How HOt is your Northbridge?

[Trekkie]

I've got a quad Mac Pro 2.66GHz.

According to iStat Pro widget, my northbridge is a toasty 93 degrees.

That's celcius

When I was visiting my brother over the 4th of july, his Mac Pro was a lot louder, but his North Bridge was 53 Degrees.

The procs are at 65, and the ambient is 33.

Fans are about 550rpms except power supply is 900 something.

is that typical for a warm summer afternoon in an upstairs room?

 

[yellow]

is that typical for a warm summer afternoon in an upstairs room?

LOL.. it's a lot more than a "warm summer afternoon" in the Tiangle today!


~100F right now. Blech.

 

[Peace]

During video conversion mine runs about 72 Celsius.

It's at 62 right now.

Mac Pro 2.66

 

[SolidShadow]

62 Degrees C.
I've seen it as high as 65C

 

[tyr2]

That does seem rather warm.

See also this thread for a similar discussion https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/320835/

 

[dkoralek]

Definitely toasty here in the Triangle today. My Northbridge heat sink is running at about 75 degrees C at the moment, but I'm at 100% load on all four processors currently (running some simulations).



Cheers.

edit to add: tweaking the fan speed, though (using SMC fan control to up the speeds by about 100rpm, gets me down about 10 degrees c pretty quickly.

 

[synth3tik]

usually between 60-75 C depending on the task.

 

[crazycat]

66

 

[bld44]

154.4 F, or 67 C.

 

[Mackilroy]

Mine usually is 147 F, or 63 C.

 

[siurpeeman]

right now it seems to be 74°F. not bad for a summer evening.

i'm sorry, i just had to.

 

[slughead]

my northbridge is 62

 

[Padthaigf]

Heat stats

24" 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac // 4GB 1067 MHz DDR3

I am running Safari (two tabs, MacRumors and Hotmail); and Microsoft Word (One document)... in use for about 1 hour.

(All temps in Celcius, using istatpro)

HD: Macintosh - 51
CPU - 43
CPU Heatsink - 41
Ambient - 25
HD Bay - 50
Mem Controller - 47
Northbridge - 52
Northbridge - 66

CPU Fan - 1200rpm // Hard Drive Fan - 1600rpm // Optical - 800rpm

Top is hot to touch - but normal - if I am using Microsoft Word (multiple docs); Preview (multiple pdfs); Safari (multiple tabs) and yahoo messenger then things really heat up... could cook an egg on the roof of my iMac, apps freeze, ... disappointing really considering the price tag. Don't get me wrong .. I LOVE my Mac .. I just wish it wouldn't act as a heater for my room.

 

[iZac]

My G1 2.66 northbridge is hovering at 48 C, fans at 1000rpm at the moment.

I too have been concerned about my northbridge, temps (One hot summer hit the mid 70s I think) but I normally just run my fans a little faster and crucially, give it a clean with compressed air at least every year. I did it recently, and it knocked ~10 C off the running temperature.

 

[Roman23]

My North Bridge is:

80 on my 3.33 Quad-core single Mac Pro 2009 system, was 2.66!

 

[spyrmac]

77 Celsius ! is that too hot ?

 

[bax2003]

Chip - 62 C
Heatsink - 52 C

 

[PowerPCMacMan]

Chip - 92C
Heatsink - 120C

 

[Tesselator]

77 Celsius ! is that too hot ?

No. Mine hits a little over 80˚C occasionally. I think it's rated at 120˚C IIRC which probably means you'll start to see some Gate Delay at around 100˚C, it'll become unstable at 110˚C and hopefully the system will halt at 120˚C.

But it's like any other LSIC in your system, the hotter you run it the less efficient it becomes and the shorter it's lifespan. In a properly cooled system I guess the temperature should range from 50˚C at dead idle to 75˚C under heavy load - given an ambient of 22˚C.

If yours is going above that too often install SMCFanControl, make some profile preset settings, and select them from the menubar as needed. I idle my system at 1400 RPM on all fans when the system is dirty and 1200 ~ 1300 RPM just after a cleaning. If I'm doing something heavy for long periods (more than 10min.) I'll up it appropriately - up to between 1700 and 2200 RPM for the duration of the task.

Apple's own SMC profile is tuned to run the system on the edge of "extremely hot" for the sake of room noise.

 

[xky]

I've got a quad Mac Pro 2.66GHz.

According to iStat Pro widget, my northbridge is a toasty 93 degrees.

