nvidia notebook chipset problems

[anykey]

Hi all,

I recently came into possession of a notebook featuring a chipset of the nforce 4x0 series. So far, all devices work; only the temperature issues really concern me, as the integrated graphics reach temperatures of 75 degrees celsius and beyond.

I have googled and sent emails for a couple of weeks now; maybe someone here can at least point me to the right direction.

the graphics adapter identifies itself to lspci as

00:05.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a2)

now, my questions:

a) is this a PCIe chip? it makes really no difference whether I select PCI Express kernel support or not.

b) this chip heats my notebook so much that the fan is constantly spinning at full speed. thermal monitor reports a temperature between 60 degrees C and 120 degrees C, and I really fear it might break. So: Is there any way to get rid of that behavior (maybe underclocking, whatever)? This also happens outside of X, on the command line.

the configuration of the notebook is as follows:

AMD Turion ML-37 (which, running at 38 degrees C, is NOT the source of that heat.)
SATA Hard Drive, 5400 rpm
2 GB of RAM

running with the forcedeth and snd-hda-intel drivers (from in-kernel), and with the nvidia kernel module, currently 1.0.8762, on kernel-2.6.[16 through 17]; distro is Arch Linux 0.72.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Edit: I chose this forum for this problem does not relate in getting the graphics adapter to work in the first place -- it works, and GL apps do too; in addition to that, it also happens outside X. The graphics tool nvidia-settings with the thermal monitor helped uncover the source of the heat, however.

Edited, too: It DOES happen in Windows (at least 2k) as well.

[anykey]

Wow, am I the only one?

I was able to mend the problem at the northbridge by employing better cooling solutions (reapplied a better thermal grease). It runs now at 60 degrees, which is more acceptable.

The southbridge (labeled NF-430-something) continues to produce quite a heat-up. Unfortunately, there is no thermal grease to be applied here, as it is not cooled at all.

Any thoughts on that?