what the heck is this?

[megamodman]

Also need to know if you intend to cool the northbridge, southbridge or mosfets.

are these on the mobo or hd or what?

[Luke122]

Motherboard.

[megamodman]

Motherboard.

all of them?

[x88x]

The northbridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northbridge_(computing)) is the memory controller, which depending on your platform is either located on the MBB or integrated into the CPU.

The southbridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southbridge_(computing)) is always located on the MBB, and handles the various buses (PCI, PCIe, USB, etc).

When doing overclocking, it is advisable to upgrade to cooling on both. In fact, even if you're not overclocking it's probably a good idea to upgrade the cooling on them; sometimes manufacturers put pretty crap heatsinks on them..the heatsink on the southbridge on my fileserver's MBB was getting up to probably around 60C until I added a fan onto it.

EDIT: sorry, forgot mosfets.

Mosfets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSFET) are a type of transistor. What 4rm was probably talking about was the mosfets on your graphics card. The can get really hot, and if you are replacing the stock HS/F on your card, you need to make sure that they are cooled by something in the new setup.

[Zephik]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northbridge_(computing) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northbridge_%28computing%29)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southbridge_(computing) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southbridge_%28computing%29)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSFET

Northbridge and Southbridge (http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/6955/motherboardbridges55693.jpg) (image)

MOSFETS (http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/9895/mosfethsf6409329.jpg) (image)

MOSFETS w/ Heatsink (http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/4849/imageviewu.jpg) (image)

[megamodman]

thanks alot guys

+ rep :)