That's celcius

When I was visiting my brother over the 4th of july, his Mac Pro was a lot louder, but his North Bridge was 53 Degrees.

The procs are at 65, and the ambient is 33.

Fans are about 550rpms except power supply is 900 something.

is that typical for a warm summer afternoon in an upstairs room?

You might want to check the clips on the heat sink for your northbridge.

My northbridge was averaging 55 degrees a few months ago then suddenly it was sitting at 85 degrees a few weeks ago.

Luckily I was doing a CPU swap and I noticed that one of the clips has popped off the heat sink for the northbridge, just popped it back in and now its back to normal 55 degrees.

 

[thehimay]

But it's like any other LSIC in your system, the hotter you run it the less efficient it becomes and the shorter it's lifespan. In a properly cooled system I guess the temperature should range from 50˚C at dead idle to 75˚C under heavy load - given an ambient of 22˚C.

Good lord! With my ambient at 21˚C, my Northbridge is idling at 32˚C in a 3,1 dual–2.8GHz system. Am I just the unusual statistic here?

 

[Tesselator]

Good lord! With my ambient at 21˚C, my Northbridge is idling at 32˚C in a 3,1 dual–2.8GHz system. Am I just the unusual statistic here?

Beats me. 3,1 may run cooler. Right now just sitting in front of the machine talking with friends (here in the room) for the past 20min. my temps are:

59.0℃ - Northbridge Heat Sink
31.0℃ - Ambient Air
24.2℃ - Room temperature

 

[Inconsequential]

No. Mine hits a little over 80˚C occasionally. I think it's rated at 120˚C IIRC which probably means you'll start to see some Gate Delay at around 100˚C, it'll become unstable at 110˚C and hopefully the system will halt at 120˚C.

But it's like any other LSIC in your system, the hotter you run it the less efficient it becomes and the shorter it's lifespan. In a properly cooled system I guess the temperature should range from 50˚C at dead idle to 75˚C under heavy load - given an ambient of 22˚C.

If yours is going above that too often install SMCFanControl, make some profile preset settings, and select them from the menubar as needed. I idle my system at 1400 RPM on all fans when the system is dirty and 1200 ~ 1300 RPM just after a cleaning. If I'm doing something heavy for long periods (more than 10min.) I'll up it appropriately - up to between 1700 and 2200 RPM for the duration of the task.

Apple's own SMC profile is tuned to run the system on the edge of "extremely hot" for the sake of room noise.

Christ! You run your fans hard.

My intake/exhaust sit at 400rpm and start ramping up at 50C heat sink temp and my CPU fan itself ramps up from 700 rpm at 50C CPU temp.

North bridge temp sits around 60-70C at idle and slightly lower at load.

Silence is golden and not having to set fan speeds manually even better!'

 

[Tesselator]

Christ! You run your fans hard.

My intake/exhaust sit at 400rpm and start ramping up at 50C heat sink temp and my CPU fan itself ramps up from 700 rpm at 50C CPU temp.

North bridge temp sits around 60-70C at idle and slightly lower at load.

Silence is golden and not having to set fan speeds manually even better!'

Yeah, I need to clean it out and I was gaming just before my friends came over. I don't care about noise tho. It all blends in with the other house and street noises. I don't live in a quiet neighborhood and I could probably sleep in a subway with 20 hobos all clamoring around.

Also I tried the various auto-control fan profiles and none are any good. The Apple one runs the system crazy hot and the only other one (yours?) would indeed damage my computer if left to it's own. No matter settings I try yours at the NB hit 100C at idle and the CPUs go thru the roof with the slightest bit of activity.

I'm more than content to make one menu selection in order to set the fans how I think or feel they need to be. I'm not that lazy.

 

[Inconsequential]

Yeah, I need to clean it out and I was gaming just before my friends came over. I don't care about noise tho. It all blends in with the other house and street noises. I don't live in a quiet neighborhood and I could probably sleep in a subway with 20 hobos all clamoring around.

Also I tried the various auto-control fan profiles and none are any good. The Apple one runs the system crazy hot and the only other one (yours?) would indeed damage my computer if left to it's own. No matter settings I try yours at the NB hit 100C at idle and the CPUs go thru the roof with the slightest bit of activity.

I'm more than content to make one menu selection in order to set the fans how I think or feel they need to be. I'm not that lazy.

Yours is an 08 (3,1) machine is it not?

Works fine on 09 (4,1) and later machines, clearly for the 08 machines the fan codes are different.