Am I having a heat problem with my ASUS X48 Rampage Formula???

[traveler]

For the last 10 months or so, my Asus X48 Rampage Formula motherboard was showing at idle 39C for the Northbridge in Probe and 49C for the Visiontek Radeon 3870X2 Overclocked Edition video card in ATI CCC. Under load, Probe showed the NB at 43-44C and CCC showed the 3870X2 at 64-65C.

Those temps are all fine for air cooling.

Now for the change.

All I did was swap out the Visiontek Radeon HD3870X2 and replace it with a Asus Radeon 4870X2 Tri-Fan video card. Nice card!!! Runs great!!! But ....

Now, with no other changes made, Probe shows the NB is now exceeding 50C under load!!!???!!!???!!! The 4870X2 video card temps are fine. CCC shows the 4870X2 at 50C idle and 65C under load.

What happened here? Why the 7C+ (or more; I shut down the load when the Probe alarm sounded) temp increase to the Northbridge? Is the new 4870X2 at 10 1/2 inches long vs the 3870X2 at 9 1/2 inches long disrupting my air flow that much?



__________________
Asus X48 Rampage Formula / Intel Q9450 2.66 @ 3.2 / 2 x 2GB OCZ Reaper HPC PC2 8500 /
Asus Radeon HD4870X2 Tri-Fan 2GB graphics card / 24" DeLL Ultrasharp 2408WFP monitor /
Western Digital Raptor X Hard Drive / Two Western Digital Caviar RE2 WD5001ABYS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drives /
Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Elite Pro 7.1 / Creative Gigaworks S750 7.1 Speaker System /
Lian Li 343B cube case / PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Crossfire Edition /
IOGEAR GCS1782 GCS1782 Dual-Link DVI KVMP switch with 7.1 audio

[fatguy1992]

Maybe the new vcard is directing the air flow in a different way, still those temps on the NB still sounds ok to me.

[Leeghoofd]

Does the Tri fan setup pump the air into the case ? That new vidcard is known to generate FAR more heat then ya older vidcard

[Scubar]

The NB on the Rampage formula does get very hot indeed. I had to have a fan directly on mine to keep it from crashing as soon as i put a waterblock on my 4870X2. I have been considering putting the NB under water to try and keep it cool.

[traveler]

Thanks Buds for the replies. Appreciate them.

Scubar: What temps are showing for your Rampage Formula NorthBridge at load and at idle? ......... How do you like your EK Supreme LT? What block would you get for the NB? Would you put a block on your SouthBridge? Is there room for a block on the SouthBridge with your 4870X2 there? I think the stock heatpipe to the SouthBridge disappears once you take the heatsink off the NorthBridge.

Leeghoofd: The Asus 4870X2 Tri-Fan card does have a vent on the back out through to the back of the case, but (I'm looking at my other Asus 4870X2 Tri-Fan card which I hoped to install in CrossFire) the card also vents to the top, bottom, and front at the card's circuit board. So it does look like the three fans of the Asus 4870X2 are pushing air onto the motherboard at the bottom side of the card. Of course the two fans of my factory overclocked Visiontek 3870X2 card with no vent out the back did the same thing. The idle/load temps of these two cards (3870X2 & 4870X2) are reading the same temp.

Hmmmmmmmm. So could the air now being pushed at the MB be such that it's raising the NorthBridge temp by more than 7C? I should reset the alarm for 55C and see where it tops out. What is the safe maximum temp for the X48 Rampage Formula NorthBridge?





__________________
Asus X48 Rampage Formula / Intel Q9450 2.66 @ 3.2 / 2 x 2GB OCZ Reaper HPC PC2 8500 /
Asus Radeon HD4870X2 Tri-Fan 2GB graphics card / 24" DeLL Ultrasharp 2408WFP monitor /
Western Digital Raptor X Hard Drive / Two Western Digital Caviar RE2 WD5001ABYS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drives /
Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Elite Pro 7.1 / Creative Gigaworks S750 7.1 Speaker System /
Lian Li 343B cube case / PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Crossfire Edition /
IOGEAR GCS1782 GCS1782 Dual-Link DVI KVMP switch with 7.1 audio

[Scubar]

I havent got the rig running at the moment as its in bits ready to be put into a new case and used as a better fileserver/webserver than what i currently am using, the Fileserver is going to be converted into the HTPC as the HTPC Doesnt need the power for a quad core and 8gb ram.

