My motherboard is a ASUS EX-B560M-V5 and I'm running with a i5-11400F.
During benchmarks the CPU can get up to 170W and my cooling solution for it I think is good enough because it doesn't go over 80°C while drawing this much power.
The thing is, as soon as the VRM temperatures reach 95°C (And it does so easily because I'm using a watercooler without downdraft fans, and this motherboard doesn't come with any heatsinks for the VRMs) the CPU throttles from 4.2GHz all-core to about 3400GHz all-core.
I was thinking if maybe some after-market heatsinks, like the ones in the image, would help with that! I'm not looking for a 30°C drop, just need it to drop enough so it doesn't thermal-throttle.
Anyone with experience in that regard is a great help!
5 Comments
typo: 3.4GHz.
Yup some decent heatsinks and a fan blowing on them will help
Copper over aluminium and make sure they have some airflow
That VRM with 8 power stages and no heatsink is going to limit you. Try to stick a fan over the VRMs – that might be enough to get you from thermal throttling.
If it doesn’t already have some, adding them doesn’t hurt. I keep a collection of these I just toss on random hot things.