Voltage Regulators

You will notice various voltage regulation circuits on a motherboard.  These regulate and stabilise the DC power to the main components.  These circuits are easy to indentify because the inductor coils need to be quite large in size.  The coil is usually a length of copper wire wrapped round a ring.  The actual switching regulators are the black square shaped devices with a few extruding pins, near the coils.

CPU voltage regulation

You will see the CPU voltage regulators right alongside the CPU socket.  In an overclocked system the regulators can become quite hot.  They will dissipate heat through the motherboard, but extra cooling is often applied in the form of a small fan.

Good quality voltage regulation is important on high performance PCs.

The photo below shows the system memory voltage regulation circuit.

Memory voltage regulator.

Useful external links

semiconductors.globalspec.com (IC switching volatage regulators)

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