Cool your VRMs

James Prosser and Daniel Meyer show you how to prevent your motherboard from melting when you overvolt your system.

There was a time when overvolting your components was a nefarious practice only carried out by the overclocking elite, but now even amateur overclockers know that you need more power if you want a higher overclock. This voltage is regulated by your motherboard's VRMs (voltage regulator modules, also called MOSFETs), which ensure that the power supplied isn't too high or too low. However, while your VRMs will be quite happy with a CPU at stock speed, they'll become toasty when you start cranking up the volts for a big overclock, particularly if they're bare. This can make your machine unstable and limit your overclock, and could even result in a fried board.

If your motherboard doesn't have a heatsink on your VRMs then you can easily make your own. All you need is a spare heatsink, a Dremel and some thermal tape or adhesive. With our custom heatsink in place, the temperature of our VRMs dropped from 31.2°C to 4°C. All testing was carried out by overclocking a 2.66GHz Core 2 E6700 to 3.6GHz, using high vcore and PLL voltages, and then running Orthos for 20 minutes until the temperature stabilised. An XSPC temperature reader was used to record the temperatures.

Thanks to l3v1ck for coming up with the idea for this guide.

"the temperature of our VRMs dropped from 31.2°C to 4°C." - From 31.2 down to 4c? That's quite an impressive drop! I assume the custom heatsink was connected to a block of ice? I constructed a waterblock to cool the VRM on my Asus P5B deluxe but I have been too lazy to fit it. I have a waterblock on the NB, CPU and GPU. My water system is somewhat different to the norm because the triple rad isn't bolted on to the PC case. It is placed across the other side of the room by an open window and the 3 x 120 rad fans suck outside air over the rad. Thus the heat from the PC never recirculates as it does with a conventional system. In winter the coolant temp can drop as low as 8c. So imagine what effect that will have on my overclocking (I have an E6300 1.86ghz duo overclocked to 3.62ghz).

Comment by feathers633 at 2:47pm 12th September 2008

"the temperature of our VRMs dropped from 31.2°C to 4°C." - From 31.2 down to 4c? That's quite an impressive drop! I assume the custom heatsink was connected to a block of ice? I constructed a waterblock to cool the VRM on my Asus P5B deluxe but I have been too lazy to fit it. I have a waterblock on the NB, CPU and GPU. My water system is somewhat different to the norm because the triple rad isn't bolted on to the PC case. It is placed across the other side of the room by an open window and the 3 x 120 rad fans suck outside air over the rad. Thus the heat from the PC never recirculates as it does with a conventional system. In winter the coolant temp can drop as low as 8c. So imagine what effect that will have on my overclocking (I have an E6300 1.86ghz duo overclocked to 3.62ghz).

Comment by feathers633 at 2:47pm 12th September 2008

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