VRM cooling question.

[The Sauce]

Just started meddling with my aftermarket cooler on my 5850. When I took off the stock cooler I found a VRM on the top left of the card that was being cooled by the stock cooler. My t-rad and R4 combo does nothing to cool this VRM. What should I do, if anything, about that?

Pic below.

 

[The Sauce]

Ok, in this pic it's the one on the top left.

Found a description on bit-tech: there's a second Volterra VT1165MF voltage regulator paired with another Volterra VT1157SF PWM up next to the CrossFire connectors, which we believe delivers additional power for the memory controller.

Just not sure if I need to cool it.

 

[dflynchimp]

it's location near the crossfire bridge would have me thinking that it had something to do with crossfire.

Just intuition, but that doesn't look like any ram chip.

 

[bradyapba]

but a ram sink on it, and be done with it. Theres not much else you can do, and there is no reason not to put one on.

 

[The Sauce]

but a ram sink on it, and be done with it. Theres not much else you can do, and there is no reason not to put one on.

Well trying to cool the other VRMs with a simple ram sink was totally unsuccessful. In another thread I mentioned that I got the wrong VRM cooler and had to try cooling them with a large ram sink - didn't work at all. Card overheats like crazy.

I could try using the baseplate, like you suggested in that thread but 2 issues:

1. All of the TIM on my original baseplate has crumbled off and I am not sure if I can just replace this with grease since it appears that it required some spacing.

2. I have already applied ram sinks to all of my memory, which would mean I have to pull them all off, and then try to reapply them when my R4 arrives. Big hastle.