The Asus P5N32-SLI Premium motherboard has two copper heat pipes snaking between its slots and connectors, connecting low profile passive chipset heatsinks to copper fins situated around the LGA775 CPU socket.

The nVIDIA nForce 590 SLI Intel Edition chipset generates a lot of heat and thus requires more cooling than the regular computer chipset. The nForce 590 SLI MCP (southbridge) has a finless copper heatsink mounted to it, with a heatpipe that connects it to a 28 fin copper heatsink set by the CPU socket. The nForce 590 SLI Intel Edition SPP Northbridge has a similar cooling arrangement, although the heatsink directly on top of this chipset is passively cools the core logic too.

In both cases, the heat from the chipsets is conducted to a small copper fin heatsink resting on top of the boards' MOSFETs. These two finned heatsinks work off the exhaust airflow from the CPU fan, which blows over then just enough to keep the thermal environment in check.

The small finned copper heatsinks on top of the MOSFETs require active cooling if the processor is cooled with a passive heatsink, water cooling system or phase change cooling. Asus ship two small squirrel cage fans with the board for this very reason. The two fans are quiet, and clip on to the heatsink fins directly (there are two power sockets on the motherboard specifically for them). Once installed the fans are held fans and there's no chance of them coming loose.

The nVIDIA nForce 590 SLI Intel Edition chipset gets very hot but the Asus cooling system does a good job at dealing with the heat. The squirrel cage fans are quiet during operation (if you decide to use them) and would not be noticeable once the motherboard has been installed into a case. Up next, a quick look around the Asus P5N32-SLI Premium motherboard...