News Funky VRM Fan Setup Is Actually Super Useful

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I made something similar from an old I/O slot blanking plate. If you're handy with a drill it's not hard at all and looks just as "professional" as this.

Oddly, it's not necessary, and might actually work against the heatsink shown in the article picture. AMD's stock heatsinks for Ryzen are all down blowing, directing exhaust air to the rear to cool VRM...as well as to the front to cool warm memory.
 
Power delivery on high end boards is already overkill so I'm not sure how much of a benefit this really is. On a lower end board there's a chance that the cost setting up something like this you could just buy a better board with better power delivery. It's possible in an ITX situation that this could come in handy due to limited airflow, but that's about the only situation I could see it.
 
Darkbreeze said:
Might help some, not that much probably.
Click to expand...

Lets go back to the Tom's article to see how much better it keeps the VRM's cool... oh wait there are no metrics. What is the point of this article since there is no proof it works and there is no link so it is not to get referral links.
 
Well, it doesn't claim to be a review, so more like just a "in point of interest" tidbit, which almost all tech sites do these days. I have no problem with it other than the fact that for boards it might actually help, you probably shouldn't be using a CPU at that end of the performance scale anyhow, and for boards intended for use with that high end of a CPU or meant for somewhat serious overclocking, they likely already have an enormous heatsink that doubles as part of the integrated I/O shield and basically won't see much benefit from additional airflow.

In most those cases they will also already be using a tower cooler that passes air over that heatsink but maybe some small benefit to those using an AIO.
 
drea.drechsler said:
I made something similar from an old I/O slot blanking plate. If you're handy with a drill it's not hard at all and looks just as "professional" as this.

Oddly, it's not necessary, and might actually work against the heatsink shown in the article picture. AMD's stock heatsinks for Ryzen are all down blowing, directing exhaust air to the rear to cool VRM...as well as to the front to cool warm memory.
Click to expand...
or just 3d print the thing I guess.
 
drea.drechsler said:
Oddly, it's not necessary, and might actually work against the heatsink shown in the article picture.
Click to expand...
Exactly what I'm saying. For older boards, for example, this MIGHT have had significantly more "usefulness" on one of the old AM3+ boards for overclocking or for FX-9370/9590 at stock settings, since there REALLY were no motherboards that could adequately support the 9590. Even the highest end boards had VRM throttling issues. But even for other older boards that either lacked heatsinks or simply had fairly small ones that only covered the VRMs, might have had a lot more usefulness.

For these modern ones, the heatsinks are often very large. Maybe for some boards that don't have the VRM heatsink integrated into the I/O shield's internal particulars it could still be useful IF you are having VRM issues. I suspect upcoming boards with very high TDP expectations will ALL have enormous heatsink integrated into the I/O though.
 
Darkbreeze said:
....
For these modern ones, the heatsinks are often very large. ....
Click to expand...
I think it depends on how modern...

I started using a fan on the VRM (when I fabbed the bracket out of an I/O blank) with a highly inadequate AM3 board I was running an FX6300 on. That one's definitely not modern but then I had to do the same thing for a B350 board I was running a Ryzen 1700 with. That was one of those with a tiny little block of aluminum they humorously referred to as a heat sink, so I put that fan arrangement on it to bring FET temps down to something reasonable.

But starting with the B450 board on my son's system...and now my own B550...they got reasonable with VRM design as well has heatsinks. I really think of B350 as modern...or should have been especially since comparable boards for Intel were extremely capable at the time. It was just bad design choices IMO, probably because the board partners didn't think Ryzen would really click so why bother.
 
Like I said, not all "modern" board designs are going to incorporate that type of heatsink design. In the past five to seven years, only really high end models got that treatment. In the last few years though, even a lot of mid tier boards like my Z690 Aorus Elite AX DDR4, which is not a high end board by comparison to ACTUAL high end models, has that type of heatsink but there are other Z690, B660, and other chipset family boards even from the latest gen with no heatsinks at all or very unflattering ones. So yeah, it could be any number of variables including age involved. But for upcoming models that are already expected to bring very high TDP, you'd think any board intended for those would have at least moderately sized VRM heatsinks and most will probably have fully integrated ones.

Then again, they used to "approve" some of the crappiest motherboards as being "compatible" with the FX-9590 and some of the high TDP intel models as well, which clearly could never handle them, so who knows.
 
i remember a million years ago when mobo's had built in graphics, an extra fan was VERY useful for cooling the northbridge.

this might not be the answer to all your vrm woes, but i doubt it will hurt any if they tend to run a bit warn in your system :)
 
"Funky VRM Fan Setup Is Actually Super Useful"
"With power creep becoming a legitimate concern on both Intel and AMD CPUs, a VRM cooling solution like this could become very useful. "
"Adding this funky fan setup to such a PC could seriously improve VRM performance "
"direct VRM cooling can make a night and day difference "

The writing is all over the place without the data to back it up. The title is click bait material.
 
kerberos_20 said:
vrm above cpu needs cooling too
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Which is why friends don't let friends use stock Ryzen coolers. And for the record, hopefully not other Cooler master products either. Because they are just grossly marketed and generally very, VERY mediocre. That includes the Ryzen coolers that are MADE by CM.

As to the VRMs above the CPU, that area is not generally AS problematic unless you overclocking memory or, and honestly, it really depends on the board design as they are mostly all SIMILAR, but they are none of them, exactly the same. Each company tends to some degree to try to "do their own shiznit", but largely some of the design is determined by standards and Intel/AMD spec. There IS a reason though that mono blocks cover everything and are very model specific. So you are right because if that area wasn't realistically important too, those blocks wouldn't include any coverage for those areas. But not all of them do. It's a very model-specific type of issue and conversation.
 
drea.drechsler said:
I made something similar from an old I/O slot blanking plate. If you're handy with a drill it's not hard at all and looks just as "professional" as this.

Oddly, it's not necessary, and might actually work against the heatsink shown in the article picture. AMD's stock heatsinks for Ryzen are all down blowing, directing exhaust air to the rear to cool VRM...as well as to the front to cool warm memory.
Click to expand...
My first thought also - surely pulling air upwards towards the exhaust fan is preferable?
 
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