NF2 northbridge cooling....not!!

[PDL]

This is the bottom of the heatsink after I removed it from the board. There is an equal amount of thermal paste on the chipset. The stuff they use must be really expensive cause they sure weren't very generous!

[Gortok]

What board is this?
I wanna know who's THIS cheap...

[sifis_samos]

ECS propably!.. But this looks as an Asrock heatsink!

[PDL]

Originally posted by sifis_samos:
ECS propably!.. But this looks as an Asrock heatsink!

haha...ROFLMAO...
Well, it could just as easily been ECS! [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Actually it is Biostar M7NCD Pro. But to the boards credit, before I fixed this it topped out at 11x215 on a TBred 2100+.
Not bad..not too bad at all... :D

This is the fix...with some AS3 of course!

[PDL]

As you can see from the first pic the major problem is the manufacturing of the heatsink itself. After it is cast and cools, the metal shrinks slightly and causes the bottom to disform.
Actually, if the heatsink and the chipset were both very flat, that is about all the goop you would need.
It's just as Gortok says, they are cheap. Too cheap to either add more goop or do it right and mill the bottom of the heatsink, or buy better quality.
I'm sure they could do a thousand of them in less time that it took me to do this one.

[WetWilly]

Hey, the board only costs $50 - what do you expect ;)

[Snigel]

I can tell you that Abit is not better than that. Many manufacturers don't have any thermal grease at all.

[elbasquero]

PDL, did you lap it on a flat surface? How did you get the surface perfect?

[sifis_samos]

Originally posted by elbasquero:
PDL, did you lap it on a flat surface? How did you get the surface perfect?

You just need sandparer like the one they use before they paint a car..Number 400 for start then 800 and you are done!It needs patience though!..A small piece of wood is a good stuff to stick the sandpaper on.

[PDL]

Originally posted by elbasquero:
PDL, did you lap it on a flat surface? How did you get the surface perfect?

..get the surface perfect??? No, not even close to perfect..I don't have that kind of machinery! :D Just kidding!

What I use is a piece of tempered glass about 6"x8". I don't remember where it came from but it is as flat a surface as I could come up with. I place that on a workbench and sand away with 400 then 600 grit.
It is best to work it in either one direction at a time and turn the piece frequently or in a figure 8 pattern. I use a combination of both. The idea is to keep the thing as flat as possible and avoid the chance that the edges get sanded more than the middle.
Northbridge heatsinks are good to practice on before you do the CPU heatsink. That one I take more time on. Fortunately the manufacturers have helped us out there and most of the good ones do not need much if any lapping. [img]smile.gif[/img]