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?

[terrywany2k]

In Power Options, Set PCI Express - Link State Power Management to "Maximum power savings" can reduce the PCH temperature .
From intel spec, the Z690 PCH operating temperature can up to 108 Celsius, so I think 60 Celsius+ is not the issue.. if you really care the temperature, just change your power options.

[NotHarry]

In Power Options, Set PCI Express - Link State Power Management to "Maximum power savings" can reduce the PCH temperature .
From intel spec, the Z690 PCH operating temperature can up to 108 Celsius, so I think 60 Celsius+ is not the issue.. if you really care the temperature, just change your power options.

Thanks I will try that now. I have just this minute moved my M2 drive to the top slot which shaved around 12 degrees of the chipset temp. Hopefully your bios fix will shave a bit more.
Thing is everything is running lovely and cool apart from the chipset which was zooming into the 80's when playing games, and this heated up my entire computer and turned it into a leaf blower.

[NotHarry]

In Power Options, Set PCI Express - Link State Power Management to "Maximum power savings" can reduce the PCH temperature .
From intel spec, the Z690 PCH operating temperature can up to 108 Celsius, so I think 60 Celsius+ is not the issue.. if you really care the temperature, just change your power options.

Sorry I can't find the setting you quote above in my bios. The only power management I could find was in Advanced/APM Configuration

[terrywany2k]

Sorry I can't find the setting you quote above in my bios. The only power management I could find was in Advanced/APM Configuration

In Windows, Control Panel, Power Options, Change Plan settings, Change advanced power settings, PCI Express(tree menu), Link State Power Management

[NotHarry]

In Windows, Control Panel, Power Options, Change Plan settings, Change advanced power settings, PCI Express(tree menu), Link State Power Management

Oh thank you. I somehow had it in my head it was a bios thing.

Update: It now runs at 50 idle. Do you think that's okay, or should I go ahead and try to reseat the heat-sink?

[Adrian1983]

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?

I've got the same board and I have even undervolted both PCH voltages in the bios, I did have them on minimum but decided in the end to have them both at around half the the voltage they were at stock and still my chipset is at 67c idle and in the mid 70's-80's during gaming, I have come to the conclusion I am past bothered, The board is under warranty, If it still works up to the warranty point then that's great, If it overheats and fails then so be it Asus can replace my board, Maybe they won't make that mistake again instead of cheaping out and not installing either decent thermal paste or installing a chipset fan like they do on the AMD platform.

I mean boards and chipsets are getting loaded with more and more NVME slots and much faster bandwidth chipsets which are required and they don't install a fan, The mind boggles it really does.

[NotHarry]

I've got the same board and I have even undervolted both PCH voltages in the bios, I did have them on minimum but decided in the end to have them both at around half the the voltage they were at stock and still my chipset is at 67c idle and in the mid 70's-80's during gaming, I have come to the conclusion I am past bothered, The board is under warranty, If it still works up to the warranty point then that's great, If it overheats and fails then so be it Asus can replace my board, Maybe they won't make that mistake again instead of cheaping out and not installing either decent thermal paste or installing a chipset fan like they do on the AMD platform.

I mean boards and chipsets are getting loaded with more and more NVME slots and much faster bandwidth chipsets which are required and they don't install a fan, The mind boggles it really does.

Yeah, this is the first Asus product that I have been disappointed with. As you say, cheeping out on the chipset heatsink, what were they thinking. I am seriously thinking of buying a Gigabyte Z790 motherboard and selling this one, I have had nothing but trouble with it since I installed it.
I have solved every problem so far and have managed to get the chipset to idle at 50/52. But I shouldn't have had to waste weeks of my time finding solutions.
It's either buy a Gigabyte board or strip my computer down and try to fix the heatsink on this one. I will sleep on it. Either way I don't think I'll be buying Asus stuff again. The quality seems to have taken a dive.

[Murph_9000]

The recent chipsets do run quite hot, it's just the way things are. The data clock rate inside the chipset doubles with each PCIe generation, so heat is just a thing that happens. Idling above 60C isn't unusual. You need to check the specific data sheet to be certain, but the max temp is very high these days, I think over 100C on some of the latest ones.

50C sounds pretty good, and I would leave the heatsink alone. It doesn't sound broken, so attempting to fix it may not be a good idea. Changing vendor is unlikely to make much difference, as they all implement the cooling spec provided by the chipset vendors (in general). Just keep a reasonable minimum case airflow and all should be good; it doesn't need that much to keep it under control.

[NotHarry]

Well, yes, but they must know that the chipset runs very hot yet they gave it a very thin bit of aluminium and then but a useless block of plastic on top of it for a even more useless cable tie. This must reduce the heatsink effectiveness by quite a lot. They should have fitted a good chunky heatsink on there over making it look pretty.
While search the net I come about many people having trouble with these boards, mainly one called the formula Z690, and a lot of those people striped the heatsink down and either refitted it properly or used another solution. They managed to drop the chipset temp down into the 30's. So Asus could have easily have done something similar.
It falls into the category of 'Bad design' They need to get away from the pretty and get back to what's practical.