Most of those transistors are purely decorative. Go ahead and scrape a few more off - fewer components means lower power consumption!
In all seriousness, that looks like a transistor of some sort, not a cap or resistor. I don't know enough about modern motherboard design to guess its function, but I can tell you that there's not really such a thing as "redundant" components in the way you're guessing. It might be boosting some signal, it might just be for controlling those asinine lights that are on everything nowadays, but you probably want to be ready to replace that motherboard at the drop of a hat, since you're likely not equipped to repair that yourself.