Hello,

I am keeping my DreamPC 2006 off for now after I figure out what is wrong with it. (Right now it is producing a very bad smell, like burning oil or plastic and the north bridge chip/heatsink seems to be overheating, it may have developed a short circuit ? it's so hot it hurt my fingers and I yelled: AAAAAAAAOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW !)

I will write a full story about it later for your enjoyment.

But right now I need hypotheses for the first time in my life to understand what may have happened because this is getting a bit weird.

I believe somehow the north bridge chip is overheating.

Normally the airflow from the PC case is sufficient to cool down the north bridge chip with just it's heatsink. At least so I believed ?!

I will first deposit my hypotheses but I am open to any other hypotheses/suggestions of what might have happened:

1. First I believed it was dust build up but NO.
2. Then I believed it was USB 3.0 PCI Express Controller, wrongly connected ? It had two power cables attached to it ? But this is impossible because the splitter only has one female connector, and two male connectors. One male connector goes to the card and another one goes to a NAT optimized harddisk from Western Digital, the red ones. So I got a scare at first, until I noticed the second one actually goes to the harddisk and not back to the power supply, so as far as I can tell/remember only one power supply cable was connected as it should be, so NO, this cannot be it.

Which leads me to my 3 rd working hypothesis:

3. I copied a 500 GB file to a USB portable a few weeks ago, and recently I installed a test version of World of Warships which by the way also seemd to slow down another computer the laptop after the game stopped, not sure if the game itself is related, but the installation takes a long time, many hours because it inefficiently copies files double and such.

So my third hypothesis is that: THE USB 3.0 PCI Express Controller was STRESSED to the MAX and perhaps the NORTHBRIDGE is reponsible for PCI Express communication ? And this may have fried/short circuited the north bridge chip, slightly ?!?!? It seems to be still working, haven't tested it but so far so good, world of warships works when I connect portable to laptop so I have no reason to believe it stopped working.

4. Anyway, after cleaning any dust, which I already cleaned a few weeks or months before I reconnected everything and I noticed the leds of the PC case fans didn't come on, and then I noticed the FANS were also not spinning.
So now I am not sure if maybe they were not spinning during that installation.
It might be that gravity or some freak power accident knocked them of slightly or got them discounted, when I fiddled with the connectors they would come on/off/on/off/on/off, it could also be that this is an artifact from a shady/damaged/fried motherboard/northbridge chip.

5. Recently there was a power failure in this city but at that time I was a sleep and the PC was off. I also believed I smelled this smell much earlier, days ahead of this failure but dismissed it as "bad car smell".

Why I only noticed this smell today I will explain in a another post later on. Short answer: I smell all kinds of smells in this city, so it's easy to dismiss bad smell as environment smell, also I have ventilators sucking blowing/sucking air from environment in/out so that adds to the confusion. I never expected it to be this old DreamPC because it has been working flawlessly for many many years.

6. I also believed I may have re-attached the usb card incorrectly because I had to remove it from windows 7 installation on usb stick otherwise it believes the card is a vga card and crashes. But now I do no longer believe I misconnected it as described above.

SO QUITE FRANKLY I AM TOTALLY BAFFLED WHY IT WOULD START OVERHEATING NOW AND WHY THE BAD SMELL HAPPENS NOW ?!?

7. Please take note that the tiny little fan was removed from it (the north bridge heatsink) long long ago, and it never seemed to be a problem ? Maybe because I didn't stress test it enough ????

I can't access my DreamPC documents/motherboard manuals right now.

And I am truely baffled and I could use some help with this, to figure out what the hell happened ? Perhaps I already have the correct working hypothesis ?

But what I would like to know from you "experts" or wikipedia or documents or manual is the following:

Q1: Is the north bridge chip used during usage of an USB 3.0 PCI Express Controller ? In other words: Could this make the northbridge chip run really hot ??? Mandating a tiny little high RPM ventilator ?!?!?

