Best Motherboards for Passive

good looking, well cooling with waterblock or passive heatsink/heatpipe, sli/crossfire huge plus for video-card fence-sitters.

gigabyte didn't stop there; they have included a passive huge heat sink with heat-pipes that attaches to the north bridge to transfer heat to from the bridge to the passive heat sink, then the heat

pros: -good looking mobo that is rock stable when overclocking my i7 920-haven't gone too crazy with overclocking yet but went from 2.66ghz to 3.4ghz without changing any of the voltages using

itself down to the max supported by the board no problem)- evga 8400gs pci- antec veris ir receiveri added a small 40mm fan to help the atom's passive heatsink a bit because of the case layout.

did not install the microcool southsink (southbridge passive heatsink) i did on the first one.

the cpu has a passive heatsink while another chip (gpu?) has a 40mm fan.

however, the unit has a built-in fan cooling fan for the northbridge (the cpu is passively cooled by heatsink only).

prefer boards with passive cooling.

cons: the voltage regulator is cooled by a passive heatsink that is designed to use air flow from the stock i7 cooler.

no needs to short jumpers while testing the board outside the chasis.3) impressive passive copper based cooling system for the chipsets4) so many output connections.

came with cooling pipe fan for use with passive cpu coolers.

the passive heatsink on this thing is a joke.

pros: - worked immediately with my i7 920 and 1366 ram.- nice additional cooling options, even a mini-fan for those with passive cpu cooling.

asus chose to go with a passive heat sink on this north bridge that appears to be designed for the "blow down" intel stock fan.