VRM Cooling importance

[Aussie Pawz]

Hi everyone

i'm not sure if i'm posting this in the right section or not, i'm currently looking at building a beast rig and the only reason i'm leaning towards Intel at the moment is because intel have a mobo (a damn expensive mobo) that has a water-block over the cpu power delivery. as the mobo will be in a enclosed box (with very little to no air flow) with the cpu and gpu being water cooled  with the rads being in the basement of the case.

 

 

what my real question is how important is it to have air flow over the Mobo heat sink and ram heat sinks ? 

 

P.S. The pc will used for games  ran at maxed everything.

 

 

[Faa]

There's no need to watercool the vrm on a lga1150/1155 cpu. They just don't consume enough power to allow the VRM go hot enough to justify being watercooled

[Oshino Shinobu]

Over the RAM doesn't matter too much, it doesn't really get too hot. Over the CPU power delivery, mosfets etc. is more important. If you're planning on watercooling them, you'll have no issues. 

 

Most of the time just passive cooling is enough for them though. 

[Aussie Pawz]

thanks for the fast reply  but what i'm asking is will i have any issues if the power delivery and ram don't have airflow over them because if i will have the issue then i will spend the extra dollors and get the mobo with  watercooling and get the ram  blocks. ?

[Enderman]

There's no need to watercool the vrm on a lga1150/1155 cpu. They just don't consume enough power to allow the VRM go hot enough to justify being watercooled

This is not true. Many people use waterblocks on their 115x motherboard when overclocking. The vrms can get really hot when overclokcing...

[Sintezza]

This is not true. Many people use waterblocks on their 115x motherboard when overclocking. The vrms can get really hot when overclokcing...

 

lol yes indeed, Faa is probably talking about "TDP power".

which has totaly nothing to do with how much power a cpu uses.

 

[Priller]

Obviously air flow to a point helps to keep things cool and if it's a very closed case then the longer it runs the more it may heatsoak and temps will climb due to it.

 

So yes put a waterblock on the VRMs/CPU/GPU if you want reduced temps and it is worth the cost to you. Are they needed in a case with ok airflow? No it may run alittle warmer but nothing to worry about. 

[Legitsu]

VRM Cooling on haswell chips is unnecessary beyond a heatsink // anybody that states otherwise doesn't have enough experience with the platform  

with haswell the majority of the HIGH amperage regulation is done on chip with the board only handling the 12v to 2V step-down essentially the voltage regulation load is split between the VRM on the board and the FIVR on the cpu package 

[Faa]

This is not true. Many people use waterblocks on their 115x motherboard when overclocking. The vrms can get really hot when overclokcing...

 

VRMS? It's only the mosfets that are being cooled. The PWM (your master control unit) is never cooled as you can see here: http://i.imgur.com/AzfpmSC.jpg

A CPU that uses less power will obviously stress the VRM less and obviously they'd run cooler. It's not because your "VRM" gets hot that it means you need watercooling. I used to run 2600K's at 5GHz the cpu clockspeed never ever throttled down during prime95 small fft's with case fans spinning around 500rpm. Upgraded to a 3930K, ramping case fans complety up 4.5GHz it starts throttling after a minute.

 

lol yes indeed, Faa is probably talking about "TDP power".

which has totaly nothing to do with how much power a cpu uses.

 

I haven't even mentioned anything about TDP.

[Aussie Pawz]

hey everyone thanks for the awesome feed back so far but these are my options i am picking from mobo Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming-G1-WIFI-BK and cpu I7-4790,3.60GHZ  or i go AMD with AMD FX-9370 apu with  ASRock 990FX-KILLER  the case either of those are going into is a desk compartment with no airflow eliminating any dust on those parts with a basement sections being turned into the water-cooling level. the the loop will consist or both gpus and and cpu.  i started this thread to more or less to get to this question.

 

P.s i won't be overclocking the cpu, may overclock the gpu's in time 

[Enderman]

VRMS? It's only the mosfets that are being cooled. The PWM (your master control unit) is never cooled as you can see here: http://i.imgur.com/AzfpmSC.jpg

A CPU that uses less power will obviously stress the VRM less and obviously they'd run cooler. It's not because your "VRM" gets hot that it means you need watercooling. I used to run 2600K's at 5GHz the cpu clockspeed never ever throttled down during prime95 small fft's with case fans spinning around 500rpm. Upgraded to a 3930K, ramping case fans complety up 4.5GHz it starts throttling after a minute.

I confused mosfets with vrms

[Faa]

hey everyone thanks for the awesome feed back so far but these are my options i am picking from mobo Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming-G1-WIFI-BK and cpu I7-4790,3.60GHZ  or i go AMD with AMD FX-9370 apu with  ASRock 990FX-KILLER  the case either of those are going into is a desk compartment with no airflow eliminating any dust on those parts with a basement sections being turned into the water-cooling level. the the loop will consist or both gpus and and cpu.  i started this thread to more or less to get to this question.

