VRM heatsinks for Mobos without..... VRM heatsinks?

venm11

2[H]4U
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Oct 6, 2004
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So what can you do to cool VRMs on cheaper mobos that don't have VRM sinks? I've been looking around for some kind of kit of tiny self-adhering heatsinks, but the closest thing is old BGA ram chip coolers and there isn't much variety or availability for those. I'm finding that the chip layout is a bit irregular, with caps jutting into an otherwise rectangular space that I could mod a heatsink for.

Ideally, there should be tiny 1/4" waterblocks for each tiny VRM or mosfet, but.... dammit... they're not invented.
 
Some boards have the holes for a VRM heatsink, but don't put one on. Check to see if your board has it. If it does, you can try to find a universal VRM heatsink that will fit it.
 
you could have a look on deal extreme for some ram heatsinks. i have seen some for only a few dollars that should do the trick.
 
just get some vram heatsinks and slap them on if you have a rear facing heatsink the moving air coming through the heatsink is enough to cool them. if you don't then you may want to reverse the rear fan if it is in the same location as the VRM's to get cooler air moving over the VRM sinks. did that with my biostar tforce 780G. the vrm's were rated for 95w without heatsinks. 125w with it (they sold 2 versions of the board, US version had no vrm heatsink, EU version did). luckly the VRM's were under rated since i had my phenom II 940 overclocked to 3.5Ghz 1.476v which brought it up to a 160w processor. took 13 months of 24/7 full load before the board finally decided it had enough and kicked the bucket.

these were the ram sinks i used.
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0253133
 
Interesting. How do you calculate processor wattage, given voltage and speed?
 
You can't. It's just a rough estimate based on how much power it pulls from the wall. If you have an Asus ROG board, it'll display voltage and amperage on a separate laptop, and you can get wattage from that, but for me, it only displays a maximum of 90 amps, while the actual usage goes off the charts.

That's interesting though that you need 1.476v for 3.5 ghz. My relative's Phenom II 940 (he got it when it first came out) does 3.4 ghz at stock voltage, which I believe is 1.4.
 
Another question about cooling VRMs. Apparently there is no individual VRM component, but on mobos they're comprised of MOSFETs, which is what we're trying to cool. These are the small, square 3-lead chips. What I notice is that they're generally in sets of 2 large ones (deplete/enhance, presumably) but then a 1-2 smaller ones. What are the small ones for?

And there lies a problem, because the small ones are shallower, so how do you cool them if the heatsink on the other two can't make contact? Double up on tape?
 
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