How Do You Custom Cool the SABERTOOTH 990FX VRM/VCORE

OK... So again the question is how do you cool your SABERTOOTH 990FX motherboards VRM/VCORE.

Asus says these babies can go over 90c no prob but you may or may not know that the temp on these VRMs directly effects the temperature of your CPU and other components as well because they are all connected to each other via copper one way or another.

Now unfortunately our case fans do little to nothing to cool off these things. What is nice is that because of the Thermal Radar we have a good idea of how hot these bad boys are getting.

I have done quite a bit of testing and intend to do quite a bit more. I have tested with my CPU being cooled by air as well as being cooled by water I am taking notes and screen shots using sensor recorder to show with the fans on and off.

I also plan on making brackets and showing them.

While I do all that I would like to ask people to please tell me what there cooling experiences have been.

Now I have been able to get over 20c of cooling from 70 to 50 which means that if I was at 90 I probably would have seen as much as 30c of cooling which is outrageous.

However that was with 2 80MM 4500RPM fans that sounded like turbo props one was installed behind the motherboard temporarily aimed between the CPU and the black plate that held the VRM heat-sink to the board. The other fan was above the board but had a plastic tube attached to it to direct the air right to the heat-sink.

But what I found to be the most efficient cost, effort, and size wise was a tiny little fan that I removed from a XBOX 360 cooler that I got for free.

The fan does not have an RPM wire but it does go up and down in speed when the positive and negative are attached to a fan header. Honestly though I would recommend buying a fan that had the 3 wires already done up for you or if you can find a PWM fan I would even go with that.
Now I am almost 100% sure that this is the exact same fan that I have except mine was ripped out of an XBOX cooler that had 3 of them in it and 1 had failed. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835168013 Is unfortunately not in stock but if comes back in stock I may buy one otherwise I have my eyes on some 20,000RPM 40MM fans I know they are extremely loud but truth is if you run them at half speed they are actually not to bad and move a ton of air.
It claims to have a crazy 28CFM which I kinda believe and it claims to have a 26DBA which I call horse-manure on. At full out this thing is LOUD! But it creates more air than most 80MM fans!

These are the pictures and my results.
Blue is the VCORE1 Temp and Yellow is the CPU Socket Temp
As you can see when I switch the fan on I get a 14c drop in the VCORE and an amazing 4c drop in my CPU temp. I find the CPU drop the most amazing since this is on a water cooled set up with a fairly low VCORE.


Now a picture of the fan. At the moment the fan has been wired to a fan header connector and I have wrapped it in the flex tube stuff and shrink wrapped the ends of the flex tube stuff. Again the fans originally only had 2 wires going to them so I do not get a rpm back but these fans are powerful and I can tell have a high static pressure which is very important for cooling a heat-sink.
The fan is also only temporarily mounted. The way I mounted it was I took the them bolt off my water block removed the large sprint put a small spring on the bolt then put the fan on then put the thumb bolt back on. The fan is therefore just hovering over the general area. I plan on using 2 of these fans on a bracket that I am fabricating this weekend.


This final chart shows cooling applied only to the back. But with air cooling for the cpu (Coolermaster V8). This was at yet an even lower VCORE and just shows how big of an impact cooling the VRM has to the overall CPU temperature. For the test I had the RPM on the Coolermaster V8 cranked all the way up. Again BLUE is VCORE1 and YELLOW is CPU it was a 10c drop on the VCORE and a 7-8c drop on the CPU. Some of the cooling on the CPU could have came from cool air on the back of the motherboard and not just cooling the VRM itself but I doubt that was much of it.

thank you!

most useful thread i've come across on any board!

(I too have high Vcore temps and I'm going to try your idea with the stock fan that came with my FX-8150. I believe it has nice high rpm and its surplus because i'm using an H100 for CPU cooling. I just have to figure out how to anchor it to the board like you have).

Thanks again for the effort you put into sharing this!

jackthelad said:

most useful thread i've come across on any board!

(I too have high Vcore temps and I'm going to try your idea with the stock fan that came with my FX-8150. I believe it has nice high rpm and its surplus because i'm using an H100 for CPU cooling. I just have to figure out how to anchor it to the board like you have).

Thanks again for the effort you put into sharing this!

Click to expand...

No prob,

One thing also you should know. If you have a cut out in your motherboard tray for accessing the heat-sink bracket then if you put a fan behind the motherboard blowing onto the back it also lowers the temps a lot. I cut a hole in my side panel and mounted a fan behind the motherboard too.

givmedew said:

No prob,

One thing also you should know. If you have a cut out in your motherboard tray for accessing the heat-sink bracket then if you put a fan behind the motherboard blowing onto the back it also lowers the temps a lot. I cut a hole in my side panel and mounted a fan behind the motherboard too.

Click to expand...

thanks. Yes i did wonder about doing that, but my case is a Corsair C70. The side panel is quite solid metal and i don't think I can cut a hole in it, at least not cleanly.

I had another idea too. The rear case fan is exhausting air out. I wondered about just flipping it around so that it was actually an intake fan, blowing air right across that Vcore area. What do you think about that?

jackthelad said:

thanks. Yes i did wonder about doing that, but my case is a Corsair C70. The side panel is quite solid metal and i don't think I can cut a hole in it, at least not cleanly.

I had another idea too. The rear case fan is exhausting air out. I wondered about just flipping it around so that it was actually an intake fan, blowing air right across that Vcore area. What do you think about that?

Click to expand...

It wont do anything for the vrm. You need pressure and a high volume of air to do anything to the vrm heatsink. You could buy a duct and attach it to the fan and aim it at the vrm heatsink. If you do that I would make a square plate and cut a slot in the plate to increase the pressure and blow air directely onto the vrm heatsink. The plate would go on the end of the duct not on the fan side.

jackthelad said:

thanks. Yes i did wonder about doing that, but my case is a Corsair C70. The side panel is quite solid metal and i don't think I can cut a hole in it, at least not cleanly.

I had another idea too. The rear case fan is exhausting air out. I wondered about just flipping it around so that it was actually an intake fan, blowing air right across that Vcore area. What do you think about that?

Click to expand...

Got a machine shop with a waterjet cutter nearby? Mark the case back panel and take it to them. Will be clean as heck. Maybe $70, but very nice.

Reversing the case fan means now you have nowhere for the air to go out of the case. It won't do much for temps if you reverse fans in the full case anyway, you need focused air there, not a gentle case fan.

Conumdrum said:

Got a machine shop with a waterjet cutter nearby? Mark the case back panel and take it to them. Will be clean as heck. Maybe $70, but very nice.

Reversing the case fan means now you have nowhere for the air to go out of the case. It won't do much for temps if you reverse fans in the full case anyway, you need focused air there, not a gentle case fan.

Click to expand...

Good idea about the machine shop. Also yes reversing the fan will do nothing unless it is directed with high pressure directly at the heat sink.

$70 is a not a lot of money yet it is at the same time especially with what we are talking about. You would almost be better off putting the money towards a XSPC WC kit if WC is something you wanted to do. It would have a more profound effect.

good post! I have heat issues with my Vcore as well. I was pushing 4.8GHz on my FX8150 with a simple Antec20 water cooling system I got for $50 and installing 3 CPU heat sync fans in prime locations. I reset my OC this morning and added the 3 CPU fans because my Vcore Temps were hitting 75+ which was affecting other components.