Hot South Bridge

[caspian]

Dear Forum Members,

I bought a mainboard for Dell-Vostro-1015 which is new and unused.
Mainboard Model: DAVM9MMB6G0 rev. G
The CPU and the North Bridge have really fine temperatures in the range of 45'C-55'C that have heat sink. But the South Bridge does not have heatsink by the manufacturer. So the South Bridge gets hot to a temperature in the range of 60'C-70'C after 8 minutes of usage. Other than the high temperature, the South Bridge works fine in this laptop.

I remember from old computers that all South Bridges should be typically cool without heat sink. Do you think this South Bridge is defective with this temperature? any experience please?

Thanks


Schematics and Mainboard Photo:

[caspian]

Re: Hot South Bridge

I have just noticed that the hard disk gets warm to 48'C in this laptop when the laptop is idle. When I connect the hard disk to my desktop PC, its temperature never gets higher than 35'C without heatsink.
what do you think is defective?
is this HDD temperature normal which is higher in the Laptop compared to the desktop PC?

[tomodachi]

Re: Hot South Bridge

what are the temperatures with our without drive, peripheral etc. connected ? Must be something drawing current

[caspian]

Re: Hot South Bridge

without HDD, southbridge's temperature is the same around 70'C. the only connected devices are LCD screen, RAM, CPU, and Wifi card.
the mainboard was stored in a dry storage for a number of years. the southbridge's temperature does not reach 70'C quickly, it takes about 8 minutes to reach that temperature.
Is it possible that the Intel southbridge chip be defective itself even though it is new?

[piernov]

Re: Hot South Bridge

I'm not surprised by those temperatures.
Also in a desktop your typically have much more room and some airflow around the hard drive that you don't have in a laptop so it's normal that it is hotter.

[FrozenHaxor]

Re: Hot South Bridge

What you show in the picture is the IBM/HBM type South Bridge. They tend to run quite hot. It's an older technology. I don't recall seeing heatsinks on those other than an occasional thermal pad to the chassis or keyboard metal.