Heatsink for VRM of ASUS B350m motherboard

xlink · May 18, 2017

I bought an ASUS B350m a bit back. I wanted an MATX board and it was the only thing in stock which also had 4 DIMM slots and I checked multiple stores.

The VRM on this is this is supposedly decent... they just spited the board's owners with no heatsink.
There are mounting holes for VRM heatsinks.

The full ATX version of the motherboard has heatsinks which fit into the same mounting holes. Is there any way I can purchase a heatsink (ideally for the equivalent board) and slap it on?

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/aR8pX1-04JM/maxresdefault.jpg

yendor · May 19, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by xlink

I bought an ASUS B350m a bit back. I wanted an MATX board and it was the only thing in stock which also had 4 DIMM slots and I checked multiple stores.

The VRM on this is this is supposedly decent... they just spited the board's owners with no heatsink.
There are mounting holes for VRM heatsinks.

The full ATX version of the motherboard has heatsinks which fit into the same mounting holes. Is there any way I can purchase a heatsink (ideally for the equivalent board) and slap it on?

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/aR8pX1-04JM/maxresdefault.jpg

I haven't seen one.

Heatsinks can be purchased from many vendors and applied to vrm one at a time.

There is video where this was done with the b350m-a/csm

You might keep your eyes out for a dead b350 plus. I'm already doing this myself.

Asus has yet to reply coherently to any inquiry I've made. Time to poke them again.

Some of the other vendors not only provide heat sinks but more fan headers.
I'm not crazy about the vrm on any of them though to be honest .

xlink · May 20, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by yendor

I haven't seen one.

Heatsinks can be purchased from many vendors and applied to vrm one at a time.

There is video where this was done with the b350m-a/csm

You might keep your eyes out for a dead b350 plus. I'm already doing this myself.

Asus has yet to reply coherently to any inquiry I've made. Time to poke them again.

Some of the other vendors not only provide heat sinks but more fan headers.
I'm not crazy about the vrm on any of them though to be honest .

Looks like we're both gunning for that legendary dead B350 plus, haha.
Any idea if any other ASUS boards have the same pin layout?
Who should we reach out to at ASUS?

yendor · May 20, 2017

I have emailed support again to inquire. First response was not promising. They have other small am4 boards coming, same apparent vrm. No heat sinks! They also have some OEM only models it appears. Perhaps some of them get the undoubtedly budget breaking heat sinks....

yendor · May 20, 2017

I think I will add my subjective opinion that the last bios released for it in April sucks.

I did hear back from them.

They told me my motherboard came with a heat sink.

Perhaps it's invisible.

I have no words for how incredibly annoyed I am by every exchange I've had via email. Not once have they shown any awareness of the products I've asked about. A random chimp throwing poo at the keyboard has a better chance of formulating a relevant reply...

xlink · Jun 29, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by yendor

I think I will add my subjective opinion that the last bios released for it in April sucks.

I did hear back from them.

They told me my motherboard came with a heat sink.

Perhaps it's invisible.

I have no words for how incredibly annoyed I am by every exchange I've had via email. Not once have they shown any awareness of the products I've asked about. A random chimp throwing poo at the keyboard has a better chance of formulating a relevant reply...

My experience with the April BIOS was this - I could finally hit DDR4-2666.

My experience with the June BIOS is this - I could hit DDR4-2666 at 1.2V instead of 1.375... DDR4-2800 (what my RAM is rated at) is still elusive... but I've yet to put serious effort into OCing.

yendor · Jun 29, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by xlink

My experience with the April BIOS was this - I could finally hit DDR4-2666.

My experience with the June BIOS is this - I could hit DDR4-2666 at 1.2V instead of 1.375... DDR4-2800 (what my RAM is rated at) is still elusive... but I've yet to put serious effort into OCing.

The lower vdimm is a positive step. I'd say you have a very good chance at higher speed now.

xlink · Jun 29, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by yendor

The lower vdimm is a positive step. I'd say you have a very good chance at higher speed now.

Yeah.

I'm eager to tweak it... after I catch up on everything else in life. Higher RAM speeds are nice to have but not critical.

Have you come across any settings which help? It looks like some things have actually gone away(switching speeds for VRMs) since the 1.0.0.4a release.

buddywh · Jun 30, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by xlink

Looks like we're both gunning for that legendary dead B350 plus, haha.
Any idea if any other ASUS boards have the same pin layout?
Who should we reach out to at ASUS?

