reduce the overall noise level, it was decided to use a radiator. After some searching and deliberation, Oleg chose the Zalman ZM-NB47J (see photo 6). The kit includes an original dismountable mounting system, which allows installation on almost any motherboard.

Now let's look at the process of replacing the cooling system (all stages are shown in the pictures). Photo 1 – computer before modernization. To remove the original cooling system, you need to remove the motherboard from the case, having first removed all devices that could interfere with this. Photo 2 shows the board already prepared for replacement. You need to be very careful when removing the “original” radiator; it is advisable not to use sharp objects to remove the plastic fasteners, so as not to damage the tracks on the motherboard. After dismantling the cooler, it is necessary to remove the remaining thermal paste and sealing gasket from the chip (photo 4).

Then the fixing clips are attached to the new radiator in such a way that they coincide with the mounting holes of the motherboard, and only after that the thermal interface is applied.

You should install a new cooling system carefully: the nForce chipset core is very fragile and is not covered with a heat dissipator, which can lead to chips. A similar problem was encountered by users who assembled PCs based on Athlon XP and Sempron processors under Socket A. You should not use excessive force to secure the heatsink; if possible, you should fix both clips at the same time and avoid distortions. The resulting motherboard with Zalman ZM-NB47J looks as shown in photo 5.

One more fact deserves special mention - before changing the cooling system, you need to make sure that the new radiator will not interfere with the installation of the video card. In the case of the ASUS motherboard, this problem did not arise, but other manufacturers may place the chipset on the board differently. We confidently declare that the radiator we have chosen cannot be used on some motherboards from Elitegroup and Gigabyte. Also, when using passive cooling, you should take care of the flow of cold air to the radiator - install, for example, a fan on the front panel of the case.

As a result, we got a quieter computer with improved northbridge cooling compared to the standard configuration. The result is shown in photo 8.