ASUS P8H61 comes with no northbridge heatsink/cooler

[ankysh]

Hello everyone,

i was interested to buy this motherboard - ASUS P8H61MLE - but i notice that it does not have a north-bridge heat-sink/cooler. i can only see it has a south-bridge heat-sink. picture link is http://depic.me/lrbxgvqwimiy

i then read customers feedback on amazon and newegg and a lot of them says it heats up a lot because it lacks a proper northbridge heatsink. What should i do in this case? i also notice a lot of lower end MOBOs these days comes with only southbridge heatsink. Please explain to me what is going on? and correct me where i am wrong!

 

[itzdanielp]

Well, simple answer to the question is. There is no more northbridge.... Since the I-Series chips the Memory controller has been built into the CPU, taking out the need for a separate NB.

I believe the heatsink you are looking for is actually the one that cools the power regulators (which would be kind of built around the CPU socket) and since this MB is designed to run stock clocks only, they are not worried about having to dissipate additional heat from OCing and they feel passive cooling on the VRM's alone is enough to keep them cool.

 

[ankysh]

thanks for replying, but what about the PCI-express 2.0 x16 graphics lane? the northbridge connects the memory controller hub(FSB) and the high speed PCI-express 2.0 x16 to the CPU and vice-versa, am i right? (correct me if i am wrong) that's why the northbridge chipset gets hot when gaming. So its going to get quite hot without a heatsink on it. I wanted to put an i3 2100 and a GTX 560 ti on that rig and maxed out all games @ 1280 * 720 on 17 inch LCD screen!!

 

[itzdanielp]

All NB functions are now built into the CPU (Sandy Bridge and newer)

Technically the SB controls the PCI lanes, but the Graphics link is controlled directly from the CPU like the NB used to control it.

There will not be an issue with anything overheating unless you are trying to OC, which I would highly suggest NOT doing on that board, the VRM's will overheat very quickly.

Just a recap on the CPU you are looking at (and the chipset on that board) there is no NB, it is built into the CPU

 

[ankysh]

OK, thanks, i got it now. so the i3 2100 and GTX 560 ti & 4GB DDR3 will not cause any motherboard heat issues at full load gaming? i intend to run the i3 2100 at stock speed only since very little overclocking can be done with that CPU.

 

[itzdanielp]

On clock speeds you will have no troubles at all

 

[ankysh]

Best answer selected by ankysh.

 

[ankysh]

OK thanks a lot itzdanielp