Probably someone higher up the management who had never seen the actual motherboards and couldn't understand design documents, decided to use these sockets because they were .000001 cheaper AND green.

He got a promotion because of that and when his son showed him the flaw of the final product he fired the guy who did the design

Was there supposed to be a chip south of that cap?

Similar case happens on my recent acquisition, and it's also an Asus (A7V133-C).

With the Athlon 1200 having a comparable TDP (66W) of a modern mainstream CPU, I want to switch the (overkilling) 400W PSU currently on my Socket 7 build with the 250W PSU that came in together with this MB. However, the more modern 20+4 pin connector would have the clip slightly upwards (as in the orientation of the photo) and conflict with that purple capacitor. 😠 Of course I could remove the clip on the connector completely but that would be an irreversible damage. The capacitor is way too near the connector even if only a 20 pin was in mind.

The first thing that comes to mind is the first time I tried to unmount an ASUS P5A-B motherboard and eventually found out that one of the mounting screws is actually located inside the CPU socket 🤣

konc wrote on 2021-09-05, 08:54:

Probably someone higher up the management who had never seen the actual motherboards and couldn't understand design documents, decided to use these sockets because they were .000001 cheaper AND green.

He got a promotion because of that and when his son showed him the flaw of the final product he fired the guy who did the design

It's not a real 16x PCI-E slot. That's often why these slots get a different color especially considering it apparently has an AGP slot and a PCI-E 16x slot.
It's actually quite an interesting design decision. Not sure why the color green was chosen though, but would be interesting to find out (and I mean find out the real reason 😜 ).

Near clips or where fingers have to work is bad.

So is putting caps close to heat sinks which get very warm.

When I recap boards like this, I bend the leads and lay the cap down.

Recently I recapped a Socket-7 board. I took care to tweak the angle of some capacitors next to the CPU heatsink clip, because I had thus far been unable to install the damn thing for lack of clearance.
Then I installed an overly tall capacitor next to an ISA slot, making it impossible to install my AWE card anywhere on the board.
I have to tear it all down and re-replace that cap now.

===
I remember a mini-scandal erupting about some board (was it an EpoX?) that had a tall cap just under the AGP slot that blocked Geforce4 Ti cards.
The manufacturer suggested yanking it out with pliers.

dormcat wrote on 2021-09-05, 09:43:

Similar case happens on my recent acquisition, and it's also an Asus (A7V133-C).

I seem to recall owning a motherboard at some point that did this as well. Trying to remove the ATX power connector was always a painful and risky process.

I have one PIII board where capacitors block the ATX power connector latch. I ended up putting shorter caps there so that it wouldn't be such a big problem.

This is one of the dumbest things I've seen in my entire life. How am I supposed to insert the ATX power connector?

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-09-22, 05:49:

This is one of the dumbest things I've seen in my entire life. How am I supposed to insert the ATX power connector? […]
Show full quote

This is one of the dumbest things I've seen in my entire life. How am I supposed to insert the ATX power connector?

IMG_20210922_014639_resize_1.jpg

IMG_20210922_014257_resize_90.jpg

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Hack up the connector to make it fit or use an older PSU with the smooth 20pin I guess.