If so then continue this posting a warning to other people to not remove the tiny little fan from the north bridge heatsink ! ;)

Q2: Why is the north bridge chip suddenly becoming hot during booting ? Even after removing the USB 3.0 PCI Express Controller ? Is it possible that something around or in this north bridge chip "FRIED" and is now a short circuit ? But it keeps functioning ? Is such a thing possible ?!?!?!?

Q3: Do you have any other explanation why this north bridge chip is suddenly overheating ???? No BIOS updates where installed, No windows 7 updates have been installed in years.
(I did change some bios harddisk boot order but it s still booting from same hd as usual, I also ran an usb stick from another usb port that is attached to the motherboard to run windows 7 platform update and geforce now, but this is a minor thing and only did it once and never smelled anything. (Windows 7 was on this usb stick, but this does not use the usb 3.0 pci express controller, but a usb 1.0 or 2.0 port on the motherboard or something like that,in the back of the case. Just being thorough, but this is just dust/sand in your eyes I guess.)
It is summer time now, but I believe I have run this system like this during other summers, though I am not 100% sure, maybe this is the first summer, but I would have to check my documents and/or logs on newsgroup when I removed it if I documented it at all on my drives I probably did but I think I also reported this on a newsgroup.

Anyway... I kinda consider this super strange and toxic and dangerous.

Fortunately I have a backup motherboard and can replace it, I hope I have enough artic silver 7 left to do so ! ;)

But first I wait to see if there is any reply/feedback about what might be going on and any confirmations that northbridge chip is indeed involved in PCI Express Contoller activity....

Q4: But if that were true ? Then why doesn't it overheat when my GT 1030 becomes active ? Perhaps I should have re-checked the north bridge chip when I replaced the GT 510 graphics card with a GT 1030 ?
Perhaps it doesn't or didn't overheat because GT 1030 not used much when the little fan was gone... though I think I did play WOWS and especially Predator hunting grounds and especially space hulk, very taxing games, and never noticed any bad smell ? Did I simply miss the smell and consider it bad car traffic ? Kinda weird. I am pretty sure this bad smell is recent though not 100% sure.

Further information: The top PCI Express slot is where the USB 3.0 PCI Express Controller is installed.

The bottom slot is where the PCI Express Graphics card GT 1030 is installed..

This is mandatory as far as I remember, vice versa won't work for some reason.

I hope to have informed you in as fully as possible in this short time, except for while I dismissed this smell and how I finally detected it, which is kinda funny but not that relevant, I already gave you a small explanation why it took multiple days for me to notice it and become alerted by it: I dismissed it as outside bad air basically and believe me there is lots of it overhere... it was sunday today, clean air... that's why I became suspicious ! LOL and my downstair neighbour female is gun so no parfume smell, so now you have a slightly better picture if why I started to notice this ! ;)

I learned one thing today:

SMELL IS VERY IMPORTANT
CLEAN AIR IS VERY IMPORTANT
THE REASON IS:
TO DETECT PROBLEMS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Unfortunately many assholes polluting the air, like burning garbage and shit, I already reported that to the police ! =D

But now there is also construction work outside and god knows what else... weird isn't it ! ;) Gjezus fucking christ now I am going into more details but didn't want to do that, but I will later to give you my original story cause it's a little bit more funny but I want to share with you this reason so I dont come over as a complete idiot not noticing a burn smell, I think this really needed some explanation ! ;) =D More will come about that later, though you know 99% of it already ok ! ;) :)

Bye for now,
Skybuck !.
PLS HELP, I love my DreamPC from 2006. I need it to survive a little bit longer until 2022 so I can design and build a NEW SUPER DREAM PC !

Yes you heard it here first ! A SUPER DREAM PC DESIGN IS COMING AND I WILL PUBLISH IT TO YOU all over newsgroups/usenet like I did in 2005 and 2006 !

Some people actually copied it and duplicated it ! VERY COOL ! =D

DreamPCs all the rage right now ! However Skybuck will take it to the NEXT LEVEL: SUPERDREAMPC2022 ! =D

If AMD WILL LET ME ! More on this possibility much later when new technologies come out and are for sale ! ;) =D

New hypothesis:

Short version:

"Flaw in the design of the NFORCE4 northbridge chip"
"It cannot handle DUAL PCI Express traffic and will OVERHEAT".

