Question Is VRM need to put on heatsink?

[Wing901]

If needed, which parts of VRM should be put on heatsink?

 

[COLGeek]

What exactly are you trying to do?

What are the specs for the system you are asking about (make/model of ALL installed components)?

 

[Eximo]

A vague question.

The VRMs themselves are power regulation integrated circuits. Usually easy to identify by their proximity to CPUs/GPUs and memory chips. They are generally paired with a coil/choke which will appear as a ceramic cubelike shape and there will be associated capacitors. The VRM modules themselves will be very short black rectangles. This is the surface that should be cooled if possible. In many heatsink designs they also cool the coils/chokes since they are basically lumps of copper directly connected to the VRM chips.

They don't always need heatsinks if the power demands are low enough. Lower end motherboard often have bare VRMs or only higher power phases covered with heat sinks. Simply pointing a fan at them is sufficient cooling.

 

[Wing901]

Thanks.

I just bought a bundle of x99-p4(unbranded motherboard), RAM and XEON CPU. I was told that cheap motherboards always come with cheap parts. It'd better put heatsink on VRM.

 

[Eximo]

It would depend a lot on which Xeon what the power consumption is. Quad core up to like 28 core if memory serves.

It would be whatever parts they could find to populate their board design, that is for sure. Doesn't mean they are poor quality necessarily. And depending on which VRM layout they decided to use, it might actually be decent. LGA2011 was a high power socket, so if they wanted it to be capable with more then the lower end chips, they would have to put in a little effort.

 

[Wing901]

It is an ITX motherboard, coupled with 16G ECC Reg RAM and Xeon e5 2670-v3 or 2669(not sure), which is said to be 120W TDP. But I wonder its TDP will be much higher(probably reach 180W) if all cores are running in their maximum turbo speed. I am afraid the VRM can hardly handle such situation.

 

[COLGeek]

Please describe the airflow situation with these systems (i.e., case used, number of fans, CPU heatsink/cooler being used, etc).

 

[Wing901]

Mid-tower case, 3 120mm case fans(at the front, side and back), 90mm fan single tower 4 heat-pipe CPU cooler(45 cfm). According to HWmonitor, the CPU temperature is about 40~45°C under normal use.