I’d rather be greeted with no TIM than a heatsink that has clearly been epoxied on in one or two corners and you can see is nowhere near flat (I’m looking at you STB with your 3DFX Voodoo 3 garbage!).

paradigital wrote on 2020-08-27, 16:34:

I’d rather be greeted with no TIM than a heatsink that has clearly been epoxied on in one or two corners and you can see is nowhere near flat (I’m looking at you STB with your 3DFX Voodoo 3 garbage!).

Touché. That wasn't even just restricted to the voodoo 3 either. I've read a few horror stories about similar on the voodoo5. *shudder*

Yes, this is common. Thermal paste isn't crucial with this low TDP but it certainly won't hurt to apply some now. 😉👍

Doornkaat wrote on 2020-08-27, 17:54:

Yes, this is common. Thermal paste isn't crucial with this low TDP but it certainly won't hurt to apply some now. 😉👍

I've actually tried to find the TDP figures for the northbridge without success. I know the CPU itself is <35W so I'm not expecting stupid numbers though. Trying to work out if a fan would be massively overkill although as I said, I've read about people complaining they run hot. There is a nice wee 2-pin fan header right beside it I've been eyeing up for it which would be perfect for a 40mm fan...

With these parts getting older you can never have too much cooling. I always try to make sure I have the best airflow and cooling I can

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-08-27, 18:34:

With these parts getting older you can never have too much cooling. I always try to make sure I have the best airflow and cooling I can

This right here. Even when this stuff was new I always made sure everything had more than adequate cooling.

You could even buy aftermarket north-bridge coolers back then. The best was one that had a heatpipe or two.... asked my little brother to save that one for me but he tossed it... grrrrrrr.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-08-27, 19:28:

[...]

You could even buy aftermarket north-bridge coolers back then. The best was one that had a heatpipe or two.... asked my little brother to save that one for me but he tossed it... grrrrrrr.

In the P3 era? Can't recall any kind of aftermarket heatsinks for northbridges being a thing then - in fact quite a few OEMs ran i440BX, i810 and i815 without any heatsink at all. First aftermarket heatsink I can remember was a blue passive Zalman affair designed as a silent replacement for active HSF combos on late 00's.

That heatpipe thing sounds impressive regardless. Any brand/model info?

There's that Alpenföhn Ötzi chipset cooler that uses two heatpipes and is all copper. I bought one NOS two or three years ago because it's kind of funny and only cost 5€.
Also some Thermaltake thing with heatpipe and blue LED 40mm fan comes to mind.
There's a bunch of others too. I think Cooler Master made one, Noctua probably, Thermalright, Evercool, probably a lot more I'm forgetting or not aware of and I think there are still new Chinese products around. Swiftech also made one (without heatpipes) in that hedgehog design - a very capable cooler IIRC.
I remember aftermarket chipset/gpu heatsinks as a commercial product starting in the early 2000s.

dionb wrote on 2020-08-27, 21:01:

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-08-27, 19:28:

[...]

You could even buy aftermarket north-bridge coolers back then. The best was one that had a heatpipe or two.... asked my little brother to save that one for me but he tossed it... grrrrrrr.

In the P3 era? Can't recall any kind of aftermarket heatsinks for northbridges being a thing then - in fact quite a few OEMs ran i440BX, i810 and i815 without any heatsink at all. First aftermarket heatsink I can remember was a blue passive Zalman affair designed as a silent replacement for active HSF combos on late 00's.

That heatpipe thing sounds impressive regardless. Any brand/model info?

I think the one we had was for a later platform.... Probably Pentium IV or Core2 era. Might have been used on an nforce 4 board or something like that that had a hot running NB.

I looked and there are some available on ebay. Just do a search for chipset cooler heatpipe.

The other bad thing about the stock chipset coolers back then besides the ones that came with no TIM were ones that had that pink bubble-gum like crap that was supposed to be TIM.