Question Would it be okay to run a motherboard without heatsinks ?

[ROBIN0220]

I know it sounds silly and is pretty much self explanatory, but would it be practically possible to run an X79 - Asus Sabertooth, Mobo without the original, or parctically No cooling system on it, well, without any cooling except maybe the Chipset, that is if I can find something that would fit.

Long story short: I found an old X79 Mobo discarded and stripped of its original cooling heatsinks, the only part left is the I/O which has the little FAN on it, but no cooling at all. The motherboard was damaged and shorted, so my guess is whoever owned it gave up and threw it away and some einstein stripped off all of it's copper heatsinks.

I managed to find the problem and removed the faulty Mosfet which caused a Short circuit on the board and allowed me to boot and get into the bios... the only downside is that one side of the memory controllers doesn't work because the Mosfet that wouldn't allow it to function, is not present on the board and I don't have a replacement or could find a good alternative, needles to say, I am clueless as with what I could replace it.

I have about 5 - X79 CPUs lying around and I thought I would use the board as a secondary machine and give it to my grandchildren to play video games, youtube and etc... I'm not very familiar with the components on a motherboard, but I do know that most gaming boards tend to have good cooling solutions to keep the board cool, but also people tend to OC their machines and maybe that's why it's so necessary, so my question... If I would not to OC the board, would I still need cooling for VRMs!???? I know they are quite important and they can get very hot, even my computer has a lot of copper on the VRMs, but how cool do they actually need to be and why... would it be dangerous for long term use ??? Could I perhaps try and put a copper bar with thermal paste under it? Which would be quite difficult if I may say so, as they are very small.


( These are the CPUs I have, in case that affects anything here. 2650 v1 - 1650-V2 - 2650 V2 - 2680 V2 - 2690 V2 )


Thanks, anything helpful is much appreciated.
Have a good day!!

 

[Ralston18]

The motherboard and components will need cooling. CPU and individual components can become very hot, very fast.

CPU likely to thermally trip off at start up. Without overclocking the CPU or anything else.

Even if a thermal trip does not occur the heat will probably start destroying components.

Not a motherboard that I would trust - with or without proper cooling.

With the premise that the motherboard is viable and that you consider all installed components expendable - no harm in going forward. No sure how the grandchildren will react.....

Just my thoughts on the matter.,

 

[kira-faye]

VRMs will need to be cooled, as well as the chipset, no way around it. Best case it will thermal throttle to the point of being useless without them, worst case it'll take other components with it as it fails.

Considering you can get a Chinese brand board like Machinist from eBay for $35, probably even less on AliExpress, and a used board from a more reputable brand for $50 or less (or a bundle with CPU and RAM for not much more)... This thing isn't worth your time. But I think you knew that already.

As for why they're important... The chipset is basically a central switch, all the I/O that doesn't come straight off the CPU originates and is routed through there. It's the second "busiest" thing on the board after the CPU itself, and gets quite hot doing all that work. If it gets too hot all major I/O will slow down drastically, then the board will fail.

The VRMs, or Voltage Regulation Modules, are responsible for keeping the feed of power to the CPU, RAM, and other onboard components stable. Tolerances here are very small. If they get too hot their output will start to go out of spec and introduce ripple. The machine will crash. If it gets bad enough it could kill anything attached to the board.

So not stuff you want to mess with.