Northbridge chipset WCing on new i875 Canterwood Motherboards

[tok3n]

I'm planning a major system upgrade soon and have been looking at new i875 Canterwood motherboards. But the ones I have looked at so far, ASUS and ABIT seem to have opted for a new mounting mechanism for the northbridge chipset. Instead of the old holes in the motherboard, they are using metal loops at the 4 corners. The fan or heatink is held on via a bracket or wire to the loops.

http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/motherboards/asus/P4C800/DSC01659.JPG

While this might be a good new system stock, that leave a problem for watercooling the chipset. There is no way to mount the block with the current designs.

Has anyone else noticed this?

Maybe it is unnecessary to watercool these northbrdiges. But my concern - at least for passively cooled chipsets like on the ASUS - is when watercooling the CPU, there will be no more fan from the cpu to blow air onto the chipset heatink from the side.

Are makers of waterblocks going to design new options if this mounting system becomes prevalent?

[mdzcpa]

Good question:D

Theres been a lot of discussion on this point. The biggest issue is not being able to get a consensus on whether serious cooling is even needed on the northbridges of these boards. I have found that my NB on my IC7-G hardly gets warm at all. And that's at FSB of about 260 to 270. Perhaps at 280 or better things heat up more (I dunno cause my 15 mutliplier on my 3Ghz P4 limits me to 270). On the other hand, sites like HardOCP say the NB does indeed get warm.

So...when in doubt cool it:D Can't hurt.

That said, most users are ignoring the clips and using epoxy to secure a waterblock to the NB. Works great for most. Whether or not the major players (Swiftech, Dangerden, etc) release a waterblock for the NB remains to be seen. I somehow do not think it will happen because there is no consensus on whether there are any benefits to cooling the NB, and hence a limited market to sell too. Just my opinion though.

[tok3n]

So are these new motherboards all gonig to have this new clip mechanism - w/o the holes for the old style spring load pin heatsinks?

[Player0]

I always skip mounting options for the northbridge and just AS epoxy them down.

[amdrules770]

All the p4 mobos we sell at my work (DFI) use some sort of spring.

[mdzcpa]

Originally posted by tok3n
So are these new motherboards all gonig to have this new clip mechanism - w/o the holes for the old style spring load pin heatsinks?

Yes...that is the direction the industry is taking.

[Tical]

The D-Tek chipset block works perfectly if you use the stock NB fan's ring to hold it down, just like the zalman mod but W/C. :D