Question Asus Crosshair VIII Forumula X570 - air cooled only?

[slurmsmckenzie]

For reasons I won't go too much into I'm considering a used X570 Forumula when I move to a Torrent Compact case I've bought. I currently have an MSI B550 A-Pro & 5950X air-cooled with a Deepcool AS500 Plus in a Fractal R6 and whilst good there were a few niggles I wanted to solve by moving to the Torrent Compact. But I've realised that the TC doesn't have room for two 140mm fans at the bottom if you use the last PCIe slot (which I do for an Intel GbE NIC as I don't trust the Realtek on-board the MSI) so I was looking for alternative AM4 MB options that have an Intel GbE NIC on-board (don't want Intel 2.5GbE either)... there aren't that many.

I like the look of the Formula because of the position of the two M.2 slots - I'm using both slots in my current MB and the primary PCIe 4 slot gets toasty when gaming due to it being squeezed between the GPU & CPU (this is even with a Sabrent heatsink added). Having them both at the bottom like the Formula would be much better, especially in the Torrent Compact with bottom 140mm fans added as I plan to. Plus it has the Intel GbE along with a 5GbE for future expansion and generally more connectivity. Things I'm not sure about with the board though are:

1. the water-cooled VRM heatsinks - would they be okay left passively cooled with the AS500 Plus doing the CPU, a 120mm exhaust in the case and the PSU exhausting directly above (at all times)?
2. the chipset fan - would it be annoyingly loud and prone to failure?
3. will this board be generally stable with a 5950x? I've owned a ROG board before (Maximus VII Gene) and it needed a lot of tweaking to stay stable with default settings, I read everywhere that they "overclock by default" and are generally tuned up which I don't really want TBH - I don't overclock and just want things pretty standard and stable where possible.

Would welcome any thoughts on this (probably daft) idea I have

 

[slurmsmckenzie]

Hmm, think this answers my question, I thought I'd searched the forum pretty well but came across this when googling: https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/ryzen-5950x-and-asus-rog-corsshair-viii-formula.3690607/

The solution to that thread was:

I don't own the hardware mentioned in the above reddit's but I think you should steer clear of the motherboard if you want to pair it with a 5950x. Also, you might need to go for the cream of the crop style boards, ones that have a robust VRM area and one's that have as few BIOS updates as possible.

I guess the fact that I have a stable system with my B550 A-Pro and the 5950x means I should avoid changing anything and put up with either Realtek LAN or lose one of the 140mm fans! At least the Torrent Compact might improve general airflow and so hopefully cooling for my top M.2 slot.