6 replies to this topic

[ManDaisy]

Current I'm looking to buy a mother board with for my gaming rig. My current concern is the Northbridge chipset. As I plan on having a dedicated graphics card, can anyone recommend the best chip for my overclocking needs?

I found some information here but its not quite clear.

http://www.squidoo.c...herboards-Intel

[Vulpesveritas]

That's somewhat old news. But if you're over on the Intel side, an z77 or z79 chipset is your best bet, depending on if you go with LGA 1155 or LGA 2011. On the AMD side, it's 990FX.
But as far as it goes with overclocking your dedicated graphics card, the two things which are more important is the card itself and your power supply. having strong, reliable, and stable power along with a voltage regulation chip which is also of high quality is important. MSI, Asus, and EVGA are the way to go on that with Nvidia, and MSI, HIS, and Powercolor are the way to go on the AMD side of graphics cards (at least in my opinion based on what I've seen) .

[ManDaisy]

I am also curious as to the graphical performance of overclocking an H67 "sandy bridge" intergrated graphics motherboard. I understand that essentially all my "load" would then be on my processor, however could a good overclocked processor with integrated graphics ever perform equally with a dedicated graphics card?

Do you need to cool the motherboard chip,( z77, z79 etc), like you would need to cool a processor (icore5, icore7, etc) and gpu?

Edited by ManDaisy, 19 June 2012 - 01:29 PM.

[Vulpesveritas]

ManDaisy, on 19 June 2012 - 01:28 PM, said:

I am also curious as to the graphical performance of overclocking an H67 "sandy bridge" intergrated graphics motherboard. I understand that essentially all my "load" would then be on my processor, however could a good overclocked processor with integrated graphics ever perform equally with a dedicated graphics card?

Do you need to cool the motherboard chip like you would need to cool a processor and gpu?

Short answer: No
Long answer: Not even close to performing on par with a dedicated GPU. Unless you're running on the AMD side with a Llano or Trinity processor, but even those when overclocked won't perform as well as a $100 dedicated card.

as far as the motherboard chip- you don't have to, but you should. But Sandy Bridge's and the AMD integrated processors on Llano and Trinity are actually on the same chip as the CPU, so you should be cooling it anyway.

Edited by Vulpesveritas, 19 June 2012 - 01:31 PM.

[Natedog]

ManDaisy, on 19 June 2012 - 01:28 PM, said:

Do you need to cool the motherboard chip,( z77, z79 etc), like you would need to cool a processor (icore5, icore7, etc) and gpu?

Generally all you need is a passive cooler at best. Most of the enthusiast boards (I.E. motherboards that are targeted to people that will be overcocking their cpu) already have good enough cooling for the northbridge chips.

[Odins Fist]

If you have Central Air conditioning, sit your case next to the vent, and after you cut a 140mm fan hole in the side of you case, and mount a 140mm fan blowing in, and take the side off of an old computer case, and prop it up against the computer case at an angle so it directs the air into your case... LOL Or if you just want to cool down your northbridge and southbridge.. Just a Toy shop link below.
http://www.frozencpu...nksCoolers.html
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Overclocking your Video card, I heard the Nvidia 600 series were winners at that, might want to check those out
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Buy this Mobo for AMD overclocking, it has addtional power inputs on the board for Crossfire or SLI (it will do both) & Overclocking stability..wink wink
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813131735
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Get into Water cooling if you're going to get serious with Overclocking a CPU...
On a side note Dedicated onboard graphics are never as good as a dedicated Video card, unless the card is really ancient..LOL

[Agincourt]

Natedog, on 19 June 2012 - 01:56 PM, said:

Generally all you need is a passive cooler at best. Most of the enthusiast boards (I.E. motherboards that are targeted to people that will be overcocking their cpu) already have good enough cooling for the northbridge chips.

On top of this, newer Intel boards don't have northbridge chips at all as it's integrated onto the CPU, so the only other heatsink, unless it's a socket 1155 board with a PCI-E 16x/16x bridge chip, would be on the southbridge/PCH (which doesn't need to be actively-cooled). OP, if you're buying into Intel, grab a socket 1155 board (2011 is more expensive and not better for gaming) with either a 2500K or 3750K CPU. You'll need a P or Z-series chipset for overclocking, as the H & Q-series chips don't allow overclocking. With a 2500K you can get away with a cheap Coolermaster 212+ heatsink and still overclock it pretty heavily (>4.2ghz).