For the case where there are no phase doublers, just doubling of the MosFets (in parallel), the sharing of the load halves the conduction losses. For example, for a 50A phase with Rdson=0,002Ω, conduction loss is 50^2×0,002=5W, while if the Mosfets are doubled each will have a 1/2×50^2×0,002=1,25W, and for both the conduction loss is 2,5W, or exactly halved, for double the board real estate and double the heatsink contact area, which helps enormously with heat dissipation. This lowers the thermal loss, which allows for higher switching loss budget by having higher switching frequency, which makes for a better transient response, all the while having a cooler motherboard with all the advantages of higher component lifetime expectancy and lower cost for heatsink price... Pretty sweet deal!
Thanks. This was really helpful! Your channel is really a golden nugget in the TH-cam mess XD As for a Q&A, you could answer questions that are asked a lot or questions that speak to you. Maybe sometimes a question might seem to easy but people could really be helped by it :)
I understand the diagram, great video. The problem when selecting a good motherboard is the heatsink which is more likely to hide the mosfets so we won't know the VRM set up clearly. I hope you'll do more motherboard VRM videos.
I understood nothing. But I will now look for more data on the motherboards I buy. Too bad I bought a Gigabyte gaming 5 X370 already and cannot apply my new found knowledge till probably year 2025. 24:35 Math on stream is always my favorite part of any video :D.
Actually Hardcore Overclocking Hey i have a lil question... im about to buy a new graphics card i have ~280€ and need opinions (i will oc it and i use it for gaming and editing) The rest of my pc is build up on a msi z170a pro, i5 6600k and g.skill ripjaws 16gb ram ddr4 !
RX 480 STRIX(ASUS) / GTR(XFX) / MSI(Gaming) I've finished my thermal testing for the STRIX and basically it is a better card for daily use than the GTR but costs more and lacks the BIOS switch. On the other hand it does have a better cooler. I have yet to test the MSI.
This is an old video and possibly a very stupid question, but... Instead of using the doubler IC connected to two drivers, why wouldn't they just use one driver to trigger one H fet and one L side fet of each pair at a time (essentially like a double throw switch)? Wouldn't they then just be basically out of phase with each other- one off and one on each at a time? Based on the explanation of the doubler IC, seems like that's what it's doing anyway. The only possible explanations I can come up with are duty cycle issues, or H and L side fets needing a different trigger (idk different voltage, current, whatever), although the latter seems very solvable.
Hi Buildzoid. I enjoyed the video very much! What would you say about the ASUS SABERTOOTH 990FX R3.0? It has 10 chokes. Also, in short, what do you think about pairing this board with Corsair DDR3L1600MHz 2x4gb CL9 Vengeance? (Average/Good/Great). Thank you very much in advance!
It's a great mobo in terms of build quality. However I personally think it's a little overpriced for it's lack luster for it's feature set. Unfortunately there aren't any real alternatives to it that match it's build quality while improving the feature set. You can get cheaper boards with more features but worse heatsinks and VRMs.
Yeah I commented before watching then figured out I wouldn't make it trough the whole video because school. Watching it for real this time :) By the way, you could emulate different PCB layers with different line colours. So top layer is black, layer underneath that is red, layer underneath that is blue, etc.
Yeah I considered doing that however changing colors takes me for ever since the drawing tablet is locked to only 1 of my 3 screens(other wise drawing with it gets messed up as it translates a 16:9 rectangle to my 53:9 monitor setup).
gecid.com/data/mboard/201312100800-5047/img/13_gigabyte_ga-970a-ud3p.jpg Thats the VRMs on the GA-970A-UD3P V1.0. From what I have been told the IR3598's on the board is setup in "Dual Mode". Each providing 2x PWM signals. So, it would seem it does have true 8+2 Phase VRMs.
So I've got an Asus AM3+ 970 pro gaming/aura, which says it has a 7+1 phase design. I'm guessing the +1 goes to the hypertransport? Would that be a doubled 4 phase, with the final phase split off between cpu and wherever the other one is going to, or is it a true eight phase with the final phase split off? Or am I completely off base here?
you have to double all the phases or none of them. Also that +1 goes to the CPUNB not the HT. That board has one of the highest true phase counts of any AM3+ board.
