Vapochilling & Northbridge question

[Ashen]

I'm finally growing a pair and installing my vapochill, but one last question continues to niggle me.....should I air cool or water cool the northbridge? I like the fact that I can buy a kick ass air cooler (Microcool chipset cooler) that comes with chipsinks for 30 USD at sidewindercomputers.com , but the watercooling begins to look more attractive when I consider its ability to be used on completely different setups for years to come. I also planned, if watercooling the NB, to watercool my new graphics card as well (still shopping around). I totaled my crap up and the air cooling would cost about 50 bucks (plus chipsinks and such), whereas the watercooling would cost about 200 dollars (without the chipsinks). I'm not really on a limited budget, but I gotta make the money before I spend it. Please help this indecisive young man

thanks

(btw all the watercooling was going to be waterchill stuff w/ 1/2' OD tubing for ease of use)

[Nomadd]

I guess it depends on what you want to do with the system? I mean, you hit the same nail on the head with your NB as you have with your CPU - i.e. how extreme and costly do you want to go?

Now it seems in the case of the CPU you've already gone the extreme route (Vaporchill) and if you are planning on doing a lot of gaming/graphics stuff then I think you'd get an overall bigger boost by concentrating on the graphics card. In other words, sort of finish what you've started and go for a water-cooled high-end graphics card - at which point you might as well do the NB at the same time. The NB block isn't going to add that much to overall cost...

I considered a Prommie/Vaporchill myself, but in the end decided that an quietly air-cooled P4@3.5 was more than enough power for my CPU needs. Of course, your CPU needs may be different. I spent the cash instead on an Nvidia 6800GT, and I'm very happy with it. If I was going to 'push' any more, it would certainly be to add water-cooling to the GPU, and if I did that I'd do the CPU at the same time. NB I wouldn't bother with the NB as it hasn't been an issue for me (i.e. it's working just fine on air.) If you are pushing things much, much further, you may have no other option than water-cooling the NB. Testing will tell.

Maybe wait until you've got your graphics solution installed and have a rethink then. I'd also give the market a little more time to come up with a greater range of newer (hopefully cheaper!) cooling blocks for the current next-gen cards too.

Nomadd