AMD Northbridge Chipset Cooling

I started out with a chipset that idled at around 50 celsius with just an aluminum heatsink. I didn't like that, so I swapped it out for a copper heatsink with a fan. Now it idles at 55 celsius. Couple things worry me somewhat. First, the way the chip is designed, and most AMD chips I think, is that there is a tiny raised area in the center and the majority of the chip is just circuit board on a lower level. The old heatsink, came with the motherboard, had a kind of foam lining around the area that actually contacted the raised part of the chip. I think this foam contacted the top edges of the various little pieces of circuitry that jutted up out of the lower level part of the chipset. The new heatsink doesn't have this. Also, the old heatsink used some kind of damnably difficult gummy thermal paste which I substituted with arctic silver for the new copper heatsink. All this said, I don't really understand my heat readings because although it reads 55 celsius heatsink feels cool to the touch. Do any of you nice, smart fellas out there know what the problem is?

 

So after doing research and sleeping on it I realized that it will probly take a couple weeks for the appropriate temperatures to show up. What I am more worried about now is the fact that the heatsink is so wide that it is slightly displacing what I think is a capacitor (or whatever you call those tall, cylindrical things all over the mainboard). The computer boots up fine and everything, but will this be a problem in the long term? It scares me anyway. The other problem is that the heatsink doesn't fit snug on the chipset because the chipset doesn't have a heat spreader, so now I need one of those thin foam things that was on my old heatsink and which holds the heatsink on the chipset snugly. Dlb posted a link that had these things once, but I lost it.

 

Arctic Silver takes time to cure to be fully effective. Say 48 hours+. I use MX-2 which doesn't cure and is non-conductive:

http://www.arctic-cooling.com/further_prod2.php?idx=149

Copper transfer heat better than aluminum, but aluminum dissipates heater faster than copper. Most good cpu cooler manufacturers understood this and the top cpu coolers are made of a copper base, copper heatpipes, aluminum fins & a fan. i.e. Xigmatek & Thermalright.

If you replace an aluminum cpu cooler with a fully copper one, your cpu temp may raise.

 

That's very good to know. I always wondered why aluminum was sold if copper was just plain better. In my case, the temps did rise. I will look around for an aluminum heatsink with a fan, or at least a bigger aluminum sink. Thanks very much.