My initial intention was to additionally lower temperature of power
pre-regulator by adding "thermal bridge" between bottom PCB side and
post-regulator heatsink (for Q4 power mosfet). That will affect cooling
fan operation since it could work with lower speed (and less audible
noise) to manage the same temperature.
I found that use of conductive thermal pad e.g.
aluminum block with PCB side insulated is a really bad choice since it will drastically
increase switching noise!
If you'd like to improve cooling you can use a piece of 5 mm thick
silicone thermal pad mounted. Channel temperature that is measured with
NTC1 can be lowered in that way significantly. With e.g. 20 mm wide pad
it’s possible to achieve 6-7 oC temperature drop on the max. load!
Search on eBay, AliExpress, etc. for e.g. 100mm x100mm x 5mm GPU RAM IC Chip Cooler Conductive Silicone Thermal Pad. It should be less then 10 USD.
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