Thanks for the info! I've been pretty happy with it so far, and it's good to know I spent my money on something good. I'm glad I went with this after basically burning out my asrock "extreme" 3.
Man, how do I know HP 8000 VRM working or not cause I got nothing on MOSFET's source and gate and when i check some of VRM pins with a multimeter I got volts like pin35 5v and pins 30,31,32,33 1.5v, SO light me and if u need more details ask me.
true, any electronic schematic CAD program will be a better choice to create the component symbols compared to manual, other software is diptrace, eagle got screwed so avoid it, diptrace is probably the easiest to use, but kicad is also a good choice plus it is also open source.
These videos are dangerous as they always make me want to attempt designing my own AM4 motherboard. "How hard could it be? AMD must have Design specifications and other design aids out there!"
Hi. Already asked Sin0822 but he seems to be away since quite a long time: do you have any tips to know what kind of ICs you have on a mobo when you don't have it physically, a list or something like that ? By the way, great stuff that helped me a lot understanding vrm, thx!
Not really. The ICs used by manufacturers tend to change a lot. Like say MSI. MSI use NIKOS and Fairchild from what I've seen on their boards. However at what price point that switch happesn I have no idea. Gigabyte I've mostly seen using either Renesas or IR. ASUS uses Ubiq, OnSemi, IR, Texas Instruments(all the Z170 and 270 ROG stuff is TI). Asrock I have no idea.
Gimp is great and all but you really should've done this in Paint. It has square stencil, or paint.net which definitely has unlimited undo (not sure about mspaint)
If i was a really shady mainboard manufacturer, i still might not want to connect chokes in parallel, because that loses inductance. More likely in series.
I was wandering if you can explain what is the power design on this thing: www.overclockers.ua/motherboard/asus-z97i-plus/15-big-asus-z97i-plus.jpg and the back side with drivers: www.overclockers.ua/motherboard/asus-z97i-plus/16-big-asus-z97i-plus.jpg It overheats under 110watts (~60amps) load :(
6 phases for the CPU not sure how they are controlled as I suspect the drivers / doublers are all on the back of the board. It looks like there's 2 phases for the RAM to the right of the Vcore VRM.
Thanks for the reply and thanks to your videos, I was able to figure this part on my own. the current capabilities of this thing is not clear to me. or anything else to understand why the VRM sensor hits 105C and than system crash. Well ... I know why, because I overclock. but it's not extreme, just 4.5@1.28v
Actually Hardcore Overclocking tried that, helps to prolong the temperature rising time. Well, not big fans since it's liquid cooled mini ITX, just two 40mm noctua fans. Next step would be modifying the VRM heatsink. Unfortunately can't put liquid on it due to space restrictions :(
Hello there, I got trouble with my R9 280X - I likes to run on only 870 MHz time to time. For example I clock to 1200 MHz runs fine and then after some time it gets to 870 MHz ( which way below anything this card should run as its Sapphire Vapor ) and then after some time it might come to its senses and run again at 1200 MHz ( not dependent on temperature ). Any ideas what can cause this ? Its driving me nuts.
There wouldn't be triplers because it's a massive waste of die and/or effort. You have 2 or 4 functional units, each of them is a timer and a gate driver, you can route them to consume the rectangular area of the die with copy paste. Once you have 3, either you've got 1/4th of the die wasted, or one of your functional units is of a different shape, which means you get to tape it out anew, and you might introduce mistakes or accidentally slightly differing parasitic characteristics (non negligible at semiconductor scale which is close to molecular scale now), which means your validation is going to be really much harder than necessary. You don't want to make a gate driver which makes a MOSFET on one particular output fail more often than others, this will make your customers VERY angry, they'll think that you have no idea what you're doing and consider switching to a competitor. You could design very skinny functional units, but that seems silly too if you get less reuse between products out of them.
In relation to your point that theory always differs from reality and that you'd actually need to overclock with a motherboard to find out the true quality of it's VRM, would you consider doing a video on your own experience when overclocking on different boards? I'm betting the majority of viewers aren't professional overclockers and aren't able to just test out multiple boards when they're looking to make a build.
I guess what is meant by "clean power" is mostly "not much ripple left". en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_(electrical) So, clean is getting to a straight line. The more phases you have the closer you are to a straight line without additional filtering. Digital electronics prefer clean DC whilst having power consumption spikes (those spikes do usually not exist in the analogue world).
