AM4 VRM Robustness??

[drea.drechsler]

It's been over 1 1/2 years since AM4 hit the streets amidst a rather steady rumble of concerns over capability of the platform's VRMs, especially in the B350 board variants. I'm wondering if those with lots of exposure to an installed base have started to see any failure trends developing (aside from the user error variety, of course) related to pushing an overclock too hard/hot, for too long. I seem to remember that people caught on pretty quick to AM3 and AM3+ boards that would toast FET's (even catch fire, in some cases) when pushed too hard, too long. It would be great if we could get some sharing of this on AM4 too.

 

[kanewolf]

I think some of that is self-induced. Many users assume to overclock an AIO is required. Using AIO water cooling removes the CPU fan from providing airflow to the VRM area. A board with a H100i and a board with a Noctua air cooler have very different VRM environments.

 

[drea.drechsler]

I think some of that is self-induced. Many users assume to overclock an AIO is required. Using AIO water cooling removes the CPU fan from providing airflow to the VRM area. A board with a H100i and a board with a Noctua air cooler have very different VRM environments.

Oh yeah...i had that problem even with my tower air cooler, hyper tx3, on an FX6300. It stood proud of the FET heatsinks and the case fan just drew the air straight out the back. Seeing the VRM was in a dead-air pocket I fabbed a bracket from a slot cover, mounted a 70mm CPU fan to it and have used it ever since, even on my Ryzen build. If somebody like CoolerMaster or Thermal Take was smart they'd make a similar bracket and include with their AIO's; super cheap thing to make it just that much better.

But even with this scenario are there many occurrences of people frying a their VRM's?

 

[CountMike]

It seems that x370/470 MBs have best VRM. Here's one list https://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/f12/pga-am4-mainboard-vrm-liste-1155146.html
For all it's worth my experience wit 1600x, 1700x and 2700x fully OCed on Asus PRIME X370 PRO and Asus PRIME X470 PRO didn't show any signs of overheating or under-supplying enough power.

 

[drea.drechsler]

It seems that x370/470 MBs have best VRM. Here's one list https://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/f12/pga-am4-mainboard-vrm-liste-1155146.html...

yeah...i'm well aware of that list. great resource.

But I'm more interested in those cases where boards with a lesser VRM is overclocked anyway, and heavily. Are there many coming up with damage? are there ANY coming up with damage!

 

[CountMike]

Well, I heven't heard of anybody actually burning VRM out (some do have protection) but throttling yes. I have seen over 180W with my 2700x at 4.3GHz and 1.46v and it didn't throttle so I wouldn't really push it on some VRM worse than this MB.