I got an AB350M Gaming 3... I'd suggest you not go looking for the heatsink off one. It's not much more than an aluminum block with a hole through it. It's got no surface area to dissipate heat to the surrounding air. It works fine for a few minutes but temps creep up until it's saturated and can't shed heat fast enough. It's good if the load is really short duration but if it's a long encoding it will start throttling, so I located a 70MM fan blowing on it and it's a lot better.

I'd suggest you go get some Enzotech FET heatsinks. You can get them at a lot of online sources, not sure what you got where you are though. Just search for Enzotech.

yendor · Jun 30, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by buddywh

I got an AB350M Gaming 3... I'd suggest you not go looking for the heatsink off one. It's not much more than an aluminum block with a hole through it. It's got no surface area to dissipate heat to the surrounding air. It works fine for a few minutes but temps creep up until it's saturated and can't shed heat fast enough. It's good if the load is really short duration but if it's a long encoding it will start throttling, so I located a 70MM fan blowing on it and it's a lot better.

I'd suggest you go get some Enzotech FET heatsinks. You can get them at a lot of online sources, not sure what you got where you are though. Just search for Enzotech.

the asus b350m variant boards share the b350 plus (and presumably b350 strix!) pcb, at least as far as vrm layout is concerned, right down to mounting holes for heatsink.
Either would be more elegant looking than Enzo's but ultimately I suspect enzo's would be more effective for just about every motherboard that doesn't have a heatpipe / active cooling or hybrid .

Xlink. I forgot the strix. we have two dead boards to keep an eye out for now

jprovido · Jun 30, 2017

you think this is enough? I ordered it this morning

voxson5 · Jun 30, 2017

FWIW, my own B350M-A has been sitting at a 4.0 oc with a 1700 since ?3 days since launch, and has been cpu mining 24/7 for the past three weeks straight.

I'm still waiting for the fail, and from the look of things, it is not going to come

BTW - most recent bios got 3066 with auto setting on my M-die 2x8 TZ's (3000C15), can get 3200 into windows, but not yet stable...

jprovido · Jun 30, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by voxson5

FWIW, my own B350M-A has been sitting at a 4.0 oc with a 1700 since ?3 days since launch, and has been cpu mining 24/7 for the past three weeks straight.

I'm still waiting for the fail, and from the look of things, it is not going to come

BTW - most recent bios got 3066 with auto setting on my M-die 2x8 TZ's (3000C15), can get 3200 into windows, but not yet stable...

yep! mine is the same boots into 3200mhz but not stable. rock solid on 3066mhz though

I have a corsair h115i GTX coming from rma and I wanted to push the overclock on my 1700x. I'll let you guys know if having heatsinks on the vrm's makes any difference with better cooling on both cpu and vrm's

yendor · Jun 30, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by jprovido

you think this is enough? I ordered it this morning

should be. if you remember this video I believe he's only using 6.

Quote:

Originally Posted by voxson5

FWIW, my own B350M-A has been sitting at a 4.0 oc with a 1700 since ?3 days since launch, and has been cpu mining 24/7 for the past three weeks straight.

I'm still waiting for the fail, and from the look of things, it is not going to come

BTW - most recent bios got 3066 with auto setting on my M-die 2x8 TZ's (3000C15), can get 3200 into windows, but not yet stable...

good to see the wee board is performing better for everyone with the latest bios.

buddywh · Jun 30, 2017

[/quote]
Quote:

Originally Posted by jprovido

you think this is enough? I ordered it this morning

If you're using a liquid cooler on your CPU you should also locate a fan blowing on the VRM area. The stock Wraithe heatsinks (down-blowers) do that pretty well and towers do it poorly but water doesn't do it at all. The VRM's are in a dead air pocket sitting underneath the case fan: a small 60 or 70mm fan will stir it up so the case fan can exhaust it. The heatsinks should bring down VRM temps by 10 degrees at least, until they saturate, a fan another 10-15 even after saturating. A heatsink with fins extending up into the exhaust fan's airflow would be ideal (that's what I'm looking for....)