I haven't even checked any specifications about that the fuck a north bridge chip does ! HAHA ! But this is my hypothesis for now people ! =D See below for mooorrreee detective work ! ;) =D

1. I played submarine test of World of Warships from USB

3.0 PCI Express Controller on DreamPC 2006

while at the same time:

2. Also playing submarine test of world of warships from

GT 1030 PCI Express graphics card.

Perhaps the combination of both led to the burn through of

the north bridge chip.

The north bridge chip now has to handle TWO PCI devices

with super high bandwidth ?!?!?

Perhaps this became to much for the north bridge chip

?!?!?!?

Perhaps this also explains why the DUAL 7900 GTX Graphics

Card SLI setup burned THROUGH multiple motherboards !

Perhaps now after 15 years the thruth is coming out and

there was a DESIGN flag in the NFORCE4 chipset and the

north bridge simply cannot handle so much PCI Traffic and

it BURNS THROUGH !!!

Could this be the culprit ! ;)

Skybuck detective is on the case ! ;) =D

Bye for now,
Skybuck ! =D

Hello,

Original reaction of me after consulting wikipedia:

NOW AFTER CONSULTING WIKIPEDIA I COME TO THE FOLLOWING CONCLUSION:

OK MY INITIAL SUSPICION SEEMS TO BE CORRECT, EXCEPT I MIS-IDENTIFIED
THE CHIP INVOLVED.

IT'S NOT THE NORTHBRIDGE CHIP, THIS CHIP IS NOW INTEGRATED INTO THE CPU
ON SOCKET 939 CPUs.

I CONSULTED THE WINFAST MOTHERBOARD MANUAL, IT IDENTIFIES THIS CHIP AS
NFORCE4-SLI.

THIS VERY CHIP IS NOW COMPLETELY OVERHEATING AFTER USING IT TO PLAY ON
TWO PCI EXPRESS CONTROLLERS: ONE FOR GRAPHICS, ONE FOR USB PORTABLE
HARDDISK.

I BELIEVE THIS CHIP IS NOW IN A MELT-DOWN PROCESS, IT FRIED ITSELF TO
PIECES.

I CONSIDER THIS HARD PROOF THAT NVIDIA SOLD A CHIP WHICH SIMPLY
OVERHEATS DURING SLI-USAGE.

IF THIS CAN BE PROVEN AND THEN NVIDIA SHOULD STILL AFTER 15 YEARS BE
TAKING TO CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT FOR SELLING OVERHEATING CHIPS, WHICH IT
MUST HAVE KNOWN IF IT TESTED IT PROPERLY AND IT SURE DID BECAUSE
PLUGGING INTO TWO GRAPHICS CARDS IS NOT THAT HARD, SURELY THE PLAYED
SLI-GRAPHICS ENABLED GAMES !!!!!

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO RE-PRODUCE THESE STEPS IS:

1. BUY 7900 GTX GRAPHICS CARDS, I STILL HAVE TWO IN CASE YOU ARE
INTERESTED IN A LAW SUIT. IN CAN SELL THESE GRAPHICS CARD TO YOU, OR
YOU CAN BUY SIMPLY ANY GRAPHICS CARDS FOR PCI EXPRESS.

2. BUY A SOCKET 939-SLI MOTHERBOARD, FOR NOW I HAVE A SPARE ONE LOL,
BUT IF YOU CAN FIND ONE AFTER MARKET/RE-SALE THAT MIGHT DO TOO. JUST
MAKE SURE IT WAS NEVER USED FOR SLI.

3. THEN PROPERLY TEST THE SLI SETUP ON A MAXING OUT SYSTEM FOR
PRO-LONGED PERIOD OF TIME.

4. THEN OBSERVE IF THE NFORCE4-SLI CHIP BURNS ITSELF TO PIECES OR
STARTS FRIEING THE MOTHERBOARD AND PRODUCING BAD SMELL.

