However, let’s take a closer look at the chipset cooling system. It starts with a small heatsink on top of the chipset South Bridge. It is not just a heat-spreader, not a plate pressing against the heatpipe that should transfer the heat somewhere else. It is a fully-fledged heatsink (though a small one) that does contribute to the chipset cooling.

The heatpipes starts at this heatsink and then goes to a larger one on the chipset North Bridge. And this is where the first questions emerge. As you can see, two next heatpipes start at the top of the North Bridge heatsink:

One is very short: it ends in the first heatsink on MOSFET transistors:

Another one goes through the groove in the first heatsink only touching it slightly and ends in the second one.

So, these two heatpipes will perform their cooling functions, but they only transfer the heat that will get to them through thin plates of the North Bridge heatsink. The main heat burden, however, will be distributed between the two chipset heatsinks, one of which is pretty tiny. So, did they really have to put together this entire bulky system of four heatsinks creating a lot of problems for some large processor coolers, if only two of these heatsinks actually work at their full potential?

Please get me right: we can’t say that MOSFET heatsinks do not work or are useless. Gigabyte mainboards and Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4 in particular use very aggressive algorithm for processor fan rotation speed management. The fan of our Zalman CNPS9700 LED cooler didn’t work at all most of the time. With hardly any airflow, this entire cooling system heats up a lot, including the MOSFET heatsinks. Once the fan kicks in, their temperature drops down dramatically, but the heatpipe connecting the chipset heatsinks remains burning hot, under any circumstances, i.e. the chipset is always running in extreme thermal conditions.

All in al, this cooling system is pretty good, but it would be nice to have at least one heatpipe go to the base of the chipset North Bridge heatsink, so that the heat could be immediately transferred away from the hottest component and dissipated through additional heatsinks on MSFET transistors. As for the heatpipe coming from the South Bridge, it can be left at the base, may continue farther, may be lifted higher – any technologically suitable solution will do. I am sure Gigabyte engineers can figure it out.

Besides the problems with the chipset cooling system we have just mentioned, Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4 doesn’t have any other drawbacks. Just check out the components layout scheme and you will undoubtedly agree with me: