What is the difference between heat sink and cpu cooler.

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Looeelooee1

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Hello! I have got a few questions for anyone out there with some knowledge.
Basically, what is the difference between the heatsink and the cpu cooler, or are they the same thing? also do motherboards come with heatsinks? furthermore when buying a mobo how do i know if it has a powerful vrm or not, and if it has heatsinks and one last question. does the cpu cooler or heatsink cool the vrm, and are there multiple heatsinks throughout the board that cool all the components
the reason i am asking all of this is because i recently built a new pc and had made a thread on what the best cpu cooler was for my build, and someone pointed out that i have a weak vrm set/no heatsinks on my mobo. They explained that the vrm handles the voltage my cpu uses/needs, and the heatsink disperses heat away from a part. i am still really confused about everything else though, any help much appreciated!
 
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They are arguably the same, just depends on whom you ask. A heatsink is a component in CPU cooling. The heatsink is the aluminum piece that sits beneath the CPU fan. A CPU Cooler is more commonly an aftermarket variation. If you buy a boxed CPU, it comes with a heatsink and fan. This assembly was designed to keep the CPU cool under stock/default or very slight overclock environments. The aftermarket variations, such as ever-so-popular Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo are designed to keep your CPU cool under heavy loads, like advance OC levels. Water...
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boosted1g

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Wow you are all over the place there.

A heat sink is the piece of metal that goes on a computer microchip to draw the heat from the chip to the aluminum and/or copper in the heatsink. A heatsink can be on a cpu, a northbridge or southbrige chip on a motherboard, the video card, or any other microchip that needs cooling. The metal surrounding a gaming stick of memory is even called a heatsink
A CPU cooler is a heat sink with 1-2 fans on it specifically for a CPU.
Sort of a "All CPU coolers are heatsinks, but not all heatsinks are CPU coolers"

Some motherboards have heatsinks on the northbridge and southbridge chips, but no motherboard comes with a CPU heatsink.

VRM quality has to do with each motherboard, and you need to research the board. Chipsets of the board provide a good indication. Low end H81 boards are not going to have the same level of VRMS as a Z97 board DESIGNED for overclocking.

Most motherboards have the ability to overclock, but ones with larger heatsinks on the board, solid capacitors and higher end vrms are much better at it and will allow you to overclock to faster speeds
 
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T_T

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They are arguably the same, just depends on whom you ask. A heatsink is a component in CPU cooling. The heatsink is the aluminum piece that sits beneath the CPU fan. A CPU Cooler is more commonly an aftermarket variation. If you buy a boxed CPU, it comes with a heatsink and fan. This assembly was designed to keep the CPU cool under stock/default or very slight overclock environments. The aftermarket variations, such as ever-so-popular Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo are designed to keep your CPU cool under heavy loads, like advance OC levels. Water cooling offers even better heat reduction/elimination, but is more expensive and requires a very concise installation.

Most do, but some cheaper models may not. While the amount of heatsinks is not an indication of quality, the absence of heatsinks certainly is and will limit performance. Your computer's worst enemy is heat.

The performance of the board is commonly determined by the people whom have used it. Read the reviews if available. Depending on where you purchase your parts, the vendor may have images of the board you're interested in. Use these images to get a view of the components equipped on the board.

Not at all. The CPU's heatsink will only pull heat away from the CPU, so if the VRM doesn't have its own heatsink, then its cooling dependency relies on the fans installed to the case.

While this is true, the take home message is that if you're worried about the effectiveness of your case fans, then upgrade them, too.

Sites I've bought parts from in the past are:

Newegg
Tiger Direct
Amazon
Frozen CPU

 
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Looeelooee1

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ok thanks for the answers that explained it well, i am still a bit confused on some aspects though, what does northbridge and southbridge mean sorry i am a complete noob, and if a mobo were to come with heatsinks on the nb/sb what would that cool? lastly just to confirm so basically no mobo comes with a cpu fan but they can come with other heatsinks which will disperse the heat away from a part but those other heat sinks are not fans. how i tell if a mobo comes with heatsinks or not, what am i looking for in say a picture of a mobo with heatsinks that i wouldn't see in a mobo w/o them. also if i were to buy a mobo w/ heatsinks, which parts would not be covered by the mobo heatsinks. what i mean by that is say i get a gpu, is the gpu fan that comes with the gpu the heatsink, or is there another heatsink in the motherboard as well that cools the gpu. sorry if im really annoying i have literally no experience with any of this stuff. thanks for the help!
 
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The Northbridge is where the memory controller is and the Southbridge is what controls just about everything else.
Unless I'm misunderstanding the question, the heatsinks would cool the nb/sb, respectively.

That is correct. No motherboard will be sold with, for the sake of this discussion, a CPU cooler. You could buy a mobo/CPU combo, but the CPU w/ Heatsink and fan would still be a separate item.

Click here to see what heatsinks look like.


In the grand scheme of things, the heatsink is designed to pull heat away from the component to which it is attached. This is because without the heatsink, the particular component could reach devastating temperatures within seconds of powering on the motherboard. That being said, the rest of the motherboard needs cooling too, but can done passively with the case fans.
For the sake of clarity, here's a list of components that tend to have their own cooling system:
GPU
PSU
CPU

 
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Looeelooee1

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ik this is a l8 reply but thank you for all the help i understand everything now! :D
 
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