Replacing buldged capacitors on a motherboard?

[orangeusa]

I design boards/hardware for tough environments. Caps never fail like this unless they went cheap on cap mfg, or didn't spec caps right.

As mentioned above, yeah, it's a piece of cake to replace them, but I wouldn't trust any motherboard that failed like this. It will only happen again.
HP has underwhelmed me in the PC market. Their test equipment is awesome and priced as such, but not the PC garbage.

I had ONE case where a run of boards failed, but it was bad components. Turns out the parts were counterfeited - no kidding - somebody in China had relabelled one IC which was in a couple hundred boards.. Took a while to solve that problem....

[gunn]

I design boards/hardware for tough environments. Caps never fail like this unless they went cheap on cap mfg, or didn't spec caps right.

As mentioned above, yeah, it's a piece of cake to replace them, but I wouldn't trust any motherboard that failed like this. It will only happen again.
HP has underwhelmed me in the PC market. Their test equipment is awesome and priced as such, but not the PC garbage.

I had ONE case where a run of boards failed, but it was bad components. Turns out the parts were counterfeited - no kidding - somebody in China had relabelled one IC which was in a couple hundred boards.. Took a while to solve that problem....

Yeah, they went cheap on their caps... like much of the industry.

Also, isn't their test equipment now made by Agilent, a seperate corporate company altogether?

[winnre]

We had that happen on about 15 dell boxes. We hit Radio Shack for the caps and replaced them all ourselves. Easy as 7th grade electronics class and much cheaper.

Of course, they were out of warranty, and I think there is a class action suit because of it.

[badfish2]

Well I pulled the board out to check the bottom, and all the leads are pretty isolated from other components so I have plenty of room to work. Funny thing is, all the caps that are bad are identical, 9 total. Im going to chance radio shack and see if they have what I need and go for it :-)

[sfwdiy]

yup, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

I'd be willing to bet this was the cause of the problem. There were a huge number of bad capacitors that were made in the last 8 years or so. Every manufacturer got hit pretty hard with these problems.

When I was working at Apple I'd replace motherboards all day long that had bad caps. I'd see four or five iMacs a week with this problem. The replacement boards we'd get for those machines all just had the caps replaced. If you know how to solder you can replace 'em.

I replaced a video card in my media center Mac that had blown caps on it about a year ago, too. That one wasn't worth re-soldering. I wanted to upgrade anyway.

--B

[orangeusa]

Digikey.com is your friend. Radio Shack has ceased to be a source of common electronics. (just my 2 cents here).

[JDay]

Digikey.com is your friend. Radio Shack has ceased to be a source of common electronics. (just my 2 cents here).

Radio Shack still has all the stuff that used to be in the stores, it's just that you usually have to order it from their catalog, and don't expect the sales guys to know they sell this stuff. Their retail stores don't carry much beyond cell phones and cellular accessories these days.

[badfish2]

Yeah radio shack only had a few pcb type capacitors, i'll be checking out digikey.

[badfish2]

found the capacitors I needed at badcaps.net, placed the order and they shipped the SAME day! I ended up ordering and replacing all the "tk" brand caps on the motherboard, a little time consuming but worth the effort since I had the thing apart already. After replacing a total of 12 capacitors and reassembling, the computer booted right up!

It looks like I fixed the problem, the computer would always crash when running the "windows experience index", but passes now

Total investment: $15 in parts / shipping (I already had a 40 watt iron and solder)

[Matt C]

That's awesome actually.

[sfwdiy]

Badass. Way to refurb your own board.

--B

[WTSGDYBBR]

Replacing caps are very easy. Make sure you get the same voltage of cap's you remove. Let say 7v , 3300UF If you put a cap that is less in voltage you better believe it will blow up. Now on your cap there is a Negative and positive side make sure you identify the negative side when you replace it. It would be best to buy a solder sucker/solder soldering pump they are like $5 bucks and they will save you a ton of headache. You just heat the area were the solder is and use the pump to remove the solder from that area. You can buy caps at www.digikey.com of you need help or have questions I'm a wiz at electronics.

Below is what the negative side looks like

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://blogs.courant.com/colin_mcenroe_to_wit/capacitor.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.overclock.net/nvidia/812179-capacitor-help.html&usg=__qe3KTyfYbx8KMWZ3pp5t54jOmQI=&h=564&w=1081&sz=147&hl=en&start=19&zoom=1&tbnid=yaoeg4Bbu7btxM:&tbnh=75&tbnw=143&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dnegative%2Bside%2Bof%2Ba%2Bcapacitor%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26biw%3D1366%26bih%3D578%26tbs%3Disch:10%2C367&um=1&itbs=1&ei=_aD8TPHyCoGssAPMjrD3DQ&iact=rc&dur=184&oei=36D8TI-oH46usAPa16j3DQ&esq=10&page=2&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:2,s:19&tx=68&ty=8&biw=1366&bih=578

Here is a youtube clip out to use a de solder pump.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw4lZGk90i4

[G-forceJunkie]

Timley post. My Dell went TU last week, wont boot up, and the first thing I noticed with the case open was bulging and leaking caps. I've bought a new computer (it was time, I've been holding off) I think I'll give it the $15 cap fix and see if that works, that would be the easiest way to get my data off the drives.