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  • FreckledTrout - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    Can someone ask the vendors to do a passive cooling solution even as an add on product. Pretty please.
  • Lakados - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    I am more interested in seeing what EKWB and the others offer for cooling options for these boards. More than not the fans shouldn’t be needed but those who choose to do multi M.2 in raid will probably need it.
  • JoeyJoJo123 - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    I think Gigabyte's highest end mobo had no integrated fan.
  • Phynaz - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    They can’t. This is how AMD lowers their power consumption, move things off the cpu.
  • Meaker10 - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    Except they have more lanes than Intel on the CPU at every market level?
  • Irata - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link

    And each lane has twice the bandwidth :)
  • JoeyJoJo123 - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    Doing free marketing for team blue doesn't really do you any good, dude. It's just part of PCI-e 4.0 that there's increased demand for the chipset to keep up with higher bandwidth PCI-e lanes. When Intel releases a chipset with PCI-e 4.0, they'll almost certainly be doing the same with a chipset fan, again. Intel has had chipset fans in the past, too, by the way.
  • Irata - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link

    Examples of CPU features that are moved to the X570 Chipset please...
  • Shorty_ - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link

    that's not even remotely accurate at all. Have you had a gander at the Ryzen SoC at all?
  • Cygni - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    It is an AMD requirement.
  • Skeptical123 - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    I'm sure some motherboard maker will make a board with a passively cooled north bridge. Keep in mind the new X570 chips use 11-15 watts, a 15 watt heatsink is not small. You could always diy a passive cooling solution using some thermal epoxy and a chunk of metal but I assume that will void the warranty...
  • Alexvrb - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    They're 11 watts on the X570 boards, and that's when they're being taxed. Rumor has it TR will get a fully enabled version, presumably with more lanes in and out, that runs at 15W. 11 watts isn't hard to cool, but the easiest way to do it without creating clearance issues is a slim HS and tiny slow-moving fan. With that being said, if a board vendor wants to offer a passively cooled model it is possible but would be costly and the board layout would have to take this into account from the start.

    Alternatively, wait for a less power hungry chipset - B550 might cut out NVMe RAID, which would drop peak power further.
  • kobblestown - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link

    The north bridge is in the CPU package and with Zen2 it's actually a separate chip on it - the I/O die.

    I guess the problem with passive cooling is that the chipset gets in the way of the PCIe cards and cannot be substantial enough. I wonder if someone would make a heat pipe chipset cooler that takes the radiator outside of the board.
  • FreckledTrout - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link

    I had one of these like a decade ago :)

    https://www.quietpc.com/tr-hr-05-sli
  • Destoya - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    Why do you think that the chipset fans will ever be spinning when they're not being punished by PCIe 4.0 loads? I'd wager that these fans will be idle 99% of the time. It's not the 90's anymore where fan speed curves and silent modes don't exist.
  • Irata - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link

    +1
  • haukionkannel - Thursday, May 30, 2019 - link

    Aorus xtreme is passive! Only cost 599$ according the prerelease information. Also msi has water cooled passive motherboard abou 1000$. So there Are some options without whining active cooler!
  • SpartanJet - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    At this point I'd rather skip PCIe 4.0 and have passive cooling rather than those horrible chipset fans of the 1990's.
  • JoeyJoJo123 - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    Cool beans. Buy an X470 board instead if you don't care about PCI-e 4.0, it'll still work with Ryzen 3000 for the most part. I'll be relishing in the 5000MB/s transfer speeds on upcoming PCI-e 4.0 m.2 drives.
  • imaheadcase - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    I wouldn't upgrade just for that, you won't exactly be noticing any difference if you just game/video edit/etc. lol
  • danielfranklin - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link

    Well good thing it's not the 90s anymore, I'm pretty sure fans and their controllers have moved on since then.
    When you remember the noisy Northbridge fans, CPUs coolers (even aftermarket) had with 60mm fans that only ran at one speed.
  • Arbie - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    "the Crosshair VI Hero features dual PCIe 4.0 M.2"

    Sadly my CH6 has only one M.2 slot, and even that isn't PCIe 4. Mobo lottery - damn the bad luck.

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