VRM/Mosfet Cooling

Nevakonaza · 23 Dec 2018 at 21:11

Do you guys reckon those little heatsinks you can buy will be enough to cool these Mosfets and VRMs?

They totally switched them around on this card so that cooler does not provide any Mosfet/VRM cooling at all.

Ive noticed there is actually holes on the PCB to have one of those cooling heatsinks with the plastic push on pin which would be more ideal as it wouldnt ever fall off but cant seem to find them,this is what i mean.

Whats your suggestions guys? i really would love to run this cooler.

cheers!

Meddling-Monk · 24 Dec 2018 at 08:15

Don't even have any vapor info for you I'm afraid. But I'm sort of in the same sitaution, so would give your post a quick bump up. Will let you know if I manage to locate anything.

pastymuncher · 24 Dec 2018 at 14:30

I used to have this problem when I was using core only blocks to cool the gpu and had to come up with my own solutions. That heatsink in the bottom picture is no good because it's not wide enough. I have one of those and it's just for vrm's on the motherboard which are usually a single row of chips. You have three rows of chips there that need cooling. What I usually did was pick up a copper 1u/2u server cpu cooler cheaply on ebay and cut it to size to fit the vrams I needed cooling at the time. I usually only paid £6 per cooler but the last time I bought I paid a tenner for two low profile socket 478 heatsinks, one of which I still have lying around. Just cut them to size, drill a couple of holes where the mounting points are and fit them with some thermal tape. Used to do the job brilliantly with just the case airflow going over it. If you go down this route the bottom needs to be completely flat and not one with raised bits for the cpu. I just checked Ebay and prices have increased quite considerably since the last time I bought them. I did find a couple that should be suitable though. This one is exactly the same as the last pair that I bought. It's dimensions are 89mm long, 60mm wide and 12.5mm high without fan. If I remember right though, the reason I didn't use it was because the last GPU I cooled this way was a EVGA GTX780 FTW and the pcb was over 100mm wide so that cooler was too small. I ended up making a waterblock out of 2mm thick copper plate and a the top part of a old motherboard vrm block that I picked up really cheap. This one is slightly longer but I think the pcb of your card is too wide as well.

You could use the small memory heatsinks but they will soon be overwhelmed if you don't fit a fan directly above them to cool them. A pack of these may be suitable but I would still have some direct airflow onto them.

Nevakonaza · 4 Jan 2019 at 12:38

Appreciate your replies guys

This is the solution ive come up with,i hope it will be enough cooling,most likely going to mount a fan somehow blowing air up at these heatsinks.

Think this will be okay?

pastymuncher · 4 Jan 2019 at 13:31

That should be fine and is basically what I used to do. You don't need to cool the chokes though. You will need to be very careful if you remove those small heatsinks as you could end up ripping the chokes off the board too.

Nevakonaza · 4 Jan 2019 at 20:19

Hope it will be enough,i was trying to find a thicker heatsink but nothing really suitable size wise that i could just mount on without loads of cutting and messing about etc,as for the chokes i read somewhere else they dont really need any sinks on them but i noticed on my cooler they had cooled those with a thermal strip across them aswel so thought why not i have spare heatsinks just to be on the safe side.

pastymuncher · 4 Jan 2019 at 21:04

The one on the vrm's is a little thin but with some air blowing over it should be ok.

doyll · 5 Jan 2019 at 17:26

Your image looks like a Thermalright HR-09 or HR-09U. Maybe try googling 'Thermalright chip & mosfet heatsink'. They used to market several small heatsinks, and while they no longer sell them several online shops still have some in stock.

Nevakonaza · 7 Jan 2019 at 20:58

Well card is totally stable no problems at all,ive benchmarked,gamed and not one issue,idle temps are around 21 to 25c depending on room temp,under load 45 to 50c.

on the OG cooler load temps would be about 70c+

Those little black memory heatsinks are crap,fell off even before i got to put the card in my system the rest just came off with a little touch,not good overclockers i wouldn't stock these.

P4Clock · 8 Jan 2019 at 08:09

Nevakonaza said:
Those little black memory heatsinks are crap,fell off even before i got to put the card in my system the rest just came off with a little touch,not good overclockers i wouldn't stock these.

