So I pulled apart one of my test PCs to clean out the dust this weekend.
When pulling it apart, I noticed some heat discoloration on the back of the PCB. I saw one of the mosfets was running hot, so I figured I would put a heatsink on it and be done with it.
That was until I realized just how hot it was running. My infrared thermometer puts the temperature of this mosfet at 97°C. This seems really hot, as all the other mosfets on the board are much lower - around 50-60°C. I also don't think it can be good for the Sanyo WG cap right next to it. The placement of the mosfet also makes it difficult to put a heatsink on it, as it can't be too tall due to the video card placement.
Now, the board works just fine. It's stable, it has good caps, and it's hooked up to a good Seasonic power supply. It's my most used test box, which has a bunch of PCI disk controllers in it. I looked at upgrading it awhile ago, but it's really hard to find things with enough PCI slots these days...or a BIOS that still boots with 3 add-in storage controllers.
So I'm seeking some advice from the technical gurus. Is the mosfet bad perhaps, if so, would I be seeing stability issues? Any way to test it? Is it supposed to run that hot? Given that I already put it back in the case, I had to steal a photo from Google images. I've highlighted the mosfet location on the board, if that sheds any light on anything.
When pulling it apart, I noticed some heat discoloration on the back of the PCB. I saw one of the mosfets was running hot, so I figured I would put a heatsink on it and be done with it.
That was until I realized just how hot it was running. My infrared thermometer puts the temperature of this mosfet at 97°C. This seems really hot, as all the other mosfets on the board are much lower - around 50-60°C. I also don't think it can be good for the Sanyo WG cap right next to it. The placement of the mosfet also makes it difficult to put a heatsink on it, as it can't be too tall due to the video card placement.
Now, the board works just fine. It's stable, it has good caps, and it's hooked up to a good Seasonic power supply. It's my most used test box, which has a bunch of PCI disk controllers in it. I looked at upgrading it awhile ago, but it's really hard to find things with enough PCI slots these days...or a BIOS that still boots with 3 add-in storage controllers.
So I'm seeking some advice from the technical gurus. Is the mosfet bad perhaps, if so, would I be seeing stability issues? Any way to test it? Is it supposed to run that hot? Given that I already put it back in the case, I had to steal a photo from Google images. I've highlighted the mosfet location on the board, if that sheds any light on anything.
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