Overheating chipset.

[NotHarry]

I have had a lot of trouble with my new 'Asus rog strix z690-A Gaming wifi D4' motherboard. My latest problem is a chipset that idles at 60c+.
I want to strip the heatsink for chipset in order to reseat it but you have this daft piece of plastic over the heatsink that has a cable tie attached to it, and I don't know how to remove it.
Have any of you guys striped the northbridge heat sink from one of these boards, how do you get the piece of plastic off first?

[IT_Troll]

I recently built a system based on the Z690-G and after being on all day, performing light duties, I discovered PCH was hitting 100 degrees! It was by far the hottest thing in my system. This hotspot was also causing the motherboard temperature to rise which was in turn raising the temperature of my NVMe drives. I've seen quite a few threads about high chipset temperatures, it seems to be a real weakness with recent Asus boards.

Turning on from cold the PCH immediately hits 50°C, after about 15 mins sitting in the BIOS it reaches 75°C. I am using all three M.2 slots and my RTX3090 covers half of the chipset heatsink. The fans on the GPU don't spin unless gaming, so over the course of a day the heat builds. So I probably have a worst case scenario.

I have now positioned a small fan near to the chipset to provide some extra airflow in that area. With this it still hits 75°C but goes no higher. The cooling solution on this motherboard is disappointingly inadequate - a small. slightly wobbly heatsink which is half covered in plastic and pointless RGB. I am sure a proper all metal heatsink with some fins would make all the difference.

[Adrian1983]

Ok I've decided to do something about it, Mines goes to 75c now just idling in Windows 11 and that's even undervolting both PCH voltages in the bios, It's well above the 80's with voltages at stock, Just not good enough I'm afraid, Yes they're moving more data and faster etc of course they're, But that's the thing these chipsets these days are literally a CPU in themselves, You only have to look at the size of the die to see that it's not rocket science, We had CPU's years ago with these sort of size of dies and we needed to cool them with heatsinks and fans so what's different about the these?

I've bought myself a Gelid 60mm 3000rpm fan to install there however after noticing all the stupid plastic on top of the chipset I can't even install the fan yet as it won't sit flush.

Anyone know how to remove the plastic shroud on top of the chipset without damaging the board? If anyone has done it it would be very helpful, I cannot see how it comes off, I've removed the cable strap but there's still plastic there on the Gaming A D4.

Thanks in advance.

[IT_Troll]

Adrian1983 wrote:
and that's even undervolting both PCH voltages in the bios

Could you tell me what under volt you have applied. I'm interested in trying this.

The trouble with the Z690-G is how little heatsink is exposed to airflow once a GPU is fitted. The section which is exposed has an RGB cover on it; because flashing lights are more important than cooling. :rolleyes:

[Adrian1983]

IT Troll wrote:
Could you tell me what under volt you have applied. I'm interested in trying this.

The trouble with the Z690-G is how little heatsink is exposed to airflow once a GPU is fitted. The section which is exposed has an RGB cover on it; because flashing lights are more important than cooling. :rolleyes:

Hey, Sure I have 0.92v set for the the PCH 1.05 Voltage and 0.76v set for the PCH 0.82v it did knock a little off but what knocked the most of was both voltages at minimum and my system still seemed to be stable, These settings are in Tweakers Paradise, Your mileage may vary if you set them too low on stability though, It does seem I have excellent silicon on mine as I can set both to minimum without any performance loss or stability issues.

[Andy_Falcon]

ASUS ROG Strix Z690-E Gaming WiFi Board. The temperature of the chipset in idle mode is about 68-71°C degrees.
Removed the heatsink (screws on the reverse side of the board). Replaced thermal pad (installed Thermalright Extreme Odyssey II 1.5mm).
I sanded down to the metal a section of the surface of the radiator opposite the chipset.
Those who wish can remove the plastic cover on the chipset heatsink (the screws are held on the back of the heatsink), I left it.
The result - 54-57°C.

[kaedex]

They either forgot to apply thermal paste or it's a ****ty cooling design on that mboard, my z690 tuf barely heats up above room temperature..

[JohnAb]

I undervolted the PCH to 0.92V and 0.76V which is roughly midpoints. That saved me maybe 2-3C by itself but I've read that others have set minimum values without any problems at all. So changing those voltages won't make a huge difference to temperature, but it all helps. You'll find those voltages in Tweakers Paradise.

[NotHarry]

I did that and it shaved about 2c off it.
Anyway I built my new system with a new Gigabyte board and wow, chipset runs at 32c idle and never goes above 40c.
I have striped the chipset heatsink of my Asus board, removed the daft plastic shroud. Btw, the thermal pad that was on it was like a dry bit of cardboard and had hardly any pressure on it, no wonder it wasn't do it's job. I but a new thermal pad on it and res-seated it, tightened it down nice and tight.
I will probably be able to test it next week as I'm building another PC for family.
There are some people with that same Asus board reporting temps 60c idle up to and above 80c under load. Asus really need to get a grip on those temps. Stop with the pretty lights and get some descent cooling in there.

On examination the Gigabyte heat sink is about the same size as the Asus but around 3 to 4 times the thickness and firmly seated with plenty of space around it. That's all it needs.
I have all Asus kit right down to AIO and caddie, this is my first disappointment and I hope it's my last.

[JohnAb]

I do agree. Even though the PCH is rated to run at over 100C, I see no need for it to be running anywhere near that hot. A passive, better/larger heatsink should indeed be plenty and I can't see that it would really add much, if anything, to the cost. Whilst my PCH is under control at just under 60C (and that's with 2 80mm fans blowing over the general area), I'd still prefer it to be cooler. I'm not saying it's a problem technically, just my preference. I'm quite capable of taking the mb out and addressing the issue, but to be honest I don't have the inclination to spend so much time doing that. I'll do it if I have to remove it anyway, but not just for that.

[Adrian1983]

JohnAb wrote:
I do agree. Even though the PCH is rated to run at over 100C, I see no need for it to be running anywhere near that hot. A passive, better/larger heatsink should indeed be plenty and I can't see that it would really add much, if anything, to the cost. Whilst my PCH is under control at just under 60C (and that's with 2 80mm fans blowing over the general area), I'd still prefer it to be cooler. I'm not saying it's a problem technically, just my preference. I'm quite capable of taking the mb out and addressing the issue, but to be honest I don't have the inclination to spend so much time doing that. I'll do it if I have to remove it anyway, but not just for that.

Yep this is kinda the boat I'm in, I've heard they don't even screw the screws on the back of the board down properly on some boards hence the much higher temps on some models and pad is either not installed or not installed correctly, I've just installed a little 60mm fan on top of the chipset, Hasn't really made much difference a few C at best so that tells you it's not mounted properly (Poor quality control)

Same here I'm not about to ruin my CPU application and remove the board because of this, It's the board designers fault so I don't care and I am not wasting any more time on trying to fix a poor QC fault.

What's even more annoying is it's mounted from the back with screws on some so I'm guessing it's the same for the Gaming A also, Yet another oversight from Asus, Why do you need to mount a tiny little heatsink from the back of the board and make it inaccessible without literally destroying your setup, All it needed was 2 tiny screws to hold this flimsy heatsink on and they could have been mounted at the front and not the back.