IF SO:

5. TAPE IT ON VIDEO TAPE, HAVE WITNESSES, AND TAKE NVIDIA TO COURT AND
DEMAND MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF DAMAGES AND SIMPLY
BAD-PRODUCT SALES AND MIS ADVERTISING AND SO FORTH, YOU KNOW THE
DRILL....

I DONT LIKE CHEATERS, SELLING OVERHEATING HARDWARE THAT DOESN'T WORK.

EVEN WITH A TINY SHITTY LITTLE FAN INSIDE OF IT, MY BET IS IT WILL
FUCKING OVERHEAT, ONE WAY OR THE OTHER, TURBULENCE, DUST BUILD UP OR
SIMPLY INSUFFICIENT AIRFLOW FROM TINY LITTLE FAN OR SIMPLY FAN FAILURE
TO SPIN UP LOL LIKE IT WAS IN MY CASE LOL.

THIS SHEDS SERIOUS DOUBTS ON NVIDIA HARDWARE. NVIDIA MUST COME CLEAN TO
RE-BUILD TRUST.

OTHERWISE THEY MIGHT BE BANNED FROM MY NEXT SUPER DREAMPC BUILD, YOU
HAVE BEEN WARNED.

BYE,
SKYBUCK.

Perhaps a fan might have saved it, fortunately I have
backup-motherboard LOL.

And I will try and find/purchase a temperature meter and then finally
the thruth will come out one way or the other ! ;) =D

Special reaction for you Paul:

You failed to recgonize there is no northbridge chip on my
motherboard/computer lol, it was just a vague hunch of what might be
wrong and a possibly description of what might be wrong.

So my posting has some merit but the chip was mis identified.

I now do believe the chip is NFORCE4-SLI that is what the manual says,
and there might be something wrong with it as DESIGNED and after 15
years there is now a possibility to get to the bottom of this !

What I need is a temperature measuring device that can measure up to 100
to 150 degree celcius.

Then I can/must be able to hold it against the heatsink and then see on
the new/backup motherboard if it indeed gets super hot when two pci
express cards are used.

I am now using claws mail to communicate with you but holy shit is it
annoying, show red text and difficulty setting up news, this program
wants me to make a mail account first, holy shit and I just typed some
shortcut pop-up screen what the fuck lol software developers these
days... fuck em... anyway...

I finally had enough of google groups limiting me in the number of
messages I can send to investigate and report about these kinds of
problems... so I give this free newsreader and free server a try...

holyshit now this editor is lagging too holy shit...

Goodbye for now,
Consider this a first test message too ! ;) =D
Bye,
Skybuck =D

This was going to be my original posting, it tells a kinda funny story
about me smelling around like a dog, but as I wrote this I believed I
accidently connected two power cables to the same pci express
controller and power splitter cable but I no longer believe that,
because one was going to a harddisk, western digital SAN optimized
harddisk.

However now that I write this another hypothesis is that this harddisk
is drawing too much power or something and somehow causes southbridge
to overheat / Seems far fetched, anyway here is the posting which I cut
and stop at the end to not lead to wrong conclusion:

The impending death of Skybuck's DreamPC 2006 however fortunately have
backup motherboard.

Today I just noticed there was a strange smell coming from somewhere.

I noticed this smell for the past few days. I never suspected it to be
my DreamPC because it has been working for so many years.

I smelled like oil or plastic or some kind of car that smelled bad.

Today I finally decided to investigate it because it's sunday and the
air was unusually clean !

First I started sniffing myself, at first I believed it must be me,
lol, maybe bad body odeur.

But then I decided no... probably not I don't smell that bad, since
when would I smell like a dirty old oil leaky benzine leaking burning
car ?!?

Further more some idiot has been burning trash late at night around
23'o clock at night, and I usually computer during those times.

So that also contributed to a sort of cover up of this smell.

Then my down stair neighbour female has huge ammounts of parfum coming
out of her appartment/window.

Plus lots of busses, cars drive by and also lots of construction work
happening in the back during days.

Heavy machinery and re-converting of office building into expensive
apparments going on.

