Ramsinks on mosfets .. not enough?

**breakneckspeeds** · 10-16-2007, 10:28 AM

I'm nearly done with my WC setup, and have been testing various things. I glued 4 swiftech ramsinks on my P5K Deluxe mosfets (the top 4) using arctic alumina adhesive. They get pretty hot! Any one else tried something like this? Hope it's adequate as long as I have some air flowing through there.

Also, Any one using the swiftech ramsinks on their 8800 (gtx) notice how incredibly HOT that little chip gets? you know the one.. I'm wondering if I should have attached a somewhat more substantial heatsink to it!

**Kobalt** · 10-16-2007, 10:37 AM

You need airflow badly. Get a quiet 80mm fan and zip tie it to blow in that area. Try to direct the fan towards the exhaust fans so as to not disturb the airflow in your case.

**~~Baleful~~** · 10-16-2007, 10:49 AM

I can't say about the mosfets, as i'm using the EVGA 680i, but I am using the ramsinks on my 8800GTX and yes that little chip does get very hot. I used a thermal gun (not sure what the thing is really called) to see how hot it was getting. During ATItools artifact scanner it never got over 44C.

**breakneckspeeds** · 10-16-2007, 08:15 PM

I'm kindof worried about those mosfets.. gets hot as hell. But then again, I can imagine how bad the cooling was with the stock aluminum cooler, where the middle ones were not even in contact because of the board flexing. I shouldnt have glued on the ramsinks lol

Those things may need some better cooling.

**Kobalt** · 10-16-2007, 08:21 PM

Like I said, you need air flow.

**~~Omastar~~** · 10-16-2007, 08:28 PM

The NVIO chip on G80s does get INCREDIBLY hot. I had an MC14 on it like you do, and it burned the hell out of my finger when I touched it. Dunno what to do about it, besides getting a fullcover block and dumping that much more heat into the loop. And I don't exaggerate--that chip is REALLY hot.

**breakneckspeeds** · 10-16-2007, 08:41 PM

LOL yea I burned my finger touching it too haha. It looks like a good candidate for a chipset northbridge cooler! I dont know if the holes around it are far apart enough to mount a northbridge cooler, though. The swiftech NB watercooler says shows 53mm apart as the shortest. I'm going to measure to be sure though.

**Jedda** · 10-16-2007, 08:57 PM

If you're cutting any mobo backboard holes for cable management an extra one behind your mosfets makes a great place to put a fan blowing onto the back and around the mobo edge.

**~~Baleful~~** · 10-17-2007, 06:37 AM

Like I said, the NVIO chip does get hot, but even when the card is being stressed, it dosn't get hot enough to hurt the cards performance. Just shoot a quiet 40mm fan at it and you'll be good to go. I just strapped the fan that came w/ my 680i NB to the NVIO chip and it works fine.

**IanY** · 10-17-2007, 07:35 AM

This sounds stupid.. but I have recently found that the key to system stability is air flow. I initially felt like a moron air cooling my water blocks, but keeping fan flow around the cpu area (where the mosfets are.. even with watercooled mosfets) and fan flow around the NVIO (even if its water cooled) helped an incredible amount with system stability during an intense computer workout (as in 8 hour gaming sessions or running BOINC/F@H 24/7). I use what I have lying around at home, which are those silly 92mm Zalma fans with brackets and those nifty rheostats to slow the fans down to inaudible levels.

I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw my mobo temps drop by almost 8 degrees. My NB apparently even dropped by 3 degrees despite being water cooled.

The real stupid part is that I started watercooling to have a silent system! Now, my PC is louder than when I had simple air cooling lol

**~~Baleful~~** · 10-17-2007, 08:20 AM

Don't feel so bad. I'm pretty much in the same place, I had to add a 60mm fan to blow on the mosfets and R50's to get my machine stable last night. And that's with 6 fans pulling air in through the front of the case, and 5 fans exhausting the air out. Air flow in key spots is crucial. I might get some of those Antec spotcools.

**disruptfam** · 10-17-2007, 08:56 AM

Don't feel so bad. I'm pretty much in the same place, I had to add a 60mm fan to blow on the mosfets and R50's to get my machine stable last night. And that's with 6 fans pulling air in through the front of the case, and 5 fans exhausting the air out. Air flow in key spots is crucial. I might get some of those Antec spotcools.

exactly why i watercooling my mofset's...I had ramsinks on them and they were incredible hot...To hot to touch almost...

I didnt want a fan over the mofset's because it ruins the look i was going for...i find smaller fans to be to whiny for my liking

Also buying a ek fc block.... had 2 remove the 120mm fan i had to cool the ramsinks on the g80 due to getting a soundcard.. (had fan above g80 exhausting hot air out of case)

**VinDSL** · 10-17-2007, 10:08 AM

Heh!

I know I'm gonna get flamed for this, but think about it for a minute...

Yeah, yeah! It's a lowly $125 GIGABYTE GH-WIU02 3D Galaxy II water kit, but they have a great idea going here!

The down-facing fan on the waterblock might seem like a stupid idea - but the reason they do this (bling aside) is to get some air around the MOSFETs, NB, RAM, et cetera. Remember, most of these cheap kits will go into machines with crappy case ventilation...

The more I think about this concept, the more sense it makes!