Motherboard – Active Cooling Required

Compared to the current X38 desktop chipset, the power consumption of the 5400 workstation part is another few Watts higher. Partly, this is due to the fact that the northbridge is still a 90nm part. When overclocked, Intel’s 5400 gets so hot that it requires active cooling.

Intel doesn’t include a northbridge fan with its board, forcing the buyer to find an aftermarket option. We strongly advise against trusting the passive heatsink alone. Either you’ll need to ensure that the CPU cooler’s airflow also reaches the northbridge or we recommend installing a fan on the heatsink. In light of the high price of this motherboard, this is a must.

The 5400 northbridge was designed with system stability as the foremost priority. Thus, the timings of the chips are higher and there are more error correction routines implemented, adversely affecting performance. In part, this is due to the fact that the northbridge has to manage two CPUs, which incurs a performance penalty.