How To custom VRM cooilng

[bkzed]

I have this very basic motherboard MSI B450 Pro M2 V2. it dosent have any heatsink on VRMs. I bought it for Ryzen 1600 and it was budget oriented and was sufficient for this processor. but now when I upgraded to 2700x my VRM tempretures stered to rise above 100 c sometimes it cross 120 c with PBO on and everything on auto in Bios. I knew its not good for the long run since I do rendering on it it needed proper cooling on VRM I wanted temps below 80c for it on continues run. so I installed my old P4 chipset heatsink for it. I will go through the process in the video below.

 

[Soulkeeper]

That looks nice, better than most factory installed vrm heatsinks on motherboards these days.
I prefer copper, but that'll work.

How is that thermal plaster stuff ? is it permanent ? Can you remove them later if you need to ?

 

[mopardude87]

I need to do something like this with my Asrock Z370M PRO4. My buddy gets this board for a 7700k mistakenly, he runs out of funds it sits for almost a year in a box till i bought it off him to find out its maybe one of the worst z370 boards he could have picked period. Toms Hardware apparently had throttling issues on a stock 8700k with it.

Not sure who in the hell decided a Z370 which obviously is going to overclock a chip also needs overheating vrms without heatsinks.

 

[Steltek]

That looks nice, better than most factory installed vrm heatsinks on motherboards these days.
I prefer copper, but that'll work.

How is that thermal plaster stuff ? is it permanent ? Can you remove them later if you need to ?

That "thermal plaster" is probably either mis-labled TIM (like you'd use on your CPU) or a thermal glue. Depends upon who is selling it and what they are selling. Since he had to use glue to attach them, that is likely to be TIM and not glue but there is no way to be sure.

If it is a thermal glue, adhesive wise (depending upon what it is) it could be a light bond up to the equivalent of one step below soldering.

If you decide to try to do this, make sure the compound you use is thermally conductive but not electrically conductive so you won't short out your motherboard if you accidentally get it some place you don't intend to.

 

[mindless1]

Funny to see people just promoting this now, when I was doing it 20 years ago.

Yes it can help, but you want to slightly lap the top of the fets so they are both smooth and closer to perfectly planar.

You want to use thermally conductive epoxy, not that silicone based goop-in-a-tube shown in the video.

You don't need heatsinks that big. That is not the primary heat path, heatsinks on top of fets are only there to keep the fet encapsulation material from getting heat stress cracks.

The most important factor is ample airflow against the PCB copper itself whether that is fromt a high flow CPU heatpipe sink oriented that direction (which you set up to ramp up in fan speed more aggressively than your CPU 'sink needs since you are mismatching the CPU power to the motherboard), or adding your own DIY custom fan bracket to point at the board.

In situations where there are ample vias to the copper on the back of the board, it also helps to have an open area on the back of the board, whether there by case design or there because you cut one out. In the most extreme of cases you can also mount a fan to the back, but this and cutting are really more of a hobby thing to do, otherwise I would sooner get a motherboard with more 'fets to spread out the thermal density rather than upgrading the CPU in a marginal board.

Do not use any thermal interface material that allows removing the heatsinks later. That is far too weak a bond for bridging individual fets due to thermal expansion, will likely cause the whole heatisink to fall off eventually. This should be considered a permanent mod so do it right the first time.

Painting them to look pretty as seen in the video? Meh, if someone is that vain about it, buy a different board instead of adding an extra step that degrades radiation.

However a 2700X should only be 105W TDP? That board should handle that without adding heatsinks, are you sure your temp reading is correct or is it possible your PSU is causing high ripple that increases the average voltage above that needed for stability? Or did you set the CPU 'sink fan RPM way too low or swap in a different fan for noise reduction? Unless overclocking of course.