You can teach an old dog new tricks......Anandtech has started to include thermal analysis on motherboard reviews

[UsandThem]

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14603/the-msi-meg-x570-ace-motherboard-review/9

This is one area I really thought Anandtech was missing out on in its reviews, so this was a nice surprise!

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14603/the-msi-meg-x570-ace-motherboard-review/9

 

[mindless1]

I'm glad they opted to use more data than just pointing a thermal gun at the heatsink, and hope they do these kinds of tests on lower end boards.

Often I added heatsinks where there weren't any, and made a custom fan bracket for an additional fan right on top of the VRM. The thing that was still lacking was (at the time) they still used electrolytic capacitors.

It would have been handy to have a heat gun to take the temperature of those because even if they didn't pop right away, they still might not last more than a couple years if running hot.

Today it's not so much of an issue with solid caps unless going to o'c extremes with continuous duty at high load, but still something to be aware of if you want to get a few years out of a board.

 

[UsandThem]

I'm glad they opted to use more data than just pointing a thermal gun at the heatsink, and hope they do these kinds of tests on lower end boards.

Often I added heatsinks where there weren't any, and made a custom fan bracket for an additional fan right on top of the VRM. The thing that was still lacking was (at the time) they still used electrolytic capacitors.

It would have been handy to have a heat gun to take the temperature of those because even if they didn't pop right away, they still might not last more than a couple years if running hot.

Today it's not so much of an issue with solid caps unless going to o'c extremes with continuous duty at high load, but still something to be aware of if you want to get a few years out of a board.

I agree these things are important to consider when looking at a board. This made me think of a Z390 motherboard I was looking at, and I was shocked to see the thermals of it compared to other boards over at Tom's (I have to add I'm really tiring of seeing auto-loading and then pop-up videos of Charon Harding when going to their site):

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/asrock-z390-phantom-gaming_7-motherboard,6160-4.html

he actual reading of the Z390 Phantom Gaming 7’s hottest choke was 126 degrees C, and it was surrounded by a few other chokes that were only a few degrees cooler: We had to reduce the room temperature to 18 degrees just to keep the board running long enough to get that measurement. Thermal protection for MOSFETs eventually kicked in as these chokes heated surrounding components, but that process took long enough that it occurred after the choke temperature had appeared to quit climbing. Our default configuration relies only on the draft of our liquid cooling systems fan to cool the voltage regulator however, and simply putting more airflow (an extra fan) closer to the Z390 Phantom Gaming 7’s voltage regulator solves the issue.