Do North and South Bridges Require Heatsinks?

Mulch

New Member
I am currently researching my first computer build and I am looking at the nVidia nForce 790i motherboard. Upon some research I came across north and south bridge heatsinks and fans. My question is are these necessary/required?
I am looking at the Antec Nine Hundred case
Geforce 9800 GX2
nVidia nForce 790i
Western Digital SATA Hard Drive Caviar RE Model WD2500YS
And the memory I am still unclear with but was looking at the Patriot Viper 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) RAM
And looking at a 750 to 1000 watt power supply unit have not come up with a clear decision on this one either.
Thank you for any advice.
 
First, no, on that chipset fans are not required. In fact, if at all possible active cooling is to be avoided. Just ask AMD fans how many of them have had the NB fans seize and consequently had the motherboard fry on them.

Second, that hard drive is a piece of crap. Shame you're looking at such good components and an absolute garbage hard drive.
 
Thank you on that reply towards the heatsinks and fans. In regards to the hard drive what should I look at. This is my first build ever and everything I have been trying to get good items for this computer. Ive read Western Digital is good but I do not know what all to look for. I know a higher cache is good and that is about all I really know.
 
Unless you're buying a Raptor or RE, avoid them like the plague. You can search other posts I've made about WD. I used to be a WD Authorized vendor, until I got sick of their garbage drives. I now repair at least one WD a day and when I do data recovery it's almost inevitably on a WD Caviar SE.

Stay the hell away from them, they are absolute garbage.
 
My 590sli AMD board has the same exact heatsink/fan on the south bridge. It works and looks nice, but it can become a pain with large graphic cards. For example, i had to re-route the fan wire behind some resistors on my video card because it was interfering with the south bridge fan. Also, large card will obviously cause very poor airflow to the south bridge.

You can see it here

For the hard drive, i personally have never had an issue with WD drives, but i'm current using a seagate drive.
 
Unless you're buying a Raptor or RE, avoid them like the plague.

So are you saying that you would go with someone other that WD now that you have been with them and seen the products that come back or do you feel they are good but with only certain drives in which they sell such as the Raptor and RE?
 
You have a W/D RE in your list, like said above if you want to spend more get a W/D Raptor but the RE is a good drive. If you dont want to go with a W/D go with Seagate.
 
The Raptor and RE are decent products. The Caviar SE is complete junk. In anything but the lightest of uses they're horrid. Even in external drives I've been having a lot of problems with them.
 
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