I have an abit IC7 which I wish to do a mod on that would make it easier for me to put a waterblock on the MOSFETs.
As you can see, the mosfets are to the left of the CPU bracket in the picture, but the caps and coils stick up and in the way of the actual fets.
My proposed mod is to desolder the caps and coils, and reattach them to the back of the motherboard (in the proper polarity, of course). I've got clearence to do this because the area behind my CPU socket is cut out of the mobo tray to facilitate waterblock mount changes.
Physically, it WILL fit. However, since there will be zero air movement back there, do I have to worry about killing the caps or inductors?
Also, the regulator on this board is 4-phase, indicated by 4 sets of coils (there is one hiding towards teh ram slots that I won't put on the back, as it doesn't interfere)... each phase has a coil, 2 caps, and 2 transistors as the largest components.
the 2 transistors are not the same size, one is large (looks about the same size as a TO-220, but surface mounted) and the other is small (not TO-92 small, but smaller). the clearest part of the image for seeing this is directly above the PS/2 mouse/keyboard ports.
the transistors are not the same height
it would make block construction EASY if I only had to cool the larger FET. What do the smaller ones do?