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Cooling capcitors?

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trents

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
There is a lot of talk about cooling for mosfets on this forum. I've noticed that the capacitors on my mobo also get quite warm to the touch when I'm stress testing. Is it advisable to put heat sinks on those too? I have a gigabyte board with "all solid capacitors".
 
You can add sinks to them with thermal tape, but it's not really needed unless you're overclocking for world records.

The mosfets, however, will definately benefit from adding sinks on them :)
 
yea caps are DANGEROUS! i know they dont hold as much charge as a PSU one, but it can still cause a nasty burn.. or worse, damage to some nerves.
 
yea caps are DANGEROUS! i know they dont hold as much charge as a PSU one, but it can still cause a nasty burn.. or worse, damage to some nerves.

So I shouldn't lick the contacts anymore to check for a charge? <jk>

There should be no need to put any kind of a heatsink on the capacitors. Often times they are warm because of something else on the board heating up. (Either the board is warm in that area, a hot component near them, or warm air is blowing at them.)
 
What about those black, cube-shaped things interspersed with the mosfets? Coils, is that what I've read them referred to? Do they benefit much from heat sinks?
 
black cube shaped? uhh do they have a number and do you have any bigger ones around the board.

the bigger ones are Ferrite Choke cores, while the little ones are your voltage regulators

correct me if im wrong

@corruption , i always lick mine =p they tickle.

EDIT, so i was slightly off they are your voltage phase regulators. lol pretty much just keeps your voltage going to components in check....
 
black cube shaped? uhh do they have a number and do you have any bigger ones around the board.

the bigger ones are Ferrite Choke cores, while the little ones are your voltage regulators

correct me if im wrong

@corruption , i always lick mine =p they tickle.

EDIT, so i was slightly off they are your voltage phase regulators. lol pretty much just keeps your voltage going to components in check....

Yeah, they have a number: R60
 
are you talking about the inductors or caps?
in the picture below are a line of caps and inductors. the inductors (what get hot) are labelled "1R2"
socket-775.jpg



mine are labelled R50 and i glued heatsinks on them. they will help increase the life of the caps surrounding them as they won't get so hot.

here is a picture of my board and me starting to put them on,
361066_5080_01.jpg



bing, if it see's this, can tell you more.
 
Performance wise, warm (not too hot) cap vs cool cap is trivial, ... BUT ... their life will be shortened almost exponentially. Check this out OSCON Cap Life vs Temp.

On that chart, that is Sanyo Oscon cap, one of the best in the world.
Those with purple label at second pic in Spawn-Inc's post above are Sanyo Oscon cap. So you can expect much more shorter life vs temperature for non branded or 2nd tier/lower quality cap compared to these top quality one.

Now, when those caps are getting "roasted", they will not die suddenly, instead their performance will degrade and affecting the power quality to the cpu "gradually". The geek/tech speak is their ESR (Equivalent Series Resistance) will getting higher from time to time, and will have impact the VCore delivered to CPU in a really bad way when they're getting near their end of life. Thats why older mobo that was heavily overclocked before for quite some time will never have the same VCore's quality as the new one. :D

If you're replacing your mobo say for every year, I think looking at above cap's life chart is not a big deal, but if the rig is planned to be a server running 24x7, and will be placed in the corner/closet with a so-so air circulation and will be forgotten for quite sometime, it is recommended to cool those caps by putting small sink on the inductor (black boxes) to dissipate their heat faster instead of radiating it's heat to the caps, or the easier way is by putting small fan blowing those area. Also sinking those inductor especially the rounded cap is not easy.

Other proof, click on my sig on "Inductors are hotter than mosfets", you will see the inductor basically are toasting the surrounding caps. From that pic, those mosfets are not that hot compared to the inductors from that infra red readings. If you're running your rig on bench table, just touch those black boxes while on high load with your finger to see my point. :D


.
 
bing,

Indeed I have touched those black box "inductors" under heavy load and they are hot. That's why I'm asking these questions. A lot of guys mention sinking the mosfets but there's a lot of other stuff on the board that gets pretty hot.

Cliked on your sig link for the infrared pic. Your inductors are open coil jobbies. I don't have anything like that.
 

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Trents pretty much our blocks ARE open coils with plastic over them

if you crack an inductor open ... DONT! unless you have a Dead board... or old one , but new enough to have them.

you will see the inside is just open coils. the flat box design does make it easier to throw on some sinks, and it stops slight EMI
 
Cliked on your sig link for the infrared pic. Your inductors are open coil jobbies. I don't have anything like that.



DarkFury is correct, the newer style inductors are all covered with boxes.

if you look at the first picture i linked to you can see on the end one. to the right of the cpu, there is a coil under it.
 
Spawn is right, here, better clue on few different types of black box inductors from different angles, a pic worth ..... :D

LD.gif
Courtesy of Trio Technology Co, Ltd.
 
Cooling Chokes (Power Inductors), is bad idea, the problem for High Temp is Over Power, u can replace Chokes Like in This Video:
 
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