Will this overclock voltage damage my motherboard?

DennisJohnHarro · 16 Mar 2014 at 18:22

I have an AMD Athlon x4 760K. I have a stable overclock of 4.7Ghz at 1.41875v with load line calibration set to Medium which gives load voltage of 1.416v and idle voltage of 1.428v (so slight vboost and vdroop however this is the best I can get). My CPU supports voltages up to 1.55v so I had some headroom so I overclocked to 4.9Ghz with a voltage of 1.48750v with load line calibration also set to medium. This gives me a idle voltage of 1.488v-1.500v at max and a load voltage of 1.476v-1.488v. As CPU had a ceiling of 1.55v this overclock should be safe for the CPU however could this be damaging for the motherboard?

My motherboard is the F2A88XN-WIFI and is rated Ultra Durable 4 plus. This as I have read had special mosfets to reduce temperatures by up to 60C and keep the VRM cooler. On my motherboard there is a heatsink which is on the mosfets and the VRM which is hot to the touch and I can only touch it for about 7 seconds before it starts to hurt enough to make me let go. I have read that mosfets and VRM are safe to 150C however I have no way of telling how hot they are getting as the temperature of the heatsink will not resemble the temperature of the mosfet and VRM directly (the heatsink definitely has adequate airflow).

My major worry is that this may decrease the life of my motherboard or just outright kill it if I am not careful and therefore why I am asking for help.

pastymuncher · 16 Mar 2014 at 19:05

The problem with mosfet/vrm and to a lesser extent, chipset coolers, is that they are designed to work with stock cpu coolers that are top down blowers and cools all the components around them. When you get to tower coolers that most people on here use, they are primarily designed to cool the cpu and nothing else. The airflow normally misses the heatsinks altogether and go straight out the rear or roof exhausts dependant on how the cooler is orientated. Liquid coolers can be even worse, especially the single 120mm rad ones. By the time a fan (or two) is mounted on the rad it's overhanging the vrm heatsink so it gets no airflow at all.

The only thing you can really do is get something like a Antec Spot Cool and place it over the heatsink to give it extra airflow and monitor the temps to see if things improve. What case is it in?

DennisJohnHarro · 16 Mar 2014 at 19:17

pastymuncher said:
The problem with mosfet/vrm and to a lesser extent, chipset coolers, is that they are designed to work with stock cpu coolers that are top down blowers and cools all the components around them. When you get to tower coolers that most people on here use, they are primarily designed to cool the cpu and nothing else. The airflow normally misses the heatsinks altogether and go straight out the rear or roof exhausts dependant on how the cooler is orientated. Liquid coolers can be even worse, especially the single 120mm rad ones. By the time a fan (or two) is mounted on the rad it's overhanging the vrm heatsink so it gets no airflow at all.

The only thing you can really do is get something like a Antec Spot Cool and place it over the heatsink to give it extra airflow and monitor the temps to see if things improve. What case is it in?

The h100i is blowing air across the motherboard and therefore heatsink. I know what you are thinking 'that is hot air' however it isn't it is actually very cool even at 100% cpu usage this is because the cpu never gets above 60C. Also there is an exhaust fan right next to the heatsink (im in the corsair 250d case by the way) Will this be sufficient?

pastymuncher · 16 Mar 2014 at 19:30

Sorting out those cables should help the airflow quite a bit. I would be very tempted to switch the radiator so that it is exhausting out of the case and getting rid of that single exhaust fan altogether. Hopefully the twin fans on the rad will suck enough air through the rear vents and over the vrm heatsink and improve the cooling. Check before and after temps though to see if it changes anything. Seriously tidy those cables up though.

DennisJohnHarro · 16 Mar 2014 at 19:33

pastymuncher said:
Sorting out those cables should help the airflow quite a bit. I would be very tempted to switch the radiator so that it is exhausting out of the case and getting rid of that single exhaust fan altogether. Hopefully the twin fans on the rad will suck enough air through the rear vents and over the vrm heatsink and improve the cooling. Check before and after temps though to see if it changes anything. Seriously tidy those cables up though.

