My daughter's computer was built with an Intel motherboard.  A few days ago, she says it keeps blue-screening.  I check it out and sure enough, it's locking up and BSOD'ing with different stop codes.  Hmmm...I pop the case and find:



There are eight of these on the mobo and six are leaking and the other two are swollen at the top.  Fortunately, there's an electronic parts supply house about 10 miles away and I was able to get near replacements; 10V vs. 6.3V.  They are a bit larger in diameter, but I was able to get them all to fit.

The machine is now up and running fine.  This is the third time I've faced this.  My older Mitsu TV had this problem and I replaced the caps.  They lasted about three years when they too went tango-uniform and I had to replace them again.

I'm a mechanical guy.  The EE's of my acquaintance say it's substandard PRC sourced parts.  Anyone else here seeing this crap?

I just build a new machine ever year

I've got 2 on a 46" LCD tv that are swollen. Still trying to decide whether it's worth it to replace them or not... it's 3 years old.

It takes like 5 minutes.  It's worth it.

For several years, MOST of the electrolytic capacitor industry was using a "better" electrolyte formula that was actually stolen

from one of the manufacturers in a nice bit of industrial espionage.





But it turned out that the stolen formula was INCOMPLETE.





Enormous quantities of electronics built with the defective capacitors went to an early grave because of the problem.





At this time, and for the last few years,  NO manufacturer of capacitors has used the faulty electrolyte formulation.





But there are still plenty of products that have them in them.
CJ

Depending on the exact cap types,  they might be 20 bucks in parts and 20 minutes in labor time to fix it yourself.



Yeah, I'd say that it's worth it.





If you disagree,  just sell me the TV, ship it to me, and we'll both be happy with that.



 

I have a 50" Magotbox with them and had to replace 4. But it works fine now.

Dell GX series pc's are notorious for cap issues, the 260,270,280 models i had all had multiple mb replacements

I have been swapping the old pc,s out for 745 or greater models.

Get back to us in a few months, and let us know how the new ones hold up.

Those capacitors get run hard, which is why the originals crapped out.  If you didn't get low-ESR units with long-life electrolytes, the replacements won't last long, either.  

Good capacitors that would long outlast the usefulness of the motherboard are expensive... they would have cost the mobo manufacturer another dollar or two.     So most manufacturers are more than willing to use substandard parts, and even run things right on the ragged edge of specs in order to save a dollar.

Some cap manufacturers (CapCon is one I've come across a ton) have very good specs on paper, but from the abysmal performance and lifespan, it seems that they're stretching things awfully far in their datasheets.

If they do pop on you, Panasonic FM series are good, with Nichicon HZ series as a second choice.   Use the same voltage as originals, and the largest capacitance that you can fit in the location.  You'll find that high-quality caps are generally larger for a given voltage/capacitance combination than the cheap ones you are pulling out.

As for the dude with the TV... if you're not going to replace the capacitors, at least give it to someone who will replace them and use the TV after it quits on you.  

Uhh... yeah. This gets posted here about once a year.

Even has a wiki article and all.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

Dude... that was what, ten or fifteen years ago?

Today, it's not so much of a problem of a bad electrolyte formula, it's just that manufacturers are more than willing to sacrifice longevity to save a buck or two, and low-cost, low-quality cap manufacturers are willing to make such parts.  I've even seen manufacturers use name-brand caps, but put such puny ones in that they blew in no time.

That's not to say that there aren't counterfeit capacitors, there are.  But I have yet to re-cap a monitor, TV, motherboard, video card, or anything else with counterfeit caps, they just use cheap, no-name pieces of junk that they got for pennies.  I've also seen plain wet electrolytics that were made with the metal can and markings to make them look, at a casual glance, like they were solid polymers.

The other reason is simply that we're building more and more point-of-load converters, and putting more and more current through them.  15-20 years ago, CPUs drew something like 4A at 5V.  These days, they draw closer to 50A @ 1.2-1.8V, with some of the most obscene chips pulling nearly 100A from the POL converter when fully loaded.  When you have 12-25 times the current, you're going to have a TON more ripple, which is what heats up the caps (due to the ESR), which in turn degrades the electrolyte.  We simply run much more demanding applications than we did two decades ago, and manufacturers aren't always willing to sacrifice board space, part count, and part quality (all of which add up to $$$) to make a computer that will run for ten years.

I'll do that.  Oddly enough, there a bunch of other caps on the board, of differing physical sizes, capacitance, etc., and they all looked just fine. It was just these eight brown pieces of sh*t that were going bad.

This machine is only a couple of years old.  I expected better from an Intel motherboard.

That's pretty typical.  The power supply board has caps that serve various functions, everything from decoupling to loop compensation.  It's really only the bulk filters on the converter (especially on the output side) that see the heavy ripple and die early.   Additionally, the converter has multiple outputs of differing voltages, and some of them are of fairly low current, so those caps aren't worked as hard.

When I do one, I generally do all of the caps on the various outputs, whether they look like they need it or not.  Input caps can vary... if they're low-voltage, I'll replace them.  But usually the mains are rectified and fed right into a high-voltage (200+v) cap, I leave that alone.  They rarely die, and as they are connected right to the mains, there are safety issues such as failure mode and flammability should they fail.  If you're going to replace one of those, make a well-informed selection.

BTW, Intel mobos aren't generally terribly great.  I have a small Atom board from them, and they've definitely cut some corners... on two of the three converters, they didn't even bother using an input capacitor.  On one, there is even a spot there for a capacitor, they just didn't feel like using one.  The board does work, but while Intel CPUs are top-notch... their motherboards are overpriced and not terribly feature-rich.

I ordered 6 mobos with faulty capacitors for optiplex 745's, today.

Yes sir! Those 200 series GX series are notorious for cap issues.....typically effects the video portion of the mobo first....and it gets worse from there. I've replaced a lot of them.....

I have found that the majority of LCD computer monitors and television issues boil down to bad caps in the power supply. An upgrade of caps go a long way.....and it's cheap.....

Then again....I also build tube amplifiers and other fun toys.....so I have most of these parts on hand......

The small form factor GX620s are also junk.  They have a line of caps in front of the sata port that go bad.  



 

I swapped out the 2 bad caps on the system board for my tv. Not sure how long it'll last because my soldering skills aren't the best and haven't been used in 20 years but it powers up.

Several of the stop codes mentioned in the OP were video related.  Though the caps were scattered over the whole board.  That was why I took the cover off at first - to see what video interface the board had so I could get a new card (the board was/is using the onboard video).

My daughter likes to leave her computer on 24/7 for the most part and it's still up and running with no problems.

1) this has been known for years, as other have posted.

2) we did this subject here about a month ago.  so.. you must not come here often.

http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_1_124/1252217_Uses_for_an_old_computer.html