What do defective capacitors look like?

Like aging people, they bulge up and may leak from their bungs. There are a few brands of these caps, which you can find by googling. Typically something like 1000uF to 1500uF 6.3VDC. No idea if the Dell mombos were involved.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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Spehro responded:

There are also some counterfeits running around out there too. i.e. caps with bad electrolyte which have been labeled as a "good" brand (e.g. Nichicon, Rubycon etc). This happened when warehouses of "bad electrolyte" capacitors had to be sold somewhere, somehow...

I doubt any of these ever made it into the Dell supply stream.

Tim.

"Tim Shoppa" wrote

I just saw this happen to an Epox motherboard that was only about two years old. Until then I thought the bad caps were all gone a few years ago. I have seen reputable brand boards with bulging/leaking caps, so even the big boys got screwed back then. Epox is not what I'd call one of those reputable brands, but that's just my opinion. I've seen Asus and Gigabyte suffer from this for sure, I think MSI as well but I'm not sure on that.

Hello Peter,

I read this in our morning paper today, regarding them taking a charge for possible costs associated with replacing the motherboards. No idea where they got the caps from though.

Probably they are on the web somewhere. As Spehro said one clue is bulging, usually of the top. Another is oozing. Look around, they will unlikely all begin to croak at the same time. So if you see some caps looking nice and then some others of same size and brand beginning to bulge, you'll know that trouble is coming.

Regards, Joerg

In message , peter writes

I suspect the Dell failures are caused by inadequate cooling and cheap parts, it's a standing joke at the place I work. The Dell engineer doesn't seem to find it funny though, mind you he hears it at least once a week (we save up the machines for him)

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Have a look at

for all the info you could want!

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Two different. Read on - reposted from yesterday.

Here's a more complete listing of manufacturers who have had/are having quality issues with electrolytic capacitors.

In case this site gets nuked, here are the listed manufacturers:

Commonly failed capacitor brands

• Tayeh (A brand that does not appear to exist, indicating the actual manufacturers were wary of putting their name on their product; and probably a fake of "Ta-Keh", a genuine maker of high-end capacitors for audio equipment, used by Denon) * Chhsi * Teapo (Teapo has denied these claims, and evidence suggests their new capacitors are sound, however their older ones appear to suffer from the same problems other brands do) * I.Q. * Rulycon (A clone of "Rubycon", a well-known manufacturer of high-quality capacitors, right down to the exact style of the cases and the fonts used for lettering) * JPCON * Jackcon (The only capacitor manufacturer to own up to their mistake; they are also the only one to issue free replacement capacitors to people who had theirs fail. Their new products appear to be of greater quality.) * JDEC * CTC * (G) Luxon (also G-Luxon) * Gloria * Raycon * Hermei * Choyo * GSC * Nrsy (only with X-shaped vents. The new NRSY capacitors have K vents and are a genuine, high-quality Nippon-made part.) * Fuhjyyu (found in Antec power supplies to this day)

As of May 2005, some evidence

shows that the failing Nichicon capacitors on the iMac, Intel, and Dell boards are due to a different problem (specifically, overfilling the capacitors with electrolyte) than the one discussed on this page (faulty electrolyte formula). However, the symptoms (both the effects on the system and the physical appearance of the capacitors) are the same as the other failing capacitors, as is how to identify them, and the required repair.

(I've actually seen a Dell P4 motherboard that had failing Nichicon parts!)

In message , "Watson A.Name - \"Watt Sun, the Dark Remover\"" writes

Umm, well we see loads of SX270s and I'm inclined to agree with you about the 'bad caps' bit but temperature is a massive factor in decreasing the life span of electrolytic capacitors, bad caps or not, I'd be surprised if it wasn't also a factor here. BTW, the SX270 runs hot when it's in it's proper stand, if any of the vents get covered for more than a couple of minutes the heat is *very* uncomfortable on your hand, verging on painful if the vents have been covered for more than a few minutes (I know the vents shouldn't be covered etc... Users will be users)

The problem is not limited to the SX270 Dell machine either, we've started seeing numbers of GX280 SFF machines with exactly the same problem.

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about bad

I recently read an article about these, complete with a URL to the pictures of them. You can do a google news search for the articles and pics. The pic showed a Nichicon 1500 uF (not hF) at 6.3V capacitor, gold letters on black case. The top was bulging, it had not yet failed.

about bad

IIRC, it was the Dell Optiplex GX270s. Some Slashdot threads said that some companies had many hundreds of these deployed across the country and they were failing like crazy. And they're PO'd because Dell won't own up to the problem and blah-blah-blah. Also Abit MoBo's and some other MoBo makers. :-/

You can go to

or for even more bad news.

Last week I had a PS fail in a Dell, but the PS had to go back to Dell (it's still under warranty), so I couldn't take a peek to see if it was the problem. Also had a HDD fail, but it wasn't a Maxtor, it was a WD HD200.

reward"

You're wrong. Check out all these articles.

about bad

once

The caps are rated for much higher temps than what's inside of a Dell PC. The higher temp should have very little to do with the failure rate. They're "just bad caps."

Capacitors are rated for a certain lifetime. When it has a lifetime at

50 degrees C of for example 100.000 hours, it may well be 10.000 hours at 80 degrees C and 1.000 at 100 degrees.

Chinese manufacterers try to get as much out of the components as possible, European ones try to let the electronics live long. It is a different approach.

And when then capacitors are bad, the Chinese stuff gets into problems first.

Pieter

No idea bout the Dell-problem, but here are some pics:

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