I wanted an AM4 motherboard that supports Pcie 4.0 and optical audio. There are only two boards that meet these requirements. The Asrock X570 ITX/TB3 and the MSI B550I Gaming Edge. I ordered the MSI board on the German Amazon in January, but it still hasn't shipped, so I'm pretty sure it's out of stock forever. Therefore, I went with the Asrock board instead.
The thing is that this motherboard has a very strange layout, and it fits very few coolers. It seems widely accepted that the Noctua NH-L9x65 is the only decent low profile cooler that fits the board. However, I want to be able to use a 5800X3D, and the L9x65 is not great for that CPU, as the 3D cache makes the CPU run quite hot.
I got out ye olde Dremel and cut away the part of the IO cover heatsink that was in the way.
This was actually quite a bit of aluminium to cut away.
Now this won't win a beauty contest but at least it fits nicely. I really don't understand why Asrock made this heatsink this large. They could have made it a bit smaller and this board would've fit way more coolers.
The thing is that this motherboard has a very strange layout, and it fits very few coolers. It seems widely accepted that the Noctua NH-L9x65 is the only decent low profile cooler that fits the board. However, I want to be able to use a 5800X3D, and the L9x65 is not great for that CPU, as the 3D cache makes the CPU run quite hot.
I got out ye olde Dremel and cut away the part of the IO cover heatsink that was in the way.
This was actually quite a bit of aluminium to cut away.
Now this won't win a beauty contest but at least it fits nicely. I really don't understand why Asrock made this heatsink this large. They could have made it a bit smaller and this board would've fit way more coolers.