Anyway long story short, since it was so unusually clean air and my 3
big home appartment fans were spinning blowing out dirty air and
sucking in fresh air I dedided to do a "CRAZY" investigation anyway.

I felt like a crazy person pretending to be a dog, believing I wouldn't
find anything anyway.

But the oder seem to be coming from myself or my chair when I stood up
and went to the balkony.

So I figured I am dragging along some kind of air but where is it
coming from ?

So again started smelling in the bedroom, then hallway.

Then smelled my chair really good ?! Could it be poo-farts ? LOL I
cleaned this chair not so long ago.

Didn't quite smell like what I was smelling.

Then smelled the laptop, some plastig smell coming from it but that
wasn's it.

Finally decided to smell my DreamPC from 2006 upgraded throughout the
years !

And BOY ! Was I in for a shocker !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There was a very bad nasty smell coming from the PC.

I kinda recgonized it as some kind of burning plastic smell, possible
plastic van wires, fans or godforbid the motherboard PCB.

A burn-out/burn through might be happening ?!?! Something may be wrong.

So I immediately check the smell again, and yup can smell it real good.

Didn't clean it so long ago as I can remember, blew out a whole lot of
dust out of power supply and cpu cooler

so I was quite surprised ?! WTF could it be ?! WTF is wrong with it
this time ?! No way that the power supply is in failure mode ?!?

Compounding a little bit to the confusion is a recent power outage at
23:00 o clock in this city, not yet sure if it has something to do with
it but probably not.

So then I decide it's time to clean the PC once more and see if that
has any effect on the smell.

So indeed there was some dust/carpet in the cpu fan/heatsink/fins on
front and back but I couldn't imagine this was the culprit and it
shouldn't.

Blew out some more dust but it was minor.

I checked for dust in power supply with flashlight all seemed ok there
was some dust but not in huge quantities.

I also inspected the entire motherboard for as far as I could see for
any burn marks, with a flashlight, nothing !

There is one peculiar thing: the northbridge chip has a heatsink and it
is missing a ventilator, it kinda stopped spinning up and I believed it
wasn't necessary and it most like isn't necessary because the PC's
airflow is enough.

After reconnecting everything again. I noticed the case fans didn't
light up. Something was wrong. Perhaps I didn't notice this behaviour.

Is it humanly possible that I didn't notice the leds where off ? I am
not sure, can't remember clearly. Don't think so but not sure.

Then I fiddled a bit with the connectors on the back, they went
on/of/on/of/on so this connection wasn't super secure... it could also
be that some other connector on the motherboard were down because of
gravity or some other phenomenon.

Hoping that I solved the problem I turned on the PC again and I almost
immediately started noticing this burn smell again !

I wondered, maybe it's the USB 3.0 PCI Express Card, it came from a
shitty PC store and it is causing shutdown problems.

Might it is the cause of overheat.

I also touched the northbridge heatsink and I yelled: AAAAUUUWWWW ! It
was superhot !

I believed somehow the USB 3.0 PCI Express Controller/card may be
causing the north bridge to overheat or somehow it got fried.

So I remove the USB 3.0 PCI Express Controller/Card and as I remove it
I discover something shocking:

I connected not one but two power connectors to it ! So it was
receiving double power !

I didn't notice this when I connected it, it's kinda weird I will have
to take pictures to show how this happened.

There is this power supply able that had to go to the top of the DVD
drive which doesn't even work anymore but I decided to connect it
anyway.

And from this power supply cable it also connects to the x-fi elite
soundcard !

I didn't notice this cable was also directly connected to the power
supply, it's kinda hard to see with the rest of the cables in the way
and going dark, kinda dark.

So I completely forgot/miss understood that this cable was ALREADY
being powered.

So then I connected this extension cable/splitter to the USB PCI 3.0
Express Card and probably connected it twice to two different power
cables. One which I believed was necessary to power the card and one to
power the rest ?!?!?!?

(HINT: it wasn't connected to two power cables it just seemed like
that, one goes to harddisk and one goes to controller, so this posting
went wrong here but it is still amuzing, fortunately male and female
connectors prevent these kinds of mistakes happening as far as I know
?!?!? so it should be impossible to do ?! ;))

Does this sound like a familiar build mistake ?!?!?!

