PCB Design and Functionality

Well, we have expected to see something new, and we got it: abit IX38 QuadGT mainboard looks very unusual because of the unique fanless cooling system called Silent OTES and designed using heatpipe technology.

Everything starts quite traditionally, with a small heatsink on top of the chipset South Bridge. Note that this is a heatsink, and not just a heat-spreader with a few plates pressing a heatpipe against the chip cover. The rib array is not too tall, so that it doesn’t hinder installation of graphics cards with long PCBs.

The heatpipe leads from the South Bridge heatsink to the top of the North Bridge heatsink. The latter is designed with a copper plate in the base and an array of thin wave-shaped plates.

Intel X38 Express chipset dissipates more heat than the previous Intel solutions that is why the heatsink has two threaded holes at the bottom for a reason. They serve to fasten an additional 40mm fan (not included with the board), which will be really helpful at all times.

There is a second heatpipe originating from the base of the chipset North Bridge heatsink. However, it doesn’t lead to the heatsink on top of MOSFET transistors, as we would have expected, but in a totally opposite direction, to a smaller additional heatsink between the processor socket and memory DIMM slots.

This heatsink hangs in mid air, doesn’t touch anything, but we doubt that it is an efficient solution. It will definitely be in the way when you try to install large coolers or fans that usually attach to tower coolers (such as Scythe Ninja, for instance) particularly on that side. We do understand that hot chipset needs an additional heatsink for better cooling, but why such an unusual implementation? It could be the digital processor voltage regulator circuitry that determined this design choice.