You cannot have a stable overclocking environment (at least not if your over-volting to achieve this) without quality cooling. Asus has been incorporating heat-pipe technology onto their Enthusiast boards as long as anyone in the industry. Cooling the 975X NB begins with a large copper heatsink on the North Bridge from which a heat-pipe originates.



The heat-pipe emanating from the NB cooler then takes a right angle and most importantly, rises upward where it is mounted through the fins in the CPU power circuitry Mosfett cooler.



The copper cooler above the primary mosfetts sports a fairly large fin array for plenty of surface area to dissipate heat. This is a well thought through cooling solution and found on many motherboards these days.



While the heat-pipe system is intended to be a passive cooling solution, Asus includes a mini blower-type fan which easily snaps onto the mosfett cooler. The fan mounts just above the heat-pipe which terminates in the cooling fins. The proprietary liquid dissipates its energy through the pipe, to the fins, and flows back down to the NB to repeat the cycle. The NB blower fan is relatively silent and cannot be heard over most case fans.



Memory, ATX power connectors and South Bridge…>