Northbridge Overheating...

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Jayce

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I'm working on an older Dell box with overheating problems. The issue is clearly with the north bridge, however this system is insanely clean, no dust or dirt, etc. I re-seated the heat sink and put new thermal compound down. It made zero difference.

I'm questioning what I should do next. My stubborn thought process doesn't want to add any fans or new gear to it since it came from the factory and ran for years without issue. However, I'm clueless on why else it would be doing this. Everything else of the system looks great. The capacitors on the board look solid, no signs of issues, etc.

Perhaps I should just take the dive into getting a heat sink with a mini fan mounted and be done with it?

The only thing is I'm seeing with some of these fan-mounted heat sinks is their mounting bracket doesn't appear like it would mesh up with the one on this Dell board. Perhaps the adhesive type of thermal compound is in order in this situation.
 
Jace, have you tried applying thermal grease to your north bridge underneath it's heatsink ?
I know it may sound odd, but try some regualr artic silver 5 and let it sit for an nhour and try your pc again.
I'm guessing you have a socket 478 or LGA 775 motherboard, sometimes they will over heat but not to the point where they won't stay cooled down.

Also try having a small fan blow in front of the case, if I am right that will help keep your systems cooled down or even at prefall tempatures.

Follow this link also as it will explain what I was talking to you about.
Northbridge heatsink and thermal compound - Cooler-and-Heatsinks - Overclocking<h1>Overclocking</h1>
 
He already did Mike:
I'm working on an older Dell box with overheating problems. The issue is clearly with the north bridge, however this system is insanely clean, no dust or dirt, etc. I re-seated the heat sink and put new thermal compound down. It made zero difference.
 
I did put some Artic Silver 5 under the heat sink and put it back on the northbridge. Same deal. It made literally no difference.

I COULD just get some double sided tape and a case fan, but this is for a client, so I want it to look decent. I'll probably just order a new northbridge heatsink/fan unit for it. I just wish I could figure out "why" it's not fine now whereas it clearly was for years without issue...

I'm not sure what kind of board it is offhand. All I know is it's a Pentium 4 HT processor with some variant of XP.
 
Sorry paton, misread that but jayce if you need information from the mobo itself, look underneath rhe board a for a white bar code number or small print serial number and put that in google, or another search engine and it should give you the information your looking for.

If the northe bridge does not cool down after a new heatsink and fan transplant, I hate to say this but....
Maybe the mobo is getting ready to give in soon, I know you don't want hear it, but if the north bridge goes so will the mobo.

In any given case offer the client service to opt in for a better board and cpu combo.
If the dell atx case I/O shield can be knocked out, theres still hope for it yet, had to do that to my mothers dell quite abit before giving up on her celeron dual core e1200.
 
I wan't to think the northbridge is toasted already.

I had a chance to play around with 30+ Dell Optiplex 7xx series (I think it was optiplex) that we got from dell in 2006ish, north bridge in those suckers NEEDED active cooling, but had a ridiculously small and horrible north bridge. We ended up buying several small 60mm fans and glued them to the top of the heatsink, no more issues as the heat could be removed from the heatsink.
 
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