970m Pro3 cooling...

Hey there,

I just ordered the 970m Pro3 motherboard yesterday (it should arrive today). I also ordered an AMD FX-8350 + an all-in-one liquid cooler from Arctic.

The liquid cooler is a big one, featuring a 240mm radiator with four 120mm fans. This thing is supposed to cool the CPU significantly.

Now I read on the Asrock website that the 970m Pro3 Motherboard requires a top-blow CPU cooler along with the AMD FX-8350...

My question is: would my new powerful 240mm liquid cooler provide enough cooling so that the surrounding components of the socket stay cool enough also?

I don't have any intentions of overclocking anything on the system! Just normal usage for gaming and all-round stuff...

Thanks in advance!

PS: my new case features a 120mm rear fan + I will add 2x 120mm fans on the roof later on, just above the motherboard. Enough mainboard cooling for the 970m Pro3?

Thanks for your reply

Well, yes, I always RTFM It helps a lot and most likely prevents the user from becoming the problem.

Meanwhile I got my components and put them together. I'm actually writing from my new system right now. It works absolutely stable so far. Windows 10 setup was fast and without problems (via USB). Latest Asrock and AMD drivers are working well also. No issues yet.

The mainboard temperature is 27°C at the moment, and the CPU is idling at around 29°C (my room temperature is at 25°C right now). I already did a stress test; using CPU-Z; which showed that the CPU does not get above 49°C. So my liquid cooler from Artic works quite well I guess. I could touch the VRM heatsink with my finger. However, its temperature was close to the pain threshold. So I guess the temperature was between 50 and 60°C. Not something to be worried about I think. I won't overclock the system anyway, and also, such a stress test is unrealistic since no game will stress all 8 cores to their full extent. I could touch the north bridge and south bridge easily by the way. They stayed warm but did not get hot.

Regarding the ventilation of my system: the liquid cooler is installed behind the front mesh panel of my case. It's the Corsair Carbide SPEC-M2. Corsair did not promise too much. The airflow inside the case is quite remarkable. And I did not even install the two 120mm top fans yet! The four 120mm fans from my CPU liquid cooler are pulling fresh air through the front of the case, onto 2/3 of the mainboard (north bridge & south bridge and lower part of the VRM heatsink included) and to the graphics card and hard drives as well. The air is then pulled out by the rear fan. This creates a decent amount of airflow. I'm sure that adding the two 120mm fans at the top will cool the entire system properly. Probably it will do it better than by just adding a top blow CPU cooler. Such a cooler does actually only push the "used" (e.g. warm) air from the heatsink directly onto the mainboard... does it really make sense?

My graphics card is a Sapphire Radeon RX 460 Nitro (4GB) by the way. It's a nice card but I bought it just for transition. I will resell it and buy the Sapphire Radeon RX 470 Nitro+ (4GB) next month...

I have read many negative reviews and opinons of this mainboard and Asrock. But my conclusion is that in most cases the problem is not the board but the user. People seam to overclock like crazy, and then being surprised and not really aware that they literally destroyed their system. For example, one guy stated that the mainboard is not stable and quit working after a few weeks. At the end of his review he mentioned in one short sentence that he could overclock his CPU "only" to 4.4 GHz on this board stably... One other person stated that the sound quality is bad. But it's just as perfect as on my previous MSI Z77 G43 LGA 1155 board (sound quality also depends on the used speakers/headsets...).

All I can say for now is, that this new system just works as fast and as stable as my previous old i7 MSI system. I switched back to AMD and Asrock due to budget considerations. The only thing I was worried about are the temperatures on AMD. But it doesn't seem to be an issue as long as cooling is sufficient and overclocking is not a consideration.

I will report more once I did intense gaming for hours...


Edited by ASRocker - 12 Oct 2016 at 8:31pm

ASRocker wrote: I won't overclock the system anyway, and also, such a stress test is unrealistic since no game will stress all 8 cores to their full extent.

As far as stress test goes, there are tests that stress your system more (and more fully). For example: Running CPU-Z stress test for ~10 minutes on my rig saw my socket temp has peak at 50 C and core temp at 40 C. Roughly 10 minutes on Prime95 and the temp peaks were at 58 C (socket) and at 43 C (core). I don't think anyone really uses CPU-Z's stress test for any serious stability testing, because it's too light.

I agree with most of what you said, Xaltar. I'm just not sure that CPU-Z's stress test actually puts the system under more stress than some games or rendering software might. It most definitely doesn't stress the cores to their full extent, since P95 stresses them more. By the way, neither might not be the best option if one wants to stress test the whole system. This is why sometimes people run something like Unigine Heaven or Furmark while they're running P95. I personally prefer running RealBench if I'm not happy with just using P95. It's easier to just run one program and it's supposed to stress the system more than any combination of separate stress tests.

Anyways, to get back on topic: FX 8-core plus no top-down blowing cooler? Definitely no overclocking and I'd stay away from P95, even though the airflow through the case seems to be okay. I'd still take parsec's advice on making sure the VRM is cooled enough and I suggest you monitor your socket and CPU temperatures every now and then. By the way, you might want to look into undervolting the CPU. Even a small decrease in voltage (if the system remains stable) could help the components cope with the demands of you CPU.