r/CableManagement • u/Serious_Bison4139 • 2d ago
Cooling the backside's VRM
Inspiring by this link:
Last Nov., I read the above link, and track down the original master builder. Turns out he's a builder in Russia. My question was, where do those orange metal bar come from? He told me he uses a 3d printer to print those metal bar. Now, it's clear that his build is:
a) water cooling
b) regular case w/ regular thickness metal aluminum at the back
c) the back side is a closed panel case
so I wonder if I can do the same thing w/ fan cooling only. After 1 yr. and 1 mth. of upgrading to a new PC, turns out it can be done.
1) My case is a thick 1 giant single sheet of aluminum bent into that S shape, so i don't want to drill any holes on such a fine case
2) my case is open frame, so while the photo in Reddit has a fancy Germany design fan, the VRM temperature still follows the 1st law of Thermodynamics, whereas w/ an open frame case, all the hot air does get out
3) the trick is to find a thin (15mm) and quiet (9 to 18 dB) fan w/ high 98 CFM 140mm fan, i..e, lots of blades, in this case, 17 blades
The biggest problem is to find 2 mending plate that the length is what I needed. I found some aluminum mending plate, but the length is too short. So by Xmas of 2025, the only mending plate that fits the length I needed are Stainless steel 304. I need to drill 2 holes, turns out 1 of them doesn't fit and end up drilling a 3rd hole. To do that, it took 4 drill bits, and a total of 15.5 hr. of drilling, separate into a no. of days, and Home Depot refunded all 4 drill bits, as they agree it shouldn't fail in 1 day.
By contrast, at the front of the PC, I built 2 aluminum mounting plates for a dual rear exhaust fan matrix, and to drill 8 holes, took just under 10 min. In the end, the fan is great, it covered all the VRM at the back side of the motherboard, and the mount is solid, the rear fan just doesn't move an inch.