Motherboard water-cooling question

[Rudy Toody]

I am building a new DC rig which will use FX-9590.

The last piece is the mobo. I am considering these two: ASRock and ASUS.

I would like to know what water-cooling options are available on each for northbridge and voltage.

Should I choose based on the best cooling options? Or, is the passive cooling satisfactory?

 

[Rinaun]

Passive is fine. Watercooling motherboards went out of style a while ago when things got more efficient heat-wise on the northbridge. VRMs are the only thing I could think of getting hot enough to warrant watercooling, and that's only with INSANE overclocking.


Bottom line, I'd set up fans before going about WCing your board. Much more efficient cost-wise, and none of the parts that are being cooled will ever get hot enough to need watercooling unless you are doing a passive fan build or some other weird rig setup.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Wouldn't pushing a high-end FX be considered insane from a VRM standpoint?

 

[Rudy Toody]

Wouldn't pushing a high-end FX be considered insane from a VRM standpoint?

That's mainly why I'm asking about cooling. A few years ago a VRM became a roman-candle and I wasn't drawing anywhere near the power I will be doing here.

 

[Rinaun]

Wouldn't pushing a high-end FX be considered insane from a VRM standpoint?

I'd save the money spent on possible WCing in getting a processor/mobo that doesn't spit out 200w+ but that's just me. That being said, if you ARE thinking of overclocking the FX series, you'll most likely need watercooling for the VRMs which is NOT cheap at 70+ euros (100+ US shipped most likely). I'd go with the Asus board because well, that's really all you'll be finding waterblocks for.

http://www.ekwb.com/shop/blocks/mot...rd-blocks/ek-fb-asus-c5f-z-acetal-nickel.html

Again, I'm not sure why you'd be overclocking an AMD chip far enough to require watercooling the VRMs. Active air from a 120mm fan passing by the VRM should handle 99% of the VRM heat issues you'll encounter. I'm not sure I'd recommend even overclocking much at all when you are talking insane TDP levels. Sounds like a case of stretching hardware farther than what was intended; VRMs aren't intended on most non-designer boards to have 50% extra load on double the wattage a normal processor uses.


P.S. Similar intel-based offerings save over 200$ per year (very close to 100% savings) in electricity when comparing 24/7 usage of AMD FX-based high-end CPUs (at the rate of .30/kwh). That's how "hungry" your FX is. Expect by overclocking to run the wattage closer to 280-300.