are extra heatsinks for chipset/module worth it?

[amt]

is it worth providing some extra heatsinks on all the motherboard and vga cards on board chips and modules? I've seen kits availble for video cards and motherboard that stick on to provide passive cooling but are they worth it if I decide to overclock.

I will have 2x 120mm case fans to move the air, has anyone done any concrete analysis to determine its benefit?

 

[keeleysam]

What are your system specs?

 

[amt]

System:

MSI K8N Diamond m/b
Opteron 170
2x1gb Corsair value select
radeon x800

 

[firewolfsm]

my MOBO came with little alluminum heatsinks that i used on the mosfets, not sure if it really matters though ... that reminds me, i have an extra, where would i put it on my 7800GT

 

[imhungry]

Bah Chipset.

my chipset fan is the noisest thing ever.
It's a 9nNPA+ Ultra too.

It's extra noisy.

 

[Painman]

Heatsinking the MOSFETs for CPU and RAM power regulation is worthwhile IMO, but it looks like MSI already does this on the Diamond for the CPU. With a chunky little fan even. Hope it isn't too loud.

 

[amt]

Yes it does have a heatsink and fan on the chipset and even an active heatpipe cooler for the mosfets. In particular to the video card and its memory chips I would imagine a little added thermal dissipation from heatsinks sitting on top of each one would aid in cooling.

I'm even thinking of ripping off the fan on the video card and replacing it with a fanless heatpipe/heatsink sandwich available from a few manufacturers like Thermaltake.

For me its a fine balance between performance and noise and in winter especially where my office is located it could produce a system happy to run on very low fan output. I know some of you don't worry too much about noise but for me this is a primary objective, thats why i'm leaning towards passive cooling so much. The next big mod will be a passive water cooling tower for the cpu but that all depends on how much noise the system develops.