"Me" wrote in message
...
I thought you guys might find this interesting in light of the recent
thread on bad caps on certain brands of G4 cards. This explains it all
in glorious detail.

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY...eb03/ncap.html

Happened to my Abit board. I don't mind so much the fact that the caps were
defective (i.e. I don't really blame Abit - it lasted well beyond the
warranty period.) What I hated was the symptom. Random crashes started
happening. I didn't know of this problem so I tried almost EVERYTHING. Two
other factors made it even worse. The fan on my video has stopped spinning,
which made me suspect an overheating video chip, and I got a repeatable
error with Memtest (and this was repeatable even after the motherboard was
fixed, but caused no problem at all), which made me suspect the RAM. After
replacing the RAM, video cooler, reinstalling Windows, doing virus checks,
etc. etc., I finally heard about his problem. Man, you really have to look
close to see the problem. I had no idea a bulging capacitor was that
subtle. I didn't know they had to be PERFECTLY flat. I couldn't even see
the leaking electrolyte until I got the capacitors off the board. Anyway, I
soldered on new capacitors. Frankly I don't think it was going to work
because the solder joints didn't look all that great (not a great electrical
connection on all pins, I didn't think.) But it's been running like a champ
ever since.