 

P.s i won't be overclocking the cpu, may overclock the gpu's in time 

You rather get the 4790 & z97 although I wouldn't recommend going z97 if you don't have plans for SLI. Neither I'd recommend going with the i7 instead of the i5 if you're only gaming

[Sintezza]

The Asrock 990FX killer has overheating issues. beware of that.

Gets hot wenn overclocking, and will start to throttle. No LLC option in bios to correct this, so this could lead to a voltage Throttle. The heatsink to cool the power delivery parts on the board is just a cover, it does not dispace the heat very well.

 

Better grab:

1. Asus crosshair V Formula Z
2. Asrock 990FX Extreme 9
3. Asus 990FX Sabertooth R2.0

[Faa]

 

The Asrock 990FX killer has overheating issues. beware of that.

Gets hot wenn overclocking, and will start to throttle. No LLC option in bios to correct this, so this could lead to a voltage Throttle. The heatsink to cool the power delivery parts on the board is just a cover, it does not dispace the heat very well.

 

Better grab:

1. Asus crosshair V Formula Z
2. Asrock 990FX Extreme 9
3. Asus 990FX Sabertooth R2.0

 

There's no point that he spends 200$ for an AMD motherboard and 250$ for an AMD CPU. That way it's hardly the better choice and worse in terms of price/performance.

[Sintezza]

There's no point that he spends 200$ for an AMD motherboard and 250$ for an AMD CPU. That way it's hardly the better choice and worse in terms of price/performance.

 

If you want a decent and stable machine with that cpu you will have to invest abit for a decent stable mobo.

Asus M5A99FX Pro R2.0 will also work fine by the way, if it has to be cheaper.

 

But i would not recommend that Asrock to be honnest, its a very nice board, with alot of cool feutures, towards gamers, but the quality of the power delivery parts and bios overclock feutures, are very limited.  Offcourse on stock speeds 4.2 GHZ the FX9360 will run fine, but wenn overclocking, he will get issues, with that killer board, i just want to make him aware of this.

 

But i have to say, i dont realy understand the choice for the FX9370 either, okay its a great chip for rendering, and codding and such, but a FX8350 is in my opinnion a much better price to performance choice.

FX9370 FX9590 dont have a place in the market to be honnest. Only its cool that you can get them with an AIO cooler kit .

[Aussie Pawz]

thanks everyone still a little lost with this all lol, my budget for  the build is about $2500 and in that I've already got the most of the parts for the water loop all i need left for that is the blocks. i've got the power and SSDs from my old rig and i'd like to stick with the red and black color scheme

things i want:

 

Not overclocking this build

 

1. best bang for buck cpu

2. solid mobo for sli or xfire

3. solid gpus ( was thinking either 770's or if i can afford it 290s)

4. 16gig ram (just wanna swing my e-peen around with that)

 

Case condtions is mobo  will be in top part with  small it no airflow  with the basement being the cooling center 

[Faa]

thanks everyone still a little lost with this all lol, my budget for  the build is about $2500 and in that I've already got the most of the parts for the water loop all i need left for that is the blocks. i've got the power and SSDs from my old rig and i'd like to stick with the red and black color scheme

things i want:

 

Not overclocking this build

 

1. best bang for buck cpu

2. solid mobo for sli or xfire

3. solid gpus ( was thinking either 770's or if i can afford it 290s)

4. 16gig ram (just wanna swing my e-peen around with that)

 

Case condtions is mobo  will be in top part with  small it no airflow  with the basement being the cooling center 

1. I5 is pretty much a better bang for the buck than a 8350 in terms of gaming performance especially if theyre priced the same. Since you're planning to go SLI/CF, the difference can be extremely huge because any multiplayer game is mostly cpu bound in SLI.

2. Any board that supports SLI is solid.

3. I don't even know which card is faster. (Kinda not following gpu's anymore)

4. Any brand.

 

[Aussie Pawz]

 thanks Faa

 

 So now i'll go the I5 now it's just a matter of picking the mobo that will be fine in the build  if it helps here are 2 pics there will be a dummy shelf between the top and bottom  of the  case and it will have exhaust fans located at the top back of the compartment behind the mobo panel to draw the air out from the rads in the basement 

 

the front will be covered will plexi glass with a nice big  opening for the rads to draw in as much air as they can handle

[Faa]

 

 thanks Faa

 

 So now i'll go the I5 now it's just a matter of picking the mobo that will be fine in the build  if it helps here are 2 pics there will be a dummy shelf between the top and bottom  of the  case and it will have exhaust fans located at the top back of the compartment behind the mobo panel to draw the air out from the rads in the basement 

 

 

 

the front will be covered will plexi glass with a nice big  opening for the rads to draw in as much air as they can handle

 

I would go with the gigabyte z97x-ud3h. It's only 120$ it's probably just the best, anything that costs more is just filled up with a bunch of gimmicks and the quality is the same.

[Aussie Pawz]

thanks Faa i might go the black ed of that one and i have no clue where you can get it for 120 the only price i can find is 200 for that one or the 230 for the black ed