ASUS Maximus III Gene Motherboard
Voltage Regulator
Contents
ASUS Maximus III Gene comes with a 10-phase voltage regulator circuit. From the 10 available phases, eight are used to generate the CPU main voltage (Vcc, a.k.a. Vcore) while the other two are used to generate the voltage required by the integrated memory controller and L3 memory cache (VTT). Thus this motherboard has a “8+2” configuration. It also comes with a separated two-phase circuit for the memory modules.
This motherboard comes with two passive heatsinks installed on top of the transistors of the voltage regulator circuit, connected to each other using a heatpipe. This heatpipe doesn’t make any sense, because it doesn’t carry the heat generated by the transistors to a heatsink so it could be dissipated. If this heatpipe wasn’t available the heat would be dissipated the same way.
In Figure 7, you can see the voltage regulator circuit.
Figure 7: Voltage regulator circuit.
As mentioned earlier, all capacitors used on this motherboard are solid made in Japan and the voltage regulator circuit uses ferrite chokes, which are better than iron chokes. Please read our Everything You Need to Know About the Motherboard Voltage Regulator tutorial for more information.
