Article on motherboard capacitor failures and repair suggestions.

Good article. I have seen this exact issue in all of the popular motherboards; Intel, ASUS, MSI and many others; all the brands that 'puter geeks rave about. Think your board is immune? Better have a look. Anyone know of a board manufacturer who waives warranty expiration for this issue?

Another good site about this widespread problem is

It's not just motherboards, either. Televisions, etc. are also affected.

No, but FWIW the good folks at Epox replaced my caps for a nominal cost. It's not all good news, though -- the replacement caps have since failed, too. When that happened (recently) I replaced them myself with what will hopefully prove to be better quality parts.

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Apple will do I hear

David

Tom Dempster wrote:

G'day David, What a coincidence. My Gigabyte GA-8IE motherboard has just turned 4 years old. I've examined the electrolytics every time I've had the PC cover off, and they've always been OK. The other day I checked again... at least 3 electrolytics now have swollen tops and two have split, releasing that yellow gunk. I'm about to rip the main board out and try replacing them. I never thought the problem would take so long to appear, but there you go. The electros in my earlier video card took "only" a couple of years to fail in the same way.

Bob

My brother, who was a GM warranty adjuster, told me it doesn't matter when the breakdown occurs. What matters is whether the defect existed during the warranty. Most people have heard of silent recalls and extended warranties when a product has problems. This way they avoid having a real recall. Not giving legal advice, just suggesting people should check into it if the money involved makes it worth while to them. I don't have a board that was mfg during that time period or that's had a problem. I got a monitor replaced about 8 months past warranty. Also talked my friend into taking his out of warranty Honda lawn mower back to Sears and he got an engine that didn't have a rod sticking out of the crankcase for the effort YMMV.

Hi Bob

For all the important stuff I use an older Apple Mac, and so far (7years) so good. But I also have a later model Windows box (Intel Pentium 2.8 meg?) with a Gigabyte GA81G1000 mainboard. Looks like I'd better take the cover off and have a look - it's always doing something weird but naturally I just assumed it was all to do with that crappy Windows XP.

Oh well, I'd better warm up the soldering iron just in case Windows is only half as bad as I thought

cheers

David

Bob Parker wrote:

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Mine sometimes crashed on startup. Windoze always said it was caused by a driver but didn't know which driver it was. Only time will tell if it was related to the electrolytics which have highest ESR when cold. I measured the ESR of the two 3300uF 6.3V ones which had ruptured at

0.8 and 0.7 ohms, when they should be around ~0.01-0.02 ohms. Luckily I've got a Dick Smith Electronics ESR meter. ;-)

Rgds Bob

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It thought you were still using the prototype you conned from that nice guy that designed it? ;-)

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Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

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I have a real DSE MK2 ESR meter where I work (which I built to evaluate the kit), and the notorious beat-up prototype at home. Yeah, I know it was wicked of me to con it out of the designer. ;-)

Did this affect laptops too ? I have a Dell that will not compleatly finish loading windows XP .

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Cheer up! At least Phil didn't get it! ;-)

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Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

It affects all kinds of motherboards. laptops have lots of ventilation problems, as well.

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Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
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Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

I have to recap a couple of Abit KT7A-RAID mobos, probably this week. I gather it's well known to be a casualty of this malarky.

Graham

I had to do my MB a few years back - replaced 15 caps, 12 of which were visibly bad. Still running fine.

WT

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Exactly right. I just repaired an Onkyo receive+dvd player that had this exact problem with the large (10,000uf/70VDC) caps in the PS. As it turns out, the PS design is so tight that it appears when the disk platter motor would rotate and the disks would load onto the spindle, the current draw was enough to lower the voltage on the control chips for the dvd optics, which would inturn cause a 'disk err' on the drive. I know these units are known for flakey OPUs, but in this particular case, a marginal PS appears to have contributed to the problem. Now the disk err message occurs in about 1/10 loads and not 8/10 loads. In any case, its worth checking. John

My company has processed approx 200 warranty claims for blown caps for Dell Optiplex GX-270 Desktop PC's and a couple Optiplex GX-260's. They all started failing last year and continue today. Dell has extended our warranty for all of the several hundred Optiplex GX-270 Desktop PC's we have.

Other than the visual inspection ...the system starts to slow way down and will randomly shut down and will display a message stating tha the System was shut down due to a thermal event.

Sam in Raleigh.