majestyk wrote on 2025-03-18, 12:00:

I recently found a nice P6DNH, replaced the VARTA cell, updated BIOS, did some cleaning and now everything seems to run just fin […]
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I recently found a nice P6DNH, replaced the VARTA cell, updated BIOS, did some cleaning and now everything seems to run just fine.

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The onboard intel "i960" (33 MHz) operates in bridge mode and the upper PCI-slots are working.
What´s a bit irritating is the i960 gets quite warm on the metal upper side (about 40-45°), even when it´s doing "nothing".
As soon as I put a little passive heatsink on it, it´s down to about 20°.
Is this normal behaviour for this chip? It´s my only mainboard that has one, so I can´t compare.

Seems so...I see old support posts which indicate ir's a toasty little bugger

There´s a "i960RP" on this mainboard and the datasheet says the max. case temperature is 95°C.

There are two mounting holes near the chip so I´ll try and find a 35 x 35mm heatsink for it. I´d like to avoid using thermal compound "glue" by all means.

The onboard intel "i960" (33 MHz) operates in bridge mode and the upper PCI-slots are working. What´s a bit irritating is the i9 […]
Show full quote

The onboard intel "i960" (33 MHz) operates in bridge mode and the upper PCI-slots are working.
What´s a bit irritating is the i960 gets quite warm on the metal upper side (about 40-45°), even when it´s doing "nothing".
As soon as I put a little passive heatsink on it, it´s down to about 20°.
Is this normal behavior for this chip? It´s my only mainboard that has one, so I can´t compare.

yes its normal. A simple stick-on heatsink will be plenty. It looks like you have 2 holes for mounting one of those little chipset heatsinks, but it sucks that its the middle-mounted version and not the more typical corner mount. Still. The little sticky green ones are more than adequate to solve this.

Supermicro is a S-tier motherboard manufacturer, if they didn't feel the need to cool something, you will be just fine. I did some experiments with an Asus version of this board here: Bitchin' dual p-pro setup (shameless self plug)

Long story short, leave it in dumb bridge mode. unless you are planning to knee-cap yourself with 10meg ethernet and slow hard drives. the cache for said i960 isn't going to do anything useful.

luckybob wrote on 2025-03-19, 16:40:

... but it sucks that its the middle-mounted version and not the more typical corner mount.

You can say that again! Tried to find one today and while scrolling through thousands of heatsinks online I couldn´t find one single fitting here.
I´ll keep my eyes open for the time being, but before I use this mainboard for a complete build in some super-big-tower case I´d add a little cooler first.

Just use the heatsinks without tabs and with double sided thermal tape. The i960 is big and flat. It should stick like white on rice.

This is a part that will be just fine as-is. No need to stress out on something extra.