I actually just bought the EK NB S-Max Acetal block today for my Rampage Formula aswell as a replacement Enzotech Heatsink for the SB.

This it the system i have ready to be put together

XSPC Dual DDC Bay Res w/single DDC 3.2 > NB S-MAX > EK Supreme LT > PA120.2

[traveler]

I havent got the rig running at the moment as its in bits ready to be put into a new case and used as a better fileserver/webserver than what i currently am using, the Fileserver is going to be converted into the HTPC as the HTPC Doesnt need the power for a quad core and 8gb ram.

I actually just bought the EK NB S-Max Acetal block today for my Rampage Formula aswell as a replacement Enzotech Heatsink for the SB.

This it the system i have ready to be put together

XSPC Dual DDC Bay Res w/single DDC 3.2 > NB S-MAX > EK Supreme LT > PA120.2

Nice NorthBridge block!

If I read what you wrote right: Coolant flow to the NorthBridge first and then to the CPU block??? You're going with a Heatsink solution to the SouthBridge instead of a waterblock solution? What made you go with the air cooling solution there?

Any faint memory of what the NorthBridge temps might have been for you? 40C's? 50C's?



__________________
Asus X48 Rampage Formula / Intel Q9450 2.66 @ 3.2 / 2 x 2GB OCZ Reaper HPC PC2 8500 /
Asus Radeon HD4870X2 Tri-Fan 2GB graphics card / 24" DeLL Ultrasharp 2408WFP monitor /
Western Digital Raptor X Hard Drive / Two Western Digital Caviar RE2 WD5001ABYS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drives /
Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Elite Pro 7.1 / Creative Gigaworks S750 7.1 Speaker System /
Lian Li 343B cube case / PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Crossfire Edition /
IOGEAR GCS1782 GCS1782 Dual-Link DVI KVMP switch with 7.1 audio

[Scubar]

SB really doesnt get hot at all, waste of time and money and effort putting a WB on it. There will be sufficient air flow passing over the SB Anyway so the tall copper HS will be fine.

The NB im sure was hitting around 45 idle and around 60-65 load and it was causing the system to crash at first until i discovered that was the cause and put a 120mm fan on it which dropped it down to around 50.

Putting it under Water along with the CPU will certainly help the stability.

[genec57]

The cooling on the X48 Rampage looks almost identical to the one on my old Maximus II Formula. The water block replaced the heat sink over the Northbridge and fastened to the cooler which in turn fastened to the Northbridge chip. The result was NO improvement over a fan placed over the heatsink. Unless there is some way to place the waterblock directly on the chip (which would destroy the cooling to the Southbridge and the mosfets) I don't think you would gain anything. That was my experience.

[Scubar]

Theres two different models of the Rampage Formula genec57.

There is the Rampage Formula and the v2 Rampage Formula with the Fuzion block which is what was replaced.

On the Standard Rampage i have to remove the whole NB/SB Heatsink construction exposing the naked cores which you then put the blocks on.

[zsamz_]

i installed a katana3 on my rex and i havent seen higher than 40c primin @ 600fsb 1.8v
n 37-38c max for 24/7 fanless

[Scubar]

Bit extreme for the NB, LOL

[PatRaceTin]

wooowww massive heatsink on NB

[passnthru2]

when i bougt mine i took off all copper heat sinks and replaced the so called "Thermal TAPE".. with the best Silverpaste, now there is Nano Diamond paste, 4x better than silver..

right now, 4 years later my temps are running.. 30.0--35.5--35.7--32.5 *C gaming BC2 at highest settings it gets..to high 30's ..-42*. but there is a bug in BC2 that max's out the cores to 100%