Asus M4A87TD Evo VRM heatsinks

[yackson]

Hello. This is my first post on this website

So, recently I decided to overclock my CPU (AMD Phenom II 1100T) since I'm planning to get a new graphics card soon and I wouldn't want it to be a bottleneck, and also I don't have money for a whole new Intel system atm. I was able to get it to [email protected] but I noticed every now and then the core speed would throttle down to 800MHz during Prime95. I've been reading a bit about that on the internet and I've come to the conclusion that I need to put some cooling on my VRM mosfets since they are probably the reason for the throttling. So I ordered 2 packs of these heatsinks (I wanted to get the Enzotech MOS-C1 heatsinks but I can't find them anywhere in Polish stores ). I'm planning to attach them to the mosfets using thermal adhesive tape.

Anyways, my question is which mosfets am I interested in? I'm pretty sure the ones I marked in red on the photo below need heatsinks, but should I also attach them on the ones marked in yellow? Since I got 2 packs I will still have some left, so are there any other places on the mobo that I could attach them to?

Also, do you have any thoughts on these heatsinks I got? Do you think they will help cool the VRM? Will also attaching an 80mm fan directly abve the area help?

 

[RGone]

The ones outlined by 'red' are the VRM mosfets. Cannot really tell what is outlined by the yellow but they are not the VRM mosfets. Another thing to remember is that those of us that use the later 9xx chipset and push the crap out of the FX processor have had issues with mosfet heating AND those mosfets have heat sinks on them AND we have to put fans blowing over the sinked mosfets. So for us a heat sink is not the full cure. Just an FYI.

RGone...

 

[yackson]

I ended up placing heatsinks on the mosfets marked with red, and also put some on the yellow ones just to be safe since I had some extra ones. I also placed an 80mm fan from my old PC over the VRM. After these modifications I managed to OC my CPU to 4.1 GHz at 1.46v and it seems to be running stable with temps not going over 40 idle and 57 under heavy load. No more throttling too I might also do some things to enhance airflow inside my case overall and see if I can get these temps any lower. Thanks for the help

 

[RGone]

57 under heavy load.

Sort of the standard has been no failures in P95 Blend mode during a 2 hour run with HWMonitor (free) running so that Max Temps/Volts are logged. During such run CPU temp not to exceed about 62c and Package/core temps not to exceed about 55c. That 55c package number is from many that 'began' to experience some instability at or around that temp with Phenom2 cpu variants. This of course may vary from user and system to system, but it is sort of a roadside marker as to what to look for.

So you know now how we setup and then test for stability for the long run. YMMV. Good luck and looks like the heatsinks and fan for VRMs was a good idea for certain.

RGone...