mainboard mosfet cooling

Combat squirrel · 7 Jul 2011 at 11:46

As title iv got a Crosshair IV mainboard and have removed the stock cooling to install 2x thermal right HR05 SLI's on there (big improvement hopefully)

However in doing this the mainboard mosfet's are now exposed (iv not powered on the PC yet until im done doing other stuff), are they ok to run bare ? obviously stock cooling has these covered with a small heatsink thats got a fairly thick pad between them and the heatsink (surely this would almost insulate it slightly its that thick ? lol)

So are they safe to run bare? or run with a small fan blowing air on them or do I need to somehow work out a cooling solution ? (which would be hard as iv got a silver arrow sitting over the top of them.)

Bubo · 7 Jul 2011 at 12:05

I would at least put some ram sinks on them or chop up an old cpu heat sink and bond this to them. I certainly wouldn't run them bare, even with a fan pointed at them

Combat squirrel · 7 Jul 2011 at 13:30

Cool got some Enzotech Low Profile Passive Mosfet Coolers on the way, should be pretty good hopefully, I did think about chopping up the old stock heatsink but if want to put it back probably not a good idea.

manveruppd · 7 Jul 2011 at 14:23

Zalman do some llittle heatsinks intended to cool VRAM chips on graphics cards, and they're just the trick for mofsets, but it seems OCUK have stopped selling them. Got a set installed on my ancient old NF7-S board, which is still running overvolted and overclocked 8 years on!

Combat squirrel · 7 Jul 2011 at 14:35

manveruppd said:
Zalman do some llittle heatsinks intended to cool VRAM chips on graphics cards, and they're just the trick for mofsets, but it seems OCUK have stopped selling them. Got a set installed on my ancient old NF7-S board, which is still running overvolted and overclocked 8 years on!

Yeah pretty much same as the Enzotech ones, spot on and will do a grand job I think

Bubo · 7 Jul 2011 at 15:33

Are they those little four pronged ones? I had some of those for my 280gtx graphics card but I found the adhesive wasn't good enough for them to reliably stick to the vrms. Mind you the surface of the vrms on that card where really shiny and smooth, maybe with proper mosfet chips it won't be so bad. I ended up using a tiny dot of silicone rubber to the side of the sink to stop any risk of them falling off. On my old Epox 8RDA+ mobo I sliced up and old aluminium cpu heat sink and epoxied it to the mosfets. I loved that mobo, did all sorts of mods to it.

manveruppd · 7 Jul 2011 at 16:04

Well mine have been stuck on for 8 years!

You could always scrape the adhesive off and use Thermal Epoxy or something.