Add Northbridge cooling.

[wseyller]

I was wondering if there is an advantage to provide extra cooling to the northbridge as opposed to leaving it stock. Some motherboards come with heatsinks only like mine and some come with a fan also. I have not seen a reason so far to invest in a good heatsink a fan for the northbridge chip. Does it help in overclocking or is it just for looks or just people being over cautious. I realize that its not too common for people to do this and I've haven't noticed any overclocking guides that would suggest such.

 

[Gothgar]

it isnt practical, unless you are overclocking and your NB heat sink is getting really really hot...

 

[loic2003]

you can get chunkier heatsinks for the NB, these give you both improved cooling and still no noise production. My chipset is slightly overclocked and it runs plenty cool, although my system is set up for passive cooling.

 

[iamtrout]

When overclocking a 250GB the mobo chip gets pretty darn hot...

 

[Operandi]

There are two reasons to change your NB cooling.

1. Overclocking, yeah it can make a difference.

2. Low noise/silent cooling via passive cooling, those tiny fans are annoying.

 

[stevennoland]

I had an ABIT IC7 MAX3 board go bad on me because one of the four loops soldered into the mother board holding my Danger Den support chipset block came loose causing the block to tilt ever so slightly. Just enough so that the block wasn't making complete contact and BOOM! The board ate itself. The Northbridge gets really hot (even when not oc'ing). If your doing the wet route, do cool it. If your board has just a heatsink, put a fan on it. Trust me.