Gadgetory

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 the heatsinks 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 your 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 currents the motherboard vrm does this a second time to provide your cpu with the you know like one to one and a half 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 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 VR end 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 you won't get very a 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 Linus then so how do I know what to look for I've never even heard of people talking about VRMs 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 tashi 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 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 six eight or even more it's also a good idea to pick up a board with solid state capacitors cheaper capacitors contain a conducting liquid which can cause problems if they're not made correctly and even if they are made correctly 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 life span what 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 mean for example until 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 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purchase so that's Squarespace calm and go there and do that thing so thanks for watching guys if you like the video do that thing if you didn't then do the other thing leave a comment with video suggestions if you have comments 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 Linus 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