does northbridge liquid cooling really help?
 

Saw some other thread around on this subject, whether liquid cooling your northbridge really does anything for your OC or not. Curious what some of the best on the web have to say about it. Any real world numbers or personal experiences would be good.

Ive never really seen a NB get that hot really, I just wonder if just a big passive heat sink or a small HSF would be just as good as an expensive NB block.

Well I found it to be useless.

Cooling the (southbridge in my case with the nForce 3) using my watercooling kit only added heat to my loop. I found that using my MCX159-R I attained the same FSB speeds while not adding un-neccessary heat to my loop.

I use a Dual Loop setup. Both are with Thermo-electric Swiftech Blocks.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v5...Z/DSC00862.jpg

I'm now in the process of switching the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum for another nForce3 the Gigabyte K8NS-Ultra 939.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v5...s/DSC01460.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v5...s/DSC01459.jpg

Basically It's only useful for HUGE gigantic OC's..lol. Like the ones MACI does.

Er, I don't think that watercooling the SB will do anything as it's not related to FSB, is it? I don't think it is. The NB is in the CPU itself.

However, there has been much testing that has shown that watercooling the NB does not actually do anything more than good aircooling. Don't waste your time.

You could probably find a case where it will help somewhat, but in general it's probably a lot more useful (though difficult) to wc your mosfets than your northbridge. THOSE bits get hot to the detriment of voltage regulation and that has a big effect on system stability.

True... but the Southbridge is what divides the PCI/AGP/etc frequencies.

In the nForce3 and nForce4.

I used this same MCX159-R on my Abit IC7-MAX3.

I will be cooling my MOSFETS and my northbridge.

I don't think the Northbridge will benefit, but it's one less fan to have in the system.

For the MOSFETS, I bought a Heattrap Regcooler block from Germany along with my Nexxxos block.

Hopefully, it'll mean my Venice gets nice stable voltage...

http://www.neoseeker.com/news/story/4589/

This looks like a neat way for NB cooling. Abit's current OTES looks like a nice solution for mosfet (air)cooling now.