I'm building a I7-980X machine (actually a Xeon W3680 but same thing essentially) and I have a Noctua NH-U9S cooler on it. At least on the test bench the Noctua does a fantastic job keeping the CPU cool at the typical modest overclock to 4 ghz. The northbridge is another story - on the bench it stays steadily in the mid-60s but if I'm doing a lot of downloading via ethernet it gets up to 75 degrees or so. The CPU mostly stays in the 50s by contrast. Apparently this is pretty typical of the X58 chipset, but I've read that the actual stock cooler for this processor - the Intel DBX-B tower cooler - is actually designed to circulate air on the northbridge heatsink as well. Is there a real advantage to using it instead? If not I'd rather keep using the Noctua.