ASUS Gives Away Cooling Kits for its Socket TR4 Motherboards

[btarunr]

To cope better with AMD 2nd generation Ryzen Threadripper processors, which come with up to four active dies on the MCM (multi-chip module), ASUS is giving away free Cooling Kits to owners of its socket TR4 motherboards, such as the ROG Zenith Extreme, ROG Strix X399-E Gaming, and Prime X399-A. The kits include a fan bracket that lets you strap a 40 mm fan onto your CPU VRM heatsink, and a so-called "SoC heatsink," designed to cool the SoC power phase MOSFETs (which now have to cope with the load of four SoC dies). The kit for the Zenith Extreme also includes a 10 mm-thick 40 mm fan, which plugs into one of your 4-pin PWM headers. The kit will neither be included with current or upcoming inventories of unsold X399 motherboards by ASUS. Customers who need it will have to contact their local ASUS office, which will verify the purchase of their ASUS X399 motherboard, and ship their kit for free.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Blueberries]

Premium boards should already be packaged with this, people already pay a premium for these boards.

Whole bunch of greedy bullshit.

 

[Flyordie]

Well, maybe Gigabyte will do the same for the X399 Gaming 7? Maybe release a "finned cooling kit" for power users to replace their blocky heatsinks with the finned type?

 

[Durvelle27]

Premium boards should already be packaged with this, people already pay a premium for these boards.

Whole bunch of greedy bullshit.

How is it greedy when it’s free

 

[eidairaman1]

Premium boards should already be packaged with this, people already pay a premium for these boards.

Whole bunch of greedy bullshit.

Dont be a cheapsk8, tell that to intel, oh wait they don't provide coolers for their upper parts either.

Well, maybe Gigabyte will do the same for the X399 Gaming 7? Maybe release a "finned cooling kit" for power users to replace their blocky heatsinks with the finned type?

Wouldn't that be nice.

Yeah buildzoid could show you on his absolute hardcore youtube channel.

 

[StrayKAT]

Dont be a cheapsk8, tell that to intel, oh wait they don't provide coolers for their upper parts either.



Wouldn't that be nice.

Yeah buildzoid could show you on his absolute hardcore youtube channel.

Intel doesn't even make boards anymore... afaik

It's just the same companies making them for both chipsets.

 

[ypsylon]

Just my 2 cents on the subject of TR4 boards. Zenith Extreme in particular. Overhyped and over priced in the extreme. On paper it was OKish upgrade from X99 - sacrificed 4 important SATA ports and W7, but gained PCIe bifurcation for more NVMe drives (no RAID, just drives)... but only on paper.

I have it for the moment. Not for much longer as I'll return to X99. Anyway...

Zenith Extreme (running 1920X, with hindsight should have went with 1900x) after nearly 11 months of use. One of the worst cooled boards in history of motherboards. Ironically VRM section as long as you run stock setup or just with boost clock to 3.7 is OK.* You can touch the radiator with bare hand without risk of burns. 4GHz OC, have fire extinguisher nearby. Chipset cooks itself in matter of moments. Especially on ridiculously hot summer days like right now. I removed NVMe drive from under the shroud to reduce the heat, but it still hits 65C just like that :snapfingers:. That's retarded. I haven't seen temps like that on chipset since X58 and n680i. Using universal waterblock is tricky. 1. Its not EVGA board, so you voiding all warranties from Asus and basically you're on your own. 2. Chipset is very close to slot so you can't use AICs longer than PCI-Ex slot itself. 3. From what I read you can easily strip the threads from screws used to mount this worthless piece of shroud which makes whole operation quite perilous to begin with.

* - OC Threadripper is bonkers idea. For 300-500 MHz more, you gain 10 ‰ more "performance" and draw 100% more power which is totally f*up idea. Period.

 

[Vlada011]

65C is nothing for VRM. If customers want cold hardware than better to invest in Monoblocks immediately.
I understand, they could done better job, but below 70-75C is really nothing for components.
Before 10-20 years hardware worked under much worse conditions, but it's fact ...electronic was little higher quality.

If customers are so frustrated maybe ASUS really should think to give free these kits.

I wait their new Maximus Code/Apex line, when i9-9900K show up and Z390 chipset I will check difference and maybe saved price on Maximus X series not XI.
For my needs i9-9900K is best. I never made mistake with processor platform choice and I have feeling that i9-9900K will be great long time investment, 4-6 years.

