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I have an Asus p5n-e SLI, which, apparently suck. Ive been reading reviews about how they overheat and die. Ive had mine for about half a year now and its been stuck at 34 degrees. But I'm guessing that's because i haven't been playing games or doing anything that really stresses the processor or uses much memory. (forgive me if i don't know what I'm talking about) Anyway, tomorrow I'm getting an eVGA geforce 9800 gtx and im going to be playing games. Should i wait and buy a new motherboard before i do anything? or at least stick a heatsink on the northbridge?

 also, a question about fans, if theyre set to 100% does that mean theyll die sooner?

huh... in the picture there is a northbridge heatsink- i think you mean the southbridge

you should definetely put a heatsink on the southbridge because the plastic fan shroud on the 9800 gtx overhangs it and creates a heat pocket- some reviews online reported mobo crashes because of southbridge overheats even with a heatsink because there was absolutely no airflow.

Bare minimum, you should stick a heatsink on there, but make sure its flat because the card's shroud will be very close to it. If you have a little more cash, I would buy a small fan and do some kind of mod and attach it near it.

Antec's SpotCool fan allows you to position it anywhere thanks to the arm, but its not on newegg anymore, unfortunately.

And yeah, faster spinning fans wear out faster.

 

thanks

You might wanna check out the VIZO VIZO-NBC-101-CPR Copper Sleet Chipset Cooler

 

I have used the chipset fan that specialist has in this post, and it works great. I had a motherboard in the past that the fan on the southbridge died on me, and I replaced it with this and works great. The new fan worked even better than the orginal so deffinetly consider buying the lil fan chipset cooler. Not only will it help keep your mobo cooler so you can play games but in overclocking situations perhaps itll help get that lil extra out of your motherboard.