You cleand the chips with alcohol before sticking them on right? The stock pads can have a wax on them.
Personly I use thermal glue

pastymuncher · 8 Jan 2019 at 09:45

Nevakonaza said:
Well card is totally stable no problems at all,ive benchmarked,gamed and not one issue,idle temps are around 21 to 25c depending on room temp,under load 45 to 50c.

on the OG cooler load temps would be about 70c+

Those little black memory heatsinks are crap,fell off even before i got to put the card in my system the rest just came off with a little touch,not good overclockers i wouldn't stock these.

I have never had a problem with them. The key to getting them to stick is to thoroughly clean the surface of the chips with IPA to remove the residue from the stock cooler. I have used Akasa Thermal Tape with those little ramsinks and much bigger and heavier copper heatsinks and have never had any fall off as long as I cleaned the surface properly.

Meddling-Monk · 8 Jan 2019 at 16:08

Nevakonaza said:
Those little black memory heatsinks are crap,fell off even before i got to put the card in my system the rest just came off with a little touch,not good overclockers i wouldn't stock these.

So is your VRM currently bare?

:: edit : a lot later... ::

D'oh, misread. It's the RAM heatsinks, not the VRM. That's fine, thought you went bare on the VRM was all.

Nevakonaza · 9 Jan 2019 at 11:39

P4Clock said:
You cleand the chips with alcohol before sticking them on right? The stock pads can have a wax on them.
Personly I use thermal glue

Yeah,i used IPA to clean them then let it dry before putting them on,At first the appeared to stick well and i thought all was good until one fell off, the other went slanted like it was about to fall off then litreraly just a little touch with my finger on another it fell off,so they was all taken off didnt want one dropping off while it was on,So the ram chips are bare but thats fine i think as they got airflow going over them all.

pastymuncher said:
I have never had a problem with them. The key to getting them to stick is to thoroughly clean the surface of the chips with IPA to remove the residue from the stock cooler. I have used Akasa Thermal Tape with those little ramsinks and much bigger and heavier copper heatsinks and have never had any fall off as long as I cleaned the surface properly.

I used Akasa thermal tape to mount those heatsinks and theyre solid,much better than whatever it is they used on those little black memory heatsinks,Its not a huge deal i can just get off the stuff they put on it then put my own akasa thermal tape on instead.

Meddling-Monk said:
So is your VRM currently bare?

:: edit : a lot later... ::

D'oh, misread. It's the RAM heatsinks, not the VRM. That's fine, thought you went bare on the VRM was all.

Yeah i wouldnt have ran if the VRM was bare

Joshua Clancy · 13 Jan 2022 at 21:30

Nevakonaza said:
Appreciate your replies guys

This is the solution ive come up with,i hope it will be enough cooling,most likely going to mount a fan somehow blowing air up at these heatsinks.

Think this will be okay?

I know this is a super late reply, but how did it work? I have just got a G12 for the same card but did not realise the MOSFET placement issue. What are the dimensions of the heatsinks you used if you remember? Thanks dude.

Nevakonaza · 14 Jan 2022 at 00:01

Hey,Oh iirc i wasn't using it like that for too long maybe a month or so then i upgraded to another card anyway to put it all back to stock and sold the G12.

The difference in GPU temp was crazy, Well worth it!
Would i want to have the little cooling on the VRMS/MOSFETS for a permanent solution, No not really.

You'd be better trying to get a proper water block that covers the entire card..this will defiantly be my intention for if i do a water-cooled build at some point in the future

Joshua Clancy · 14 Jan 2022 at 11:22

Awesome, I'll definitely concider it! But for now do you know what size heatsinks you got for the VRM/MOSFETs? Or where you got them from. Thank you for replying!

varkanoid · 17 Jan 2022 at 11:14

Even when the VRM's were under the fan I always put a heatsink there. Also on VRAM too. For me I just bought a square heatsink off the net of the right size and cut it to shape for the VRM's and use Akasa tape to stick it on, sometimes I tie wrapped it and sometimes I used the existing holes to properly screw it down. Also stuck a better Noctua fan on it too made a difference

Gelid used to sell one for the AMD 290 which was the right size for VRM's on most cards but they got scarce I had to get them from US before they disappeared altogether.