Q6600 Mobo cooling question

[Human1]

Hey gents,
I've been looking at getting a Q6600, but I have a question. I've noticed a lot of the motherboards have heat pipes running around the north and south bridges then up around the capacitors around the CPU. My question is do those heat pipes rely on the fan from the CPU heatsink? I water cool, and my case has decent air flow, but would it be enough to keep these things cool, or do they have fans somewhere in them? I don't see any in the pictures and I don't want to cook my 'puter.
Here's an example of what I'm referring to: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128046
Let me know if you have any experience with this!

 

[bornking]

I asked the same Q but got no replies. I have an ASUS Striker Extreme and want to upgrade to a q6600 and use a better cooling solution but am worried about the space constraints.

I hope we get some good replies!

 

[tsponholz]

These heatsinks rely much more on good case airflow than a CPU cooler fan. The new passive cooling set-ups on most new mobo's are very robust and do not need additional fans.

Depending on the cpu cooler, you would not get any direct cooling on the mobo heatsinks anyway (any top down cooler, eg. stock intel). A side mounted cpu cooler/fan set-up (eg. Scythe Ninja) could add additional cooling to the mobo, but would not make much difference if your case has good overall flow.

The example you use: GA-P35-DQ6 is a great example of this, it runs cool and is a great overclocker.

However, if you want a bit of overkill and REALLY want to go nuts with watercooling, have a look at this board:
http://www.memoryexpress.com/index.php?PageTag=&page=file&memx_menu=EmbedProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=10595&SID=

I know... serious overkill and a serious price tag.

 

[Human1]

Wow.. now that's some serious watercooling
Well, if it doesn't depend on the cpu fan, then I'll probably just go with a slightly less expensive board (~$150). Should be good.

One other question, though. Better to have 2G RAM at 1066 or 4G at 800?

 

[tsponholz]

Depends... my quick answer is 4 GB, 2x2 GB is best but not if you can get 4x1 for cheap. I went with 4x1: Patriot Extreme Performance at $80 bucks a stick!

Some thing to consider:

32 bit OS cannot address full 4GB of ram, despite what MSFT says. There seems to be a debate on this, but I've seen figures of as little as 3.1 to 3.6ish. I do not claim to understand this issue, but you should be aware and consider it in your build.

If you go with 64 bit Vista or XP Pro you may run into driver compatabilty issues. However, most new parts should be fine and there are often work-arounds (3rd party drivers, base component drivers, etc.). I install Vista 64 and had no issues once running a Windows Update.

What programs do you need to run? Most games will see a performance boost to more ram, all profesional grade software (CS3) will use the extra ram.

The performance difference between 800 and 1066 is almost not noticeable in real-world performance, mostly just a benchmark increase. I'm sure some of the extreme users will disagree though. Besides, if you really want to, you should be able OC any good ram to 1066.

The extra cost of the 1066 ram is not worth the minor performance boost, IMO.

 

[Human1]

I'd forgotten about the address limitations on 32bit Windows. I'm using Vista, so I'll see what it can see.
I'm a chemical engineering student, and I run lot of Comsol and Aspen, process simulation stuff mostly. I'm sure more RAM isn't going to hurt. It was only $30 more for the 2x2Gb DDR2800 vs the 2x1Gb DDR1066. I doubt I'd be able to notice the difference.

 

[bornking]

I installed two more gigs of corsair twinmx2 6400 800mhz ram to my original pair of the same and windows only sees 2.5 gigs!
hmmm.