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General discussion

Home-made VRM heatsink and Thermal Tape

Sep 11, 2013 3:36AM PDT

Discussion is locked

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Not much new going on here.
Sep 11, 2013 3:47AM PDT

You find this mostly has been obviated by advances in CPUs and GPUs. That is, while folks will continue to tinker, most will be fine with a stock setup.
Bob

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..
Sep 11, 2013 6:47AM PDT

I plan on OC and had heard that this particular board was rather nasty when it came to the VRM and overclocking - so it was advised to pick up some heat sinks

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Why not?
Sep 11, 2013 6:54AM PDT
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Confused
Sep 11, 2013 7:17AM PDT

Haha huh? I am so confused - its like you post in riddles! xD Have you ever cut up a CPU heat sink and used it on the VRM or know anything about Thermal Tape?

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Nvm
Sep 11, 2013 7:19AM PDT

I see what you said.. kinda... So to be more literally it will work if I chop apart the cpu heat sink and use dual sided thermal tape to stick it?

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Yes. You can create your own heat sinks.
Sep 11, 2013 7:30AM PDT

It's pretty old school but today I really enjoy having a band saw in the shop for this work.
Bob

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Awesome!
Sep 11, 2013 7:35AM PDT

Thanks Happy Oh and have you ever used "Thermal Tape" or perhaps know of any nifty ways I can secure my new heat sinks to the VRM

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There's a lot of thermal tape and glue.
Sep 11, 2013 7:55AM PDT

The old tape I used was an embossed aluminum film with some thick tack glue. I never really liked that stuff for reasons that where we were, it would go out of stock and this was pre-Amazon.com days.

This is why at the time we would use old school methods such as the common compound then make a heatsink retainer out of springy metal then through any number of clips or other hardware.

Today you can use that or glue.
https://www.google.com/#q=heatsink+glue

Bob

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I'm a little leary of glue
Sep 11, 2013 8:02AM PDT

I'm assuming the thermal glue will be a permanent adhesion?

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Use thermal compound
Sep 11, 2013 8:20AM PDT

Thermal tape is a typical OEM application because of ease of install in mass manufacturing. What many users resort to is thermal or heatsink compound. The common name is Arctic Silver, though they various kinds.

http://www.arcticsilver.com/#

Check the website for typical application and use.

tada -----Willy Happy

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Thanks for the help
Sep 11, 2013 8:26AM PDT

One last question is do you think that regular thermal compound will have enough adhesion to keep those heat sinks from drooping?

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No.
Sep 11, 2013 2:41PM PDT

That's why they make it like a glue. Since I rarely remove such from voltage regulators I use the glue and cement it down.
Bob

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Glue or mechanical fastners
Sep 12, 2013 3:56AM PDT

Provided it doesn't weight much, glue is fine and it better state that adhesion as in glue is the intended purpose with thermal abilities. Otherwise, plain heatsink compound is applied then assured to keep the heatsink in place by fasteners of some type. There is no other way around this, unless you jerry-rig it somehow.

tada -----Willy Happy