Gigabyte EP45 Extreme pictured.

[Azza]

Clicky

[Timo]

Nice northbridge heatsink there. lol. Crazy.

[Flewis]

Metal!!!

[ackrite26]

This is getting rediculous!

Could build a case with all that metal.

[Platinum]

Thats just a waste of copper, theres no need for anything that large.

[acro666]

Tweaktown refer to the heatsink as Humongous, a hi-brid word dreamed up from 'Huge,' and 'Monstrous,' and it is rather large?

regards

acro666

[this_is_gav]

In my experience all these supposedly huge, great northbridge heatsinks are so poorly made they're all better replaced by 3rd party products. Take the Maximus Formula I've got - £170 gets you massive hulks of copper everywhere (which is quite possibly aluminium with a copper coating?) so inefficient that if you replace it with a single little aluminium Thermalright heatsink it performs much better. They're all so flimsy.

It's all just marketing. It'll be no better than any other northbridge, and a complete waste of a precious slot.

The P5B Deluxe had its northbridge temps lowered by nearly 10c buy buying a £3 Zalman passive cooler. It annoys the hell out of me.

[Agent]

Thats not extreme, its ridiculous.

There is no point to having that much copper on a board.

[Andy3536]

I don't know if i'm bieng silly but those pcie slots look a little too close to put anything in a second?

[Link97]

I don't know if i'm bieng silly but those pcie slots look a little too close to put anything in a second?

I thoughtthe same thing... graphics cards tend to be on the American side of the width scale, nowadays.

[this_is_gav]

I thoughtthe same thing... graphics cards tend to be on the American side of the width scale, nowadays.

Which is fine, as the 1st 16x PCIe slot is a further 2 down the board. I just think it's all very unnecessary and completely inefficient. x48 is no better than x38, yet will this be any cooler than sticking a much smaller aftermarket cooler on?

Ludicrous publicity stunt, a total waste of space and nothing more.

//edit: it's not even an x48 board, it's the lower model P45 with only 1 16x lane... oh dear.

[mrt9888]

Imagine the size of the box it comes in.

[chuckskull]

Am I the only one? But I quite like that design, keeps out of the way of the CPU HSF and shouldn't foul the graphics card. Fitting a big HSF and something like an HR-05 on the north bridge can be an exercise in futility. I know mine took 2 hours of shouting and swearing to get on and there's no way to put a fan on it.

I don't like the colour though. Black please.

[HSK]

interesting design...

[this_is_gav]

Am I the only one? But I quite like that design, keeps out of the way of the CPU HSF and shouldn't foul the graphics card. Fitting a big HSF and something like an HR-05 on the north bridge can be an exercise in futility. I know mine took 2 hours of shouting and swearing to get on and there's no way to put a fan on it.

I don't like the colour though. Black please.

It's not needed though. A much smaller design would be more than adequate - even a low profile job. The fact is none of them are designed at all well, so as a result they just employ the tactic of more is better.

Thermalright supply the brackets for fans with the heatsink, and slim 80mm fans are usually enough (especially given as you mount the HR-05/HR-05 SLI in different orientations, even rotating them ~30 degrees each way when already installed. Failing all that you always employ something like the Zalman bracket that's been going around for years now, which while not perfect, would provide more than enough airflow. Not that a fan is needed anyway, well not on Intel boards (clearly the rather poor NV boards do need something a bit more substantial).

In the last year or so companies have even started putting heatpipes on the southbridge. The reality is that, for ICH8(R) anyway, even heatsinks weren't necessary, and ICH9(R) was hardly a massive step forward, and ICH10 isn't looking especially ground-breaking.

You're paying for nothing more than bling. They might as well jam Christmas lights between the fins.

[hermeticist]

I don`t think that is a cooler, I think it`s a radiator. A Gigabyte special edition, It comes with a thermostatic rad. valve, you just plug it into the main central heating et voila! A heated PC for our cousins in Siberia..........