Sorry this is an old picture of the case just to give you an overview. The cabling is much better now however not perfect. I cannot check the VRM or Mosfet temps except by touch so idk how I will do that very accurately

DennisJohnHarro · 16 Mar 2014 at 19:45

pastymuncher said:
Sorting out those cables should help the airflow quite a bit. I would be very tempted to switch the radiator so that it is exhausting out of the case and getting rid of that single exhaust fan altogether. Hopefully the twin fans on the rad will suck enough air through the rear vents and over the vrm heatsink and improve the cooling. Check before and after temps though to see if it changes anything. Seriously tidy those cables up though.

I could also invest in one of these:

Thermalright HR-09U MOSFET heatpipe cooler

pastymuncher · 16 Mar 2014 at 19:47

To be honest, Gigabytes cooler does look up to the job. The Thermalright would stick up into the airflow more though. Doesn't Gigabytes easytune tell you the temps? If you haven't got it installed the latest version is here. If that's no good try hardware monitor.

DennisJohnHarro · 16 Mar 2014 at 19:58

pastymuncher said:
To be honest, Gigabytes cooler does look up to the job. The Thermalright would stick up into the airflow more though. Doesn't Gigabytes easytune tell you the temps? If you haven't got it installed the latest version is here. If that's no good try hardware monitor.

ET6 doesn't show it, all it shows is system and cpu temps. HwMonitor under motherboard shows TMPIN0, TMPIN1 and TMPIN3 what do they mean?

pastymuncher · 17 Mar 2014 at 10:12

I believe they are for the graphics card. Motherboard temps are at the top, TZ00, TZ01, mainboard.

DennisJohnHarro · 17 Mar 2014 at 11:13

pastymuncher said:
I believe they are for the graphics card. Motherboard temps are at the top, TZ00, TZ01, mainboard.

I do not have anything called TZ00 or TZ01 in HWMonitor

pastymuncher · 17 Mar 2014 at 13:43

In the second group at the top under the voltages you should at least have one listed as mainboard. Any other's in that section should be motherboard temps. If there's nothing else there then i suppose your motherboard has no sensors for the vrm's which is quite poor seeing as it's designed for a form factor that limits cooling.

DennisJohnHarro · 17 Mar 2014 at 13:56

pastymuncher said:
In the second group at the top under the voltages you should at least have one listed as mainboard. Any other's in that section should be motherboard temps. If there's nothing else there then i suppose your motherboard has no sensors for the vrm's which is quite poor seeing as it's designed for a form factor that limits cooling.

that is all I have

pastymuncher · 17 Mar 2014 at 16:59

That's different to mine. The top TMPIN0, TMPIN1, TMPIN2 on yours read as TZ00, TZ01, mainboard on mine. I presume they are still your motherboard temps though. TMPIN1 is obviously not reading correctly. TMPIN0 is probably the chipset, not sure about TMPIN2. The only other way to keep an eye on the temps is to buy a IR temperature reader. I got one off the bay for £9 delivered a couple of months ago.

DennisJohnHarro · 17 Mar 2014 at 17:18

pastymuncher said:
That's different to mine. The top TMPIN0, TMPIN1, TMPIN2 on yours read as TZ00, TZ01, mainboard on mine. I presume they are still your motherboard temps though. TMPIN1 is obviously not reading correctly. TMPIN0 is probably the chipset, not sure about TMPIN2. The only other way to keep an eye on the temps is to buy a IR temperature reader. I got one off the bay for £9 delivered a couple of months ago.

Like a IR temp 'gun'?

pastymuncher · 17 Mar 2014 at 19:46

Yep, one of those little battery operated, hand held jobbies. Point the laser light at what you want measured and tells you the temp on a little led screen. I bought mine to measure my graphics card vrm temps. I then got hooked and went all over the house finding cold spots.