You probably would find this https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835708012 tall copper heatsink would work even better. Being fairly soft copper they're easily trimmed and re-worked to fit most any location.

xlink · Jun 30, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by buddywh

If you're using a liquid cooler on your CPU you should also locate a fan blowing on the VRM area. The stock Wraithe heatsinks (down-blowers) do that pretty well and towers do it poorly but water doesn't do it at all. The VRM's are in a dead air pocket sitting underneath the case fan: a small 60 or 70mm fan will stir it up so the case fan can exhaust it. The heatsinks should bring down VRM temps by 10 degrees at least, until they saturate, a fan another 10-15 even after saturating. A heatsink with fins extending up into the exhaust fan's airflow would be ideal (that's what I'm looking for....)

You probably would find this https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835708012 tall copper heatsink would work even better. Being fairly soft copper they're easily trimmed and re-worked to fit most any location.[/quote]

I have an AIO(2x 120mm) directly above the CPU socket(not above the IO area but on level with the board) which pulls air across the motherboard.
I also have 2x1400mm case fans OVER the motherboard pushing air down onto the board, half onto the GPU area and the other half over the CPU socket. I suspect that gives reasonable airflow, though all of my fans(6 in total not counting PSU but also counting the AIO) are at pretty low speeds.

Motherboard sensor says 30-40C in bios depending on ambient temps. no idea what it's at under load.

For what it's worth agesa 1.0.0.6a lets me run my 2x16GB RAM at 2666 1.2v. Before I needed 1.375v to hit it. I'm going to aim for 2800, 2933 or 3066 later when I have time to dial things in.

zGunBLADEz · Jun 30, 2017

i put some info on my artic mortar about vrms
http://www.overclock.net/t/1624139/official-ryzen-7-1800x-1700x-1700-owners-club-4ghz-club/13810#post_26190368

This one in specific
http://www.overclock.net/t/1624139/official-ryzen-7-1800x-1700x-1700-owners-club-4ghz-club/13820#post_26190383

Aida reads them as motherboard temperature thats what i use.. How i know you may ask? When i put the house fan blowing air in them aida mobo sensor reading temps goes down with it. Plus a motherboard/system sensor is unlikely to be going up 20c+ more in top of the cpu temperature in that type of scale when loading the cpu it will dance the same as the CPU temp but at higher temperatures.. At least on the artic mortar matx mobo, they do have a vrm sensor probe on this board. The msi app just shows cpu/system temp which is the real motherboard temp sensor.

So far it do have system/cpu and vrm sensor temp probe.

In this one i start loading prime small ffts then i put the active cooling on the vrms you see how it started to go down

then i stopped prime and it went down the same way the cpu temp went down, they both scale linear to a point, but when my water temps normalize my ryzen temp would stay the same all the way, the vrm would fluctuate as is not on the loop.

Then i put hwinfo and in the mobo stats is showing me the vrm temps as the cpu temp those are the problems i think the reportings of +20c are on 1700x-1800x they are reporting vrm readings instead of cpu readings.

Theres no way is not the vrms readings when it shows improvement when i active cool them with a fan and it shows in the temperature reading. You just need to find which one is which XD

buddywh · Jun 30, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by xlink

...
Motherboard sensor says 30-40C in bios depending on ambient temps. no idea what it's at under load.
...

If your fans are working for you then great... but watch VRM temps under load.

yendor · Jun 30, 2017

advertising refers to dedicated heat detection area for the asus b350m temps under load do not correspond to software values. except in passing. Maybe a temp sensor is attached to the heatsink.

eh, I'll use thermal probes this weekend and see if I can't figure out what crazy software is reporting as motherboard. it's not the vrm for this board.

zGunBLADEz · Jun 30, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by yendor

advertising refers to dedicated heat detection area for the asus b350m temps under load do not correspond to software values. except in passing. Maybe a temp sensor is attached to the heatsink.

eh, I'll use thermal probes this weekend and see if I can't figure out what crazy software is reporting as motherboard. it's not the vrm for this board.

try aida and hwinfo and try too to load the cpu and watch the sensors/graphs the vrm at least in my case react to active cooling and it shows in the temp difference as my pictures shows..

Its just a hazzle to have all those apps running at the same time to see whats what lol... But once you got that figure it out is easy.

Heatsink for VRM of ASUS B350m motherboard

xlink

yendor

xlink

yendor

yendor

xlink

yendor

xlink

buddywh

yendor

jprovido

voxson5

jprovido

yendor

buddywh

xlink

zGunBLADEz

buddywh

yendor

zGunBLADEz

Top Contributors this Month

Recommended Communities