I think I will do a video on this topic. But your comment pretty much covers it. "Clean power" is not so much about power as it is about trying to maintain a constant voltage level with varying current demand.
@10:00 + i have been working with 3 phase power for years and this is not adding an extra phases it is only doubling the current load capacity... but i think this is what you where trying to say but not explaining it right.. other then that good job
The thing about buck converters is you can actually have all your phases running in sync and still call them phases. But you're right there is a mistake there. You can't put 2 Hi FETs 2 Lo FETs and 2 chokes on 1 driver IC without the FETs and chokes being connected together because the driver IC needs to monitor the voltage before the chokes. There was a mobo review a recently read where they had a 4+1 VRM with 8+2 phases worth of components(only the FETs and chokes only 4+1 drivers) and the author called it a phase doubling scheme. I should of just stuck with calling them "super phases"
If the controllers aren't in sync there would be no guarantee that the phases would be turning on at the correct times. In a multi phase VRM only 1 phase is ever turned on. With 2 controllers that wouldn't always be the case they clocks wouldn't be in sync. The other issue is that both controllers would have to be aiming for the exact same voltage or one of them would be trying to lower the voltage the other is producing. So in order for this to work you would need special voltage controllers that can be hooked together and in fact those do exist but the only version I've seen was 2 phases per chip with a maximum of 8 phase total using 4 chips. Also another issue is that I doubt any mobo vendor would want to actually use a true 10 or more phase voltage controller. True 8 phases are already really unpopular due to their cost.
Actually Hardcore Overclocking OK so it can be done but it would be very expensive and we will probably not see it any time soon if someone doesn't start making 16 phase controllers. Interesting stuff
I think my Sabertooth X79 has two controllers for RAM VRM (I can set independent Voltage for A+B and C+D DIMMs). Which is cool, but kinda weird... Maybe they did this because of space constrains ?
Actually Hardcore Overclocking interesting, we can always hope that things like that come down in price and we can have high end motherboards with 40 phases lol
"This doesn't pay enough for me to do it better", well put sir.
i dont not getting paid for this .... oh wait.
For the case where there are no phase doublers, just doubling of the MosFets (in parallel), the sharing of the load halves the conduction losses. For example, for a 50A phase with Rdson=0,002Ω, conduction loss is 50^2×0,002=5W, while if the Mosfets are doubled each will have a 1/2×50^2×0,002=1,25W, and for both the conduction loss is 2,5W, or exactly halved, for double the board real estate and double the heatsink contact area, which helps enormously with heat dissipation. This lowers the thermal loss, which allows for higher switching loss budget by having higher switching frequency, which makes for a better transient response, all the while having a cooler motherboard with all the advantages of higher component lifetime expectancy and lower cost for heatsink price... Pretty sweet deal!
Thanks. This was really helpful! Your channel is really a golden nugget in the TH-cam mess XD
As for a Q&A, you could answer questions that are asked a lot or questions that speak to you. Maybe sometimes a question might seem to easy but people could really be helped by it :)
I understand the diagram, great video. The problem when selecting a good motherboard is the heatsink which is more likely to hide the mosfets so we won't know the VRM set up clearly. I hope you'll do more motherboard VRM videos.
"It's a C, deal with it" designers and electrical engineers in the radius of 10 Terabites of interned had a stroke
Just wanted to say thank you for making this
I have to do this, for computer architecture but more complicated.
Dude has a rectangle tool, but draws his squares. It tells you a lot about him.
I understood nothing. But I will now look for more data on the motherboards I buy.
Too bad I bought a Gigabyte gaming 5 X370 already and cannot apply my new found knowledge till probably year 2025.
24:35 Math on stream is always my favorite part of any video :D.
first!
Who would think seeing someone draw MB phases would be entertaining ...BTW EV GA :D
Actually Hardcore Overclocking Hey i have a lil question... im about to buy a new graphics card i have ~280€ and need opinions (i will oc it and i use it for gaming and editing) The rest of my pc is build up on a msi z170a pro, i5 6600k and g.skill ripjaws 16gb ram ddr4 !
