2oz copper motherboards

nippynoo

nippynoo

nippynoo

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Joined
25 Feb 2006
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194
are these really much more reliable? better cooling by building a heat dissipator into the copper? The infra-red thermal images look quite convincing.
 
Thicker copper should also be able to handle high currents better also, which I imagine could be useful if you want to put a lot of power into your cpu.
 
yes & no

heat dissipation is better but would you really want that heat spread out across all of the components

Surely, the better approach in my opinion is to spend the R&D money on developing boards with more efficient components? After all, why worry about spreading the heat around when it's better not to produce the heat in the first place.

MSI make a lot of noise about their Military Class components but the results speak for themselves

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see more here

They were the fist company to introduce the exceptionally efficient, cool operating DrMOS MOSFET driver, four years ago, now EVGA, Asus & Gigabyte are all using it on their next generation (under different names). They were also the first to introduce Icy Choke and their P67's look as though they are going even further with efficiency improvements.

The problem with saying that thicker copper handles higher current's better is that current produces heat and heat causes resistance which actually reduces, not increases, the current's abilty to flow.
 
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ScottiB: I agree efficiency is thae way forward, and using higher efficiency MOSFETS is a nice way of doing this. I'm a little sceptical if the 100% efficiency of the graph above though, as for something to be 100% efficient is pretty much unheard of...
ScottiB said:
The problem with saying that thicker copper handles higher current's better is that current produces heat and heat causes resistance which actually reduces, not increases, the current's abilty to flow.
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My comment about higher current handling was more aimed at people wanting to overclock.

They are planning on running more power than intended to their CPU, so thicker PCB traces are beneficial. Also, thicker traces will be lower resistance, and therefore more efficient...

Copper is pricey, and while 2oz traces may give something for the marketing guys to shout about, it can have some benefit, even if it does ramp up the costs somewhat. ;)
 
I've used an AMD Gigabyte 2oz copper motherboard recently and it was a stinker for overclocking compared to the Crosshair IV, it may add longer life but a pig with makeup is still a pig. :p
 
ScottiB, you could use the same argument to say there's no reason for heatsinks to get bigger and bigger.

I expect they have completely different departments working on the PCB and the components, with completely seperate budgets.

I wonder if the added copper in the PCB helps reduces cracked solder joints. If the mobo has more copper, it might expand and contract with the solder when things heat up, and increase the reliability of the boards. It might also make the boards stronger, and more able to withstand the flexing caused by heavy heatsinks and graphics cards.
 
jimbob27 said:
I wonder if the added copper in the PCB helps reduces cracked solder joints. If the mobo has more copper, it might expand and contract with the solder when things heat up, and increase the reliability of the boards. It might also make the boards stronger, and more able to withstand the flexing caused by heavy heatsinks and graphics cards.
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More copper on the PCB actually makes soldering more difficult. This is because the thicker traces act like a heatsink and it's hard to get the area you want to solder up to the temperature you need in order for the solder to melt. I would say that thicker copper would improve reliability though, as usually the PCB itself is thicker and stronger also...

This is probably less of an issue with mass produced boards which use reflow, but I'm in building a audio amplifier right now, which uses triple weight (105um) copper layers on the PCB, and you really need a high power soldering iron in order to fit the larger components, as the thicker traces act like a small heatsink.

If I had the choice of 2 identical motherboards apart from one had the extra thick copper traces and was £5 more expensive, I'd go for the thicker copper trace motherboard everytime. Especially if I was overclocking...
 
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ScottiB said:
The problem with saying that thicker copper handles higher current's better is that current produces heat and heat causes resistance which actually reduces, not increases, the current's abilty to flow.
Click to expand...

That hurt my head. Wouldn't thicker copper be more efficient in carrying the said current, thus produce less heat/resistance?

As an analogy on a much bigger scale:

Oven of a few kw connected to mains with 1.5mm wire = lots of volt drop/resistance, hot wire and potentially very warm christmas as the house combusts.

Same oven with say 10mm wire = Miniscule volt drop, cool wire that handles power draw efficiently with headroom and no house fire :D

So like for like, thicker copper should be more efficient and handle more load than normal design. Though i wonder if the amount extra used really has that much of an effect.
 
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Justintime said:
That hurt my head. Wouldn't thicker copper be more efficient in carrying the said current, thus produce less heat/resistance?
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Yes. The easiest analogy is thinking of water going through a pipe - the smaller the pipe, the harder you have to force it through.
 
Makhaira said:
Yes. The easiest analogy is thinking of water going through a pipe - the smaller the pipe, the harder you have to force it through.
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But 99% of the heat is generated within the chips themselves (FET switching/on-resistance/capacitance etc). The thicker copper then just conducts it away into the motherboard better...
 
Yea.. i think its more of a gimmick, though it may help a little when pushing it hard overclocking as the traces might be able to carry a higher amperage current with less noise/loss than conventional ones.
 
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