I'm doing a mod that involves fitting lots of stuff into very small spaces, and i'm thinking of taking the heatsinks off my rheobus to make more room. How well do you think it will cope without the heatsinks? should i replace them with smaller heatsinks, like chopped up heatsink from an old GFx card or suchlike? I reckon those heatsinks can't be doing _THAT_ much, but if you know otherwise, tell me! ta
The easiest way to find out would be to test it in a controlled environment. Add the fans that you want to use on the rheobus, remove the heatsinks, turn the fans down to the lowest setting, and take a temp measurement either by instrument or your hand. The semi-conductors that have the heatsink placed on them can be in a state of very high temperature but make sure to check the data sheet. If they are well within tolerance then it is perfectly okay to take the heatsinks off.
Yes, at that setting all power that is not normally used by the fan will be conducted into the surrounding air by the regulator.