RX 480 STRIX(ASUS) / GTR(XFX) / MSI(Gaming)
I've finished my thermal testing for the STRIX and basically it is a better card for daily use than the GTR but costs more and lacks the BIOS switch. On the other hand it does have a better cooler. I have yet to test the MSI.
Actually Hardcore Overclocking If i would go for the XFX Gtr Black Editon or normal ? Btw thx for the fast answering !
The XFX rep on /r/AMD said that they don't bin the cards so it really doesn't matter which you choose.
Thank you thank you thank you thank you so much for these videos!!
Wouldn't it be possible to have a doubler shift the phase by 180 by doubling the frequency with a phase locked loop, then choosing alternate pulses?
This is an old video and possibly a very stupid question, but...
Instead of using the doubler IC connected to two drivers, why wouldn't they just use one driver to trigger one H fet and one L side fet of each pair at a time (essentially like a double throw switch)? Wouldn't they then just be basically out of phase with each other- one off and one on each at a time? Based on the explanation of the doubler IC, seems like that's what it's doing anyway.
The only possible explanations I can come up with are duty cycle issues, or H and L side fets needing a different trigger (idk different voltage, current, whatever), although the latter seems very solvable.
Hi Buildzoid. I enjoyed the video very much! What would you say about the ASUS SABERTOOTH 990FX R3.0? It has 10 chokes. Also, in short, what do you think about pairing this board with Corsair DDR3L1600MHz 2x4gb CL9 Vengeance? (Average/Good/Great). Thank you very much in advance!
It's a great mobo in terms of build quality. However I personally think it's a little overpriced for it's lack luster for it's feature set. Unfortunately there aren't any real alternatives to it that match it's build quality while improving the feature set. You can get cheaper boards with more features but worse heatsinks and VRMs.
Dif you already do a video on what doublers do and how they're set up? I'd like to know about that.
I pretty much cover exactly what they do in this video.
Yeah I commented before watching then figured out I wouldn't make it trough the whole video because school. Watching it for real this time :)
By the way, you could emulate different PCB layers with different line colours. So top layer is black, layer underneath that is red, layer underneath that is blue, etc.
Yeah I considered doing that however changing colors takes me for ever since the drawing tablet is locked to only 1 of my 3 screens(other wise drawing with it gets messed up as it translates a 16:9 rectangle to my 53:9 monitor setup).
gecid.com/data/mboard/201312100800-5047/img/13_gigabyte_ga-970a-ud3p.jpg
Thats the VRMs on the GA-970A-UD3P V1.0.
From what I have been told the IR3598's on the board is setup in "Dual Mode". Each providing 2x PWM signals. So, it would seem it does have true 8+2 Phase VRMs.
So I've got an Asus AM3+ 970 pro gaming/aura, which says it has a 7+1 phase design. I'm guessing the +1 goes to the hypertransport? Would that be a doubled 4 phase, with the final phase split off between cpu and wherever the other one is going to, or is it a true eight phase with the final phase split off? Or am I completely off base here?
you have to double all the phases or none of them. Also that +1 goes to the CPUNB not the HT. That board has one of the highest true phase counts of any AM3+ board.
Thanks for the info! I've been pretty happy with it so far, and it's good to know I spent my money on something good. I'm glad I went with this after basically burning out my asrock "extreme" 3.
Man, how do I know HP 8000 VRM working or not cause I got nothing on MOSFET's source and gate and when i check some of VRM pins with a multimeter I got volts like pin35 5v and pins 30,31,32,33 1.5v, SO light me and if u need more details ask me.
Very well explained!
20+2 can be done with 10*2 and +2 right?
Finally got a drawing tablet I see.
Also: KiCAD is your friend. So is Copy+ Paste
I had a drawing tablet for ages it just that for some videos I feel it's too much of a hassle to pull it out
Well it makes a positive difference imo. You should look into KiCAD for these circuit diagram presentations. might be faster/easier for you.
true, any electronic schematic CAD program will be a better choice to create the component symbols compared to manual, other software is diptrace, eagle got screwed so avoid it, diptrace is probably the easiest to use, but kicad is also a good choice plus it is also open source.
have you considered getting a surface studio to to the drawing? by the way I think they look great as the are, I was just wondering...
As nice as that would be to have it cost over 3000USD so that's not happening.
