What is a "North Bridge cooler"?

[mitchelt]

I am looking at getting one of the new "Intel 845 DDR " based motherboards after the holidays and I was wondering if a "North Bridge cooler" had to be added to the budget?

It might help to know that I do not Overclock and that I will be going with a ~ P4-1.7Gig and probably a Nvidia based card, something a little cheaper than the GeForce3 Ti 500.

Thanks!

Mitch

 

[Quixfire]

A north bridge cooler is a heatsink and/or fan on the North Bridge Chip on a motherboard. If you are going to purchase a Name Brand motherboard like the MSI 845 Ultra, it already has a cooler on the north bridge. It's not nessary to upgrade from the factory supplied unit unless you run into problems overclocking the FSB.
🙂

 

[mitchelt]

In Anand's review of the MSI 845 Ultra, is the cooler the small fan in the middle of the board?

Anand's Review of the MSI 845 Ultra

Thanks!

Mitch

 

[Jeff H]

mitchelt, yes that fan you see to the left of the cpu socket is a combination heatsink/fan. Similar to what you'd mount on a cpu, only in a smaller size (simply put). You can pretty much leave it up to the mobo manufacturer as to whether they feel a cooler is necessary. There are aftermarket coolers for this application, from companies like TennMax, Thermaltake and Global Win. They're typically fixed to the board via either two push pins through the board or a bent wire clip (like what you're seeing on the MSI board), or thermal epoxy. The biggest problem w/ the factory applied coolers is typically a lack of thermal paste to make the cooler effective.