when it comes to motherboards everyone wants something different for their PC
some people are like yeah bring on the USB ports others want support for like
multiple graphics cards and others just want like sweet Dragon graphics on their
heat sinks but there's one important aspect of motherboard design that you'd
be hard pressed to find in a spec sheet from your favorite retailer but is
extremely important the voltage
regulator modules or vrm so why are they
important and how do you know what to look for when choosing a motherboard
great question and it might help to think of the vrm as kind of like a mini
power supply just like your actual main computer power supply takes 120 or 240
volts from the wall and steps it down to 12 volts not to mention DC current the
motherboard vrm does this a second time
to provide your CPU with the you know
like 1 to 1 and 1/2 volts or whatever it needs to operate without cooking like a
lobster but unlike your power supply the vrm isn't one big bulky thing in a box
that's easy to spot it's actually made up of a few different components number
one is mosfets which are often located under those big heat sinks that surround
your CPU socket indicating that they do give off some heat so the processor
tells the mosfets yo dog I need 1.2 volts or whatever and the mosfets then
deliver exactly that much power to to the CPU you also have your chokes those
blocky things next to the mosfets that stabilize the current as well as
capacitors which both serve as temporary storage for electricity and protect
against sudden voltage spikes now admittedly these things aren't as
exciting as putting in a new $400 graphics card or whatever but the
quality of your vrms can make a huge difference for your PC for starters
cheaply made vrms can lead to system instability and crashes even at stock
speed and very poor quality vrms can
even mess up the power delivery to the point where they'll damage your other
expensive components and if you're overclocking uh you won't get very far
with a poorly engineered vrm since the correct voltages are so important to
system stability when you're pushing your components beyond their rated
speeds okay lonus then so how do I know what to look for I've never even heard
of people talking about VR before well a couple of simple tips can
help you make sure you don't end up having to make a long trip to the tshi
station to pick up a replacement power converter one of the easiest things to
do is just count up the number of chokes on the motherboard you see motherboards
split up power delivery to the CPU into a number of phases and more phases means
the power is split more ways lightening the load on each phase which in turn can
lead to Greater stability each choke on your motherboard corresponds to one
power phase and usually all but one or two of these around the CPU socket are
reserved for your CPU cores entry-level
boards will usually have three or four phase CPU power but higher quality
boards can have 6 eight or even more
it's also a good idea to pick up a board with solidstate capacitors cheaper
capacitors contain a conducting liquid which can cause problems if they're not
made correctly and even if they are made corre irly they're very likely to bulge
and rupture or even explode over time which is what happened to a lot of
people during the infamous capacitor plague of the mid 2000s solid capacitors
not only largely eliminate these risks but they also have wider temperature
tolerances and a longer lifespan but are
these things even going to be a big deal forever I mean CPUs are getting to the
point where they can do so much more with so much less power I mean for
example Intel Skylake CPUs don't need as
many power phases for a solid overclock as previous generations and AMD's
upcoming Zen architecture looks to be much more power efficient as well
nevertheless you obviously want to make sure that whatever board you drop your
hard-earned cash on won't fail more quickly than your attempt to go pro in
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for watching guys if you like the video do that thing if you didn't then do the other thing uh leave a comment with
video suggestions if you have com with video suggestions don't forget to
subscribe and follow and if you're looking for something else to watch we had a great video over on our lonus Tech
tips Channel taking a bunch of different graphics cards and finding out what the
actual difference in performance from one card to another in spite of them
being identical can be very interesting stuff