Hi there,
It's good to see you again, fellows. 😀
It's hot here (when the time comes, you will know what I mean).

So, I'm on this mission (seems an eternal one) to recover and make my hardware collection shining as new and sealed. So I often don't have time to play with
benchmarks, comparisons and get along. Today I'd like some help specifically in relation to the following motherboards: 1 Abit and 1 Soyo motherboard.

1) The Soyo 7VBA133U was plagued with leaking capacitors from underneath. Most of them were bulging and totally dried near "Vcore area"). Sacon is evil !
I'm so impressed cause I've never seen something like that. Awful, just awful! Thanks god Rubycon on Abit AB9 pro is the good. Let's take a look on the recap stats:

• (10) capacitors rating 1500uf 10v were replaced with 1500uf 6.3v (new).
  (6) fault 1000uf 10v were replaced with 1000uf 6.3v (new)
  (2) 1500uf 10v were replaced with 1500uf 16v (used but tested outside).
  (10) Old Sacon remaining (pretty soon I will take them out)

I know this is overkill for DOS games and Voodoo5 and AWE32 is kinda pointless combination for glide games. Yeah, that was a complicated era, indeed.
Regardless of this fact, I want my Soyo working 100%. Fortunately, now "everything" is fine and stable.
Not really. Going more in-depth about my problem, I found out a component getting extremely hot. I believe it is feeding the memories.
I can only hold my finger on it for a few seconds (I'm really concerned)
Also, the super I/O (just right next to it) is kind hot, but not that much. They say this super I/O is the very first chip "turning on" in a motherboard.

What's happening here ?
Is this the kind of trouble I may have changing those capacitor rates?
I'm pretty sure this is not true because I have studied about motherboard caps on a reliable source.
Having asked this, 768MB of RAM passing 6 times in MEMTEST is proof of great stability, isn't ?

The component in question (voltage regulator) gets really hot from square one - the moment I turn on the computer:

I am having a bad feeling about this component (presenting 3v instead of 3.3v DIMM needs).
As i said, I have studied about it and chances are the component itself or some CI is acting up. Sure I can take them out, but I don't have defectives
SOYO anymore (I'm such a fool cause I trashed two of them in the past).

Many thanks for being receptive even to dumb question like mine.
Boring...but you still work some potions for me 😀

Help me or I don't know what I will do (Ogden reference here...to be able to write in english I just copy lines from cartoon, games, etc... Sad).
Goddamn, I must stop crying and whining.

2) And there is this Abit AB9 Pro - with a strange train and the moto: "Xpress for the big tracks" in front of the box - I scored some time ago
(orange PCB, heatsinks in blue metal 😈 and Pink BIOS) for peanuts - 9$. This must be from the early days of PCI express. I'm kind happy!

Alongside the Abit, a Conroe (was laying around). They are so cheap these days it hurts me. How could that happen ? 2007 is just around here. Time sure flies.
Never gonna sell my Conroe processor. You just can't make a profit from it and these C2D were so popular. Besides I don't have spares.
Doesn't matter anyway. To hell with money 😳 😳 😳. Just put your garbage in front of my house and I'll make it fly.
The fact is I love bringing back boards from the dead and putting processors to use. So, straight to business:

• The Southbridge is getting kinda hot, but listen, this is true when you compare this Abit Ab9 pro with any other mid range socket 755.
  For example, the ASUS P5N-E SLI (although the hottest chip here is the Northbridge, whereas the Silent-OTES cooling the NorthBridge
  in the ABIT AB9 Pro is as cold as winter (I may say around 40C)).
  You see, I tested the board with MEMTEST (passed 2GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800 *** 3 times ***). So it's clear now I'm being paranoid about this Conroe build!
  The question is: There is even a pipe on the Northbridge to the PWM and Mosfets. What about the Southbridge burning with only that little heatsink??
  This is way too ilogical.

• OK. What the hell is that ? A revision lacking 3 SATA ports ? I don't care about that and I'm satisfied, but the Abit Ab9 Pro comes with 9 SATA ports, not 6.
  Of course I saw some pictures on net which match my motherboard, but I'm still confused! Like, Do I have an Abit Ab9 ?
  -Yes, only six SATA ports and (1) Ethernet 😠 .
  -No, it's written Abit Ab9 pro up in the first memory slot, though it doesn't take a detective to realize the label "Abit AB9" on my motherboard fell off.
  
  Conclusion: Right now I'm not considering myself a Pro. 🙁
  And in consequence I think I made a big mistake: Flashed Abit Ab9 with Abit Ab9 Pro BIOS. Here we go!

Look, I know this is way modern stuff and not retro stuff, but C2D is 10 years old and this qualifies for vintage. Believe it or not, it's an axiom around here. 😎
Many thanks,