680i MCP acceptable temperatures

[Korporativ]

I'm running the EVGA 680i SLI motherboard.(a great board now that they fixed the 680i bugs by the way)

My question is this: Overclocking or not, the MCP seems to be the absolute hottest part of my system. It is running at about 52-53*C no matter what. Is this normal, or do I need pull it off and make sure it is seated correctly? I installed the provided chipset fan, but it only has a heatpipe&heatsync leading off to the southbridge. Any ideas?

 

[lopri]

MCP is the southbridge and SPP is the northbridge. Both can get extremely hot (~100C) without proper cooling. 52~53C should be, while a bit too hot for my liking, fine for either SPP or MCP. Only ways to lower those temps are 1) lower the ambient temps 2) use aftermarket HSFs. I use Thermalright HR-05-SLI for SPP and Evercool chipset cooler for MCP. Both work great and temps stay around 30~36C for both SPP/MCP.

 

[Korporativ]

Yeah, it is a little too hot for my liking as well. The ambient temperature inside the case is between 28 and 32*C... the processor sits around 38*C when not overclocked and 44*C if I pump it up to 3GHz from 2.4.

The problem is, with the layout of the board... the heatsynch and heatpipe run directly under the PCI-E 1 slot. I'm thinking they may sit a bit too close to the card to even be able to install an after market cooler. My board came with a fan that clamps ontop of the SPP and seems to do a fine job of cooling, it just doesn't seem to help the heatsync and heatpipe coming off of the MCP. I'm still thinking that maybe the heatsync and heatpipe that came standard with the board are somehow not making proper contact. Then again, I'd really rather not peel that off and deal with the heatpiping, etc. that runs to the northbridge.

 

[lopri]

Are you using PCI-E x1 slot? Then yeah maybe HR-05 doesn't fit. But if you're talking about the first PEG (PCI-E X16), there is plenty of room for after-market cooling. Check my setup below.

http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/5161/dsc0139301ue8.jpg
http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/4716/dsc0137601pe5.jpg

That's Scythe Infinity, Thermalright HR-05-SLI, Evercool Twinky or something, and a 8800 GTX. Enough room even for an additional fan on HR-05-SLI. But again, I think 52~53C for MCP/SPP is fine. Getting on the nerve, yes, but it shouldn't affect the stability. I just wanted to let you know that there is enough space. As you can see in the pics, I'm using the SLI version, and if I used the non-SLI version, the heatsink would be where the fan is right now. But it'd be too close to the Scythe Infinity and hard to mount.