Anyone have evidence of improved overclock with NB watercooling?

[Jimbo Mahoney]

Cynical me again...

Does anyone have numerical evidence of the benefits (or not) of cooling the northbridge? By numerical, I mean Mhz gains, not temperature drops.

I'm skeptical that it helps with anything other than peace of mind.

I used to watercool the NB on my DFI NF4, but didn't conduct any tests and since it was WC from the day I installed it, had no comparison with it being aircooled.

 

[Jimbo Mahoney]

From what I have seen, they are pretty easy to take off (I don't have one yet though).

The sinks just screw onto or are glued onto the chips like normal. The heatpipes are clamped in the middle of the sinks like a sandwich, so it's all dismantleable (if that's a word!). I suspect if you decide to take the NB sink off, for example, you can just take the heatpipe that it's connected to out too.

 

[Jimbo Mahoney]

I have no hard evidence... but pretty much all the 680i and 650i boards don't overclock much beyond 370-380MHz without additional cooling on the NB...

The Gigabyte 650i-DS4L I've been playing with wouldn't go much above 375 and no way hit 400 stable on the stock cooling but when I whacked a high throughput 60mm fan on the NB heatsink I got it upto 470MHz no hassle and it would probably go beyond that with extra voltage and better RAM - the RAM I'm using doesn't like going above 940-950MHz.

Interesting, thanks!