VRM/Phase upgrade on a HD5970 (fix for overheating card vrms?)

Hey guys.

According to all the teardowns and reviews of this monster of a card the VRMs get too hot and throttle back - but also, there is spare slots for 2 more phases on the card -> (bottom of this teardown) http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/gra...deon-hd-5970/2

Now I dont know too much about the circuitry stuff of electronics, but if we were to add these extra phases, would this take off some of the load for the others and keep em cooler?

Has anyone tried doing this just to increase overall card juice as well?

Thoughts? Am I mad?

-Ash

Theres nothing to indicate that the card would even know how to use them even if you were somehow able to add those empty vrm spots. in-fact it might hurt the card more than help it even if you could get it to use them, as it would take the card out of factory set tolerences.

Thats ignoring the fact that they seem to be surface mount parts and thus nearly impossible to add without damaging/destroying the card.

The PWM controllers are only three-phase controllers, so you would have to replace those as well. It would be tricky to find exactly the right components to suit their purpose, and like Chilly pointed out, there's no guarantee that it would even work altogether. So I would say that it's not a fantastic idea.

Insane that you would think of adding the 4th GPU phase yourself. The capacity for a second 8-pin PEG and two more vGPU power phases is there, however it will require a new bios, and is probably saved for future board revisions.