So most likely, power was being applied twice and feedback into the
motherboard via the USB 3.0 PCI Express Card ?!

I had to remove this fucking card to be able to install windows 7 and
when I reinstalled it I must have improperly reconnected it ?!?!?

Holyshit.

So all this time the motherboard was under double stress, double
powersupply.

Maybe this wasn't an issue as long as I didn't use the USB 3.0 PCI
Express Controller.

But now it is starting to make sense to me.

For example, I installed a test version of world of warships onto a usb
protable harddisk via my DreamPc because it can download faster thanks
to the gigabit network card.

This was 35+ gigabytes. So this must have stressed this entire setup
quite severe !

World of warships also have a very inefficient installation process
where it copies files double.

I also transferred a 500 GB virtual harddisk of music collection before
that ! Also heavily taxing this system ?!?!?

I now believed that what must have happened is that under this
especially insane world of warships load the north bridge chip has
fried too slightly.

Everything is still working as far as I can tell, but there is a
burning smell coming from the heatsink of the northbridge chip ?!?!?

This can't be good....

Even after removing the USB 3.0 PCI Express Controller I still noticed
this heatsink becomes unusually hot... enough to hurt my finger easily
in just a few seconds.

So I believe some PCB lines may have fried through and this is the
beginning of the end for this motherboard !

If I continue using this motherboard it's probably a matter of time
before this "short circuit" will fry the rest of it !

Maybe I could try removing this tiny little heatsink and maybe I will
see some kind of fried PCB lines.

But it might be on the inside ?!

This becoming a dangerous situation for my health (breathing this toxic
air can't be good) and also my data might be at slight risk ?!

I almost can't believe that such a stupid foolish mistake can be made
and was made by me... it's a really innocent mistake.

It's so weird I can hardly believe it.... but I know what I saw, there
was two power cables running to this fucking splitter !

BUT WAIT

Before you blame it on my again ! THERE IS MORE !!!!! WEIRDNESSS ! You
are never going to guess this one !

GUESS WHAT IT IS BEFORE READING FURTHER !!!

^ STOP OF POSTING.

In article <3c764f12-9bcc-4b86-930d-db1bd70047a2n@googlegroups.com>,
skybuck2000 <skybuck2000@hotmail.com> wrote:

>7. Please take note that the tiny little fan was removed from it (the north bridge heatsink) long long ago,
>and it never seemed to be a problem ? Maybe because I didn't stress test it enough ????

Quite possible.

The PC manufacturer put a fan on that chip's heatsink for a good
reason. By removing it, you may very well have condemned your
Northbridge chip to an early death.

A commonly-quoted rule of thumb is that every 10-degree-C increase in
the operating temperature of an integrated circuit, corresponds to a
50% reduction in the circuit's lifetime. If the removal of the
Northbridge fan caused the chip temperature to rise by 30-40 degrees,
the chip's lifetime could have been shortened by a factor fo 10 or
more.

The increased temperature might also have caused the heatsink compound
to "dry out" faster than expected, too, and thus reduced the
heatsink's effectiveness, and raised the chip temperature even more
and further shortened its lifetime.

>Q1: Is the north bridge chip used during usage of an USB 3.0 PCI Express Controller ? In other words: Could
>this make the northbridge chip run really hot ??? Mandating a tiny little high RPM ventilator ?!?!?

On many PC architectures, yes, the Northbridge is the interface
between CPU, memory and PCIe/AGP busses.

One can probably expect that its power usage (and heat dissipation)
will depend on the amount of memory access activity.

>Q2: Why is the north bridge chip suddenly becoming hot during booting ? Even after removing the USB 3.0 PCI
>Express Controller ? Is it possible that something around or in this north bridge chip "FRIED" and is now a
>short circuit ? But it keeps functioning ? Is such a thing possible ?!?!?!?

The chip could very well have developed a partial short circuit or
other malfunction (e.g. internal oscillation) in an area which isn't
currently being used by software. The fault might or might not be
detected.

