Source
r/buildapc•
Sethnar

How to shop for motherboards in terms of VRM?

Discussion

Hey. I recently built a pc, so I’m not really looking for advice on specific motherboards to buy. I just want to start a discussion on what makes a good motherboard in terms of VRM, or the voltage regulation module. For other aspects of a motherboard like chipset, PCIe slots, I/O, and RAM slots and compatibility, it can be easy to see a technical specification for what the board can handle. But for VRM, oftentimes there’s no real spec listed for motherboards about what you’re getting on the board. Maybe you can find the number of power phases on the product page on the manufacturer’s website, but that’s about it.

The lack of readily available information on motherboard VRM is surprising to me for how important of a feature the VRM can be for the motherboard. The VRM is the only thing standing between your delicate CPU and the whopping 12 volts that get sent to it by the PSU. While most modern motherboards from reputable brands have VRM perfectly capable of operating at stock speeds, I’ve noticed a trend in marketing newer motherboards to a focus on stating how good the VRM is for boards.

I just have some buyer’s remorse about my motherboard choice for my recent build after seeing more information on the VRM of other boards I was considering compared to the one I got. So, what’s the best way to assess a motherboard ‘s VRM before you buy? Would you like to see some sort of standard adopted for rating VRM’s like the 80plus rating system for PSUs? Is VRM quality something that really needs to be considered?

Posted Oct 9, 2019, 3:34 PM UTC · edited

24
Dragonstar914•

This guy does a lot of motherboard reviews by build components and quality. The VRM layouts change from generation to generation and differs between models and components can even change between versions of the same model.

VRM quality is usually only important if you are overclocking or have a very high core count CPU.

1
SethnarOP•

Numerically, very high core count CPU would be... more than 8? more than 10?

1
Dragonstar914•

I'm talking 12+ cores in most cases and some cases 8+. It still totally depends on the motherboard model. As and example b320 might be able to run a 3900x but it can't properly feed power to it and get good clock speeds while some b450 might do fine.

That's why I posted that link. Very few people do breakdowns on VRMs, he is one of them.

1
Tigertron62•

You could always stick a heatsink on it. I did see a spreadsheet for them at one time but I bet it's outdated now and I can't find it anyway.

Mine was way down at the bottom of the list. And sure, it doesn't have any heatsink or fan and it gets hot but I don't over clock so I don't worry.

I was over clocking and it seemed to hold up fine in the benchmarking but I stopped running a high clock because it really made zero positive difference for me.

1