Very good video, but is it not possible to Ctrl+c/Ctrl+V parts of the components for the sake of simplicity? :D
will you ever show VRM of asus 970 pro gaming aura motherboard or do motherboard pcb breakdown
because it is i think only am3+ motherboard that has 7 phases
yeah it's a true 7+1 VRM.
What abou MSI X99 SLI/ALL - what type of "x2'rs" it has? (at what time on video did you talk about this one type?)
These videos are actually very interesting.
Could you tell me the VRM configuration of the Asrock Z170 Extreme 7+? I'd really appreciate it
These videos are dangerous as they always make me want to attempt designing my own AM4 motherboard. "How hard could it be? AMD must have Design specifications and other design aids out there!"
Remember, if you don't make your OWN mosfets then it's not truly YOUR motherboard
Great video thanks
Hi. Already asked Sin0822 but he seems to be away since quite a long time: do you have any tips to know what kind of ICs you have on a mobo when you don't have it physically, a list or something like that ? By the way, great stuff that helped me a lot understanding vrm, thx!
Not really. The ICs used by manufacturers tend to change a lot. Like say MSI. MSI use NIKOS and Fairchild from what I've seen on their boards. However at what price point that switch happesn I have no idea. Gigabyte I've mostly seen using either Renesas or IR. ASUS uses Ubiq, OnSemi, IR, Texas Instruments(all the Z170 and 270 ROG stuff is TI). Asrock I have no idea.
Motherboards with 4 mosfets per choke, are they just using two mosfets in parallel to reduce current per mosfet?
yup. That reduces mosfet resistance and therefore losses. And improves Thermals at the same time.
Gimp is great and all but you really should've done this in Paint. It has square stencil, or paint.net which definitely has unlimited undo (not sure about mspaint)
Why the voltage drops when the circuit is closed?
If i was a really shady mainboard manufacturer, i still might not want to connect chokes in parallel, because that loses inductance. More likely in series.
I was wandering if you can explain what is the power design on this thing: www.overclockers.ua/motherboard/asus-z97i-plus/15-big-asus-z97i-plus.jpg
and the back side with drivers: www.overclockers.ua/motherboard/asus-z97i-plus/16-big-asus-z97i-plus.jpg
It overheats under 110watts (~60amps) load :(
6 phases for the CPU not sure how they are controlled as I suspect the drivers / doublers are all on the back of the board. It looks like there's 2 phases for the RAM to the right of the Vcore VRM.
Thanks for the reply and thanks to your videos, I was able to figure this part on my own.
the current capabilities of this thing is not clear to me. or anything else to understand why the VRM sensor hits 105C and than system crash.
Well ... I know why, because I overclock. but it's not extreme, just 4.5@1.28v
put a fan over the VRM heatsink.
Actually Hardcore Overclocking tried that, helps to prolong the temperature rising time.
Well, not big fans since it's liquid cooled mini ITX, just two 40mm noctua fans.
Next step would be modifying the VRM heatsink. Unfortunately can't put liquid on it due to space restrictions :(
Hello there,
I got trouble with my R9 280X - I likes to run on only 870 MHz time to time. For example I clock to 1200 MHz runs fine and then after some time it gets to 870 MHz ( which way below anything this card should run as its Sapphire Vapor ) and then after some time it might come to its senses and run again at 1200 MHz ( not dependent on temperature ). Any ideas what can cause this ? Its driving me nuts.
does GPU-z by any chance read the VRM temperatures for the card?
No, only GPU chip itself.
puu.sh/tC8UR/6f4a51a4e2.png
I dont see a reason why there wouldnt be triplers, just pick every third signal. but what do I know, maybe odd numbers are bad marketing or something.
There wouldn't be triplers because it's a massive waste of die and/or effort. You have 2 or 4 functional units, each of them is a timer and a gate driver, you can route them to consume the rectangular area of the die with copy paste.
Once you have 3, either you've got 1/4th of the die wasted, or one of your functional units is of a different shape, which means you get to tape it out anew, and you might introduce mistakes or accidentally slightly differing parasitic characteristics (non negligible at semiconductor scale which is close to molecular scale now), which means your validation is going to be really much harder than necessary. You don't want to make a gate driver which makes a MOSFET on one particular output fail more often than others, this will make your customers VERY angry, they'll think that you have no idea what you're doing and consider switching to a competitor.