The heat buildup around the Northbridge chip could also have "cooked"
one or more of the power filter capacitors on the board, leading to
voltage instability.

On 14/06/2021 7:39 am, Dave Platt wrote:
> In article <3c764f12-9bcc-4b86-930d-db1bd70047a2n@googlegroups.com>,
> skybuck2000 <skybuck2000@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 7. Please take note that the tiny little fan was removed from it (the north bridge heatsink) long long ago,
>> and it never seemed to be a problem ? Maybe because I didn't stress test it enough ????
>
> Quite possible.
>
> The PC manufacturer put a fan on that chip's heatsink for a good
> reason. By removing it, you may very well have condemned your
> Northbridge chip to an early death.
>
> A commonly-quoted rule of thumb is that every 10-degree-C increase in
> the operating temperature of an integrated circuit, corresponds to a
> 50% reduction in the circuit's lifetime. If the removal of the
> Northbridge fan caused the chip temperature to rise by 30-40 degrees,
> the chip's lifetime could have been shortened by a factor fo 10 or
> more.
>
> The increased temperature might also have caused the heatsink compound
> to "dry out" faster than expected, too, and thus reduced the
> heatsink's effectiveness, and raised the chip temperature even more
> and further shortened its lifetime.
>
>> Q1: Is the north bridge chip used during usage of an USB 3.0 PCI Express Controller ? In other words: Could
>> this make the northbridge chip run really hot ??? Mandating a tiny little high RPM ventilator ?!?!?
>
> On many PC architectures, yes, the Northbridge is the interface
> between CPU, memory and PCIe/AGP busses.
>
> One can probably expect that its power usage (and heat dissipation)
> will depend on the amount of memory access activity.
>
>> Q2: Why is the north bridge chip suddenly becoming hot during booting ? Even after removing the USB 3.0 PCI
>> Express Controller ? Is it possible that something around or in this north bridge chip "FRIED" and is now a
>> short circuit ? But it keeps functioning ? Is such a thing possible ?!?!?!?
>
> The chip could very well have developed a partial short circuit or
> other malfunction (e.g. internal oscillation) in an area which isn't
> currently being used by software. The fault might or might not be
> detected.
>
> The heat buildup around the Northbridge chip could also have "cooked"
> one or more of the power filter capacitors on the board, leading to
> voltage instability.
>
You could put this lad in a sealed steel container with a ball bearing
and 10 mins later he would have broken it !!

I forgot that in the summer, the case ventilators should be either set to medium or max. They were all at low.

I have set them all at max. This seems to solve the burning smell problem somewhat.

It might just be enough airflow to cool down the NFORCE-4-SLI chip.

However it also feels like a airflow conspiracy.

The airflow is now so much that any burning smells is quickly dilluted making it harder to detect.

For now I will go with it.

Also the hardware monitor shows no sensor for the NFORCE-4-SLI chip, how convenient to hide an overheating problem !

Next PC must damn sure have sensors all over the place ! ;) =D

Bye,
Skybuck.

There is no north bridge chip in this motherboard, it's integrated with the CPU.

I miss-identified/guessed/gamble the chip.

After inspecting the manual and also wikis it's actually a south bridge.

It's known as NFORCE-4-SLI chip.

I do not believe anymore that it has developed a short circuit. But it might have been burning the PCB around it slightly.

All case fans were on low. I have now set them to max.

For now I believe this will be enough to keep it alive, though I do get worried a bit there might be slight particles going into the air, or perhaps not and it's just some dust that I am smelling.

This chip seems to be responsible for usb communication as well, so perhaps using usb harddisk might run it hotter.

Not sure yet, but not going to try anymore during the summer, just keep my DreamPC2006 for low tasks for now during this summer ! ;)

I need it to make it to 2022 till hopefully I have new computer and can transfer everything over ! =D

And I do want it to life on FOREVER ! =D

Or at least as long as possible !;)

It's quite a nice system feels very powerfull software wise, there is simply nothing like it anywhere else on the planet ! :P** =D

Bye,
Skybuck,