 

[Hood]

With all the bad press about marginal PWM and chipset cooling these days, you would think that top board makers would have already addressed the problem, by including better heat sinks/fans out-of-the-box, instead of these ineffective-looking add-ons. These boards are marketed as high-end overclocking units, with prices from $300 to $500, and designed to get the most out of the highest core count desktop CPUs in the world. So why do they come with anemic flat aluminum heat sinks? All in the name of style, with very little regard for performance. Asus has shown sense in the past, with boards like Rampage Extreme X48 -

actual finned sinks with greatly increased surface area for heat transfer, and a water block for the north bridge. Why are they now afraid to do it right? I guess they don't want it to be obvious what a problem these CPUs have with minor OCing, or nobody would buy TR. 100% more power for 10% more performance is crazy, these things should come with a carbon tax.

 

[bonehead123]

HAHAHAHA, I did the (almost) same exact fan thingy for a relative's rig not too long ago, 'cause he was concerned about his vrm getting too hot.

And yea, it didn't cost me anything either, except 5 minutes of my time, since I already had the fan and bracket in the garage

 

[Zubasa]

With all the bad press about marginal PWM and chipset cooling these days, you would think that top board makers would have already addressed the problem, by including better heat sinks/fans out-of-the-box, instead of these ineffective-looking add-ons. These boards are marketed as high-end overclocking units, with prices from $300 to $500, and designed to get the most out of the highest core count desktop CPUs in the world. So why do they come with anemic flat aluminum heat sinks? All in the name of style, with very little regard for performance. Asus has shown sense in the past, with boards like Rampage Extreme X48 - View attachment 104888 actual finned sinks with greatly increased surface area for heat transfer, and a water block for the north bridge. Why are they now afraid to do it right? I guess they don't want it to be obvious what a problem these CPUs have with minor OCing, or nobody would buy TR. 100% more power for 10% more performance is crazy, these things should come with a carbon tax.

Whats worse is these X399 boards were released after the X299 VRM disaster, and yet they did nothing.
They continue putting big blocks of almuninium with minimum surface area and slap pieces of Plastic with RGB over the "heatsinks" to ensure they don't get air flow from the rear exhaust fan.

Now they try to do this band-aid fix on the Zenith, and still they couldn't do it right, put a fan blowing at the top plate instead of across what little fins it has is the worse way to do it.

 

[StrayKAT]

My X299 is running cool. All I have is a cheap Corsair AIO for the CPU, but rarely does anything get past 60C (and idles in the 30s). This is the dead heat of Texas Summer, with a damn wall unit AC for the only room cooling.

 

[Zubasa]

My X299 is running cool. All I have is a cheap Corsair AIO for the CPU, but rarely does anything get past 60C (and idles in the 30s). This is the dead heat of Texas Summer, with a damn wall unit AC for the only room cooling.

You have a Supermicro broad with a real heat-sink on the VRM.
My Asrock X399 does fine under the tropical heat as well, it doesn't have the best heat-sink design either,
but at least Asrock has enough common sense not to cover it with a chunk of plastic to make it"Gamery".

 

[StrayKAT]

You have a Supermicro broad with a real heat-sink on the VRM.
My Asrock X399 does fine under the tropical heat as well, it doesn't have the best heat-sink design either, but at lease Asrock has enough common sense not to cover it with a chunk of plastic to make it"Gamery".

I should add though that my AC might actually be a benefit... I made it sound like it wasn't, but I'm having second thoughts.

 

[Zubasa]

I should add though that my AC might actually be a benefit... I made it sound like it wasn't, but I'm having second thoughts.

AC or not, there need to be ways to let air pass over the heat sinks to work,
Asus completely cover the auxiliary heat-sink and put a whiny little fan inside the shroud and hope that it can pull enough air through the tiny slits.

 

[raptori]

How about you put some real heatsink and remove those ugly cheap plastic shrouds and flat aluminum blocks .

 

[Ruru]

My Rampage V Extreme has also those stupid chunks of aluminium as heatsinks. Yeah, they look cool, but they aren't literally cool. I also miss the old days when they were heatsink, not just some goddamn decoration with poor cooling capability.

 

[mcraygsx]

This points to the fact that VRM cooling for current X399 might be insufficient since the load will increase with core count.