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ashenfang

The Jet Man!
Joined
Feb 25, 2003
Location
Indiana
Not really sure where to post this, so if you want to move it thanks :)

Basically, it might be a dumb question, but what exactly do Northbridges and southbridges do? And what does cooling them help with?
 
Southbridge is a chipset that manages the basic forms of input/output (I/O) such as Universal Serial Bus (USB), serial, audio, Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE), and Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) I/O in a computer. Southbridge is one of two chipsets that are collectively called Northbridge/Southbridge. Northbridge controls the processor, memory, Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus, Level 2 cache, and all Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) activities. Unlike Northbridge, Southbridge consists of one chip, which sits on Northbridge's PCI bus.

There's a quote for you.

Anyway, the northbridge is much more likely to get hot than the southbridge. Just like any other piece of electronics, the northbridge is susceptible to heat-related failure, and overclocking one and/or over-volting one can increase the heat produced. That's why boards are coming with bigger and/or active heatsinks on the NB these days.

[edited to add: Hahahaha, rugbyroy's avatar is hilarious.]
 
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