You could design very skinny functional units, but that seems silly too if you get less reuse between products out of them.
In relation to your point that theory always differs from reality and that you'd actually need to overclock with a motherboard to find out the true quality of it's VRM, would you consider doing a video on your own experience when overclocking on different boards? I'm betting the majority of viewers aren't professional overclockers and aren't able to just test out multiple boards when they're looking to make a build.
I currently get far too few mobos to consider doing that but the livestream sorta show how the different mobos behave when I use them.
Can someone define/explain clean power. Never understood that.
I guess what is meant by "clean power" is mostly "not much ripple left".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_(electrical)
So, clean is getting to a straight line. The more phases you have the closer you are to a straight line without additional filtering. Digital electronics prefer clean DC whilst having power consumption spikes (those spikes do usually not exist in the analogue world).
I think I will do a video on this topic. But your comment pretty much covers it. "Clean power" is not so much about power as it is about trying to maintain a constant voltage level with varying current demand.
Thanks! So basically the better the components used the "cleaner" the power delivery.
My 990FX-UD7 is a true 8 phase :)
Be a bit more useful if the bclk could even hit 250mhz...
@10:00 + i have been working with 3 phase power for years and this is not adding an extra phases it is only doubling the current load capacity... but i think this is what you where trying to say but not explaining it right.. other then that good job
The thing about buck converters is you can actually have all your phases running in sync and still call them phases. But you're right there is a mistake there. You can't put 2 Hi FETs 2 Lo FETs and 2 chokes on 1 driver IC without the FETs and chokes being connected together because the driver IC needs to monitor the voltage before the chokes. There was a mobo review a recently read where they had a 4+1 VRM with 8+2 phases worth of components(only the FETs and chokes only 4+1 drivers) and the author called it a phase doubling scheme. I should of just stuck with calling them "super phases"
Can you run two voltage controllers? Can't you just feed them the same input and then drive a true 16 phase?
If the controllers aren't in sync there would be no guarantee that the phases would be turning on at the correct times. In a multi phase VRM only 1 phase is ever turned on. With 2 controllers that wouldn't always be the case they clocks wouldn't be in sync. The other issue is that both controllers would have to be aiming for the exact same voltage or one of them would be trying to lower the voltage the other is producing. So in order for this to work you would need special voltage controllers that can be hooked together and in fact those do exist but the only version I've seen was 2 phases per chip with a maximum of 8 phase total using 4 chips.
Also another issue is that I doubt any mobo vendor would want to actually use a true 10 or more phase voltage controller. True 8 phases are already really unpopular due to their cost.
Actually Hardcore Overclocking OK so it can be done but it would be very expensive and we will probably not see it any time soon if someone doesn't start making 16 phase controllers. Interesting stuff
I think never is a better outlook. Volterra already made a 10 phase and basically no one used that thing. More than 8 is just not worth it.
I think my Sabertooth X79 has two controllers for RAM VRM (I can set independent Voltage for A+B and C+D DIMMs).
Which is cool, but kinda weird...
Maybe they did this because of space constrains ?
Actually Hardcore Overclocking interesting, we can always hope that things like that come down in price and we can have high end motherboards with 40 phases lol
I am going to use a bunch of AA batteries to power directly My FX CPU so there is no need for VRM
Why not D cells for more current?
Also could that actually work if you knew the pinout on AM3? (Or whatever socket FX uses).
@@gamegame2179 dont think so.
You want to use a CPU that can handle 1.5 V but also an extremely low voltage because your transient response wil be horrible. Also use lots of caps
Wow, new profile pic, nice.
You know there are free schematic software out there instead of trying to use GIMP/Paint?
But that's part of the charm!
Question: If I had a good enough electron microscope, could I take a "photo"" of a 9900K die, and produce it?
th-cam.com/video/WOZqoTuAGKY/w-d-xo.html der8auer looked at a 9900k's transistor
if you ever put out a video that has actual editing I will unsubscribe.
Right hehe
so he is saying my EV GA GTX 1080 FTW is sheit?
Did you just fart at 9:53?
Nope. Energy drinks taste delicious and have bubbles in them.
What did you study bro?
google
Why are you not paid by someone with loads of money yet ?
third!
second!
Fist!