Explosive capacitors - and how to replace them?

In article , stacko23
@my-deja.com says...
Hi NG!
I'm having a big problem: One of the 2200 µF chemical capacitors near
the cpu socket of my abit KT7 has exploded yesterday.
It just separated in two parts, with a loud 'pop' sound. I was lucky
that it just damaged his neighbour capacitor, but nothing else
(apparently) on the mainboard was broken. I was also lucky to be able
to shutdown the computer without problems (in a haste though, you
could imagine! )
As this capacitor was touching the cpu heatsink, I think this
malfunction was due to too much heat on the capacitor (up to 60 °C),
and now I want to replace it by hand.
Does anyone know:

This is a well known problem. There were a lot of bad caps sold a few
years ago. If you want to fix the board you really need to replace all
the caps. I'm sure you have more bad ones. There are two right under the
AGP slot that usually go first, and if you have any that are domed on
top or are leaking any black or brown substance they are bad also. You
can go here if you want to get the board repaired.

http://www.motherboardrepair.com/

Here are just a few of many links about the cap problems.

http://www.overclockers.com/tips00140/
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=5878
http://tinyurl.com/jw4m
http://www.ttiinc.com/MarketEye/zogb...s_20021014.asp
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=195

Doug

It's well known that Abit (and lots of other MOBO producers-even
Intel) have fallen prey to a several year problem of out-of-spec
(defective) caps.. Some boards run years, other only days.

It's even possible that your caps were in the death-martch for a long
time...maybe maybe, replacing the caps will even fix the other things
that seem to be wrong. The heaksink (I think) didn't hurt the
caps....the caps were just CRAP from day one.

If you're in warranty, call/write to Abit. If you have your purchase
invoice (proof of date) they will fix it free and even pay return
freight. Else, you have to pay a fixed fee (around $25 last time I
looked.

You will almost surely NOT get your own board back...rather they are
swapped from a 'pool'.

I had 2 boards fixed (around 10 days in the USA)...but I didn't like
the fact that ABit wasn't smart enough to replace the whole series of
caps (in a row...just a few. 2 weeks later, a cap blew. I've got the
skills, so I replaced the last few myself.

Most of the Abit boards I have are very stabile and running
years...but there are 1000's to 10 of 1000's of bad Abit MBs...due to
cheap cheap cheap CAPS.....There's even a whole story published in
Electronic News (Industry Paper) last year....many other products,
like cell phones etc are also effected....

Good Luck....

If your MB is out of warrnty, think carefully. Should you spend
$25.00, plus the cost of insured shipping and still being uncertain.

At an estimated $40.00 overall cost...think carefully about what a new
board will cost....with careful shopping it's not too much higher.










On 13 Aug 2003 05:15:42 -0700, (0) wrote:

Hi NG!
I'm having a big problem: One of the 2200 µF chemical capacitors near
the cpu socket of my abit KT7 has exploded yesterday.
It just separated in two parts, with a loud 'pop' sound. I was lucky
that it just damaged his neighbour capacitor, but nothing else
(apparently) on the mainboard was broken. I was also lucky to be able
to shutdown the computer without problems (in a haste though, you
could imagine! )
As this capacitor was touching the cpu heatsink, I think this
malfunction was due to too much heat on the capacitor (up to 60 °C),
and now I want to replace it by hand.
Does anyone know:
1. what these capacitors are good for on my Abit KT7/KT133 mainboard.
The damaged caps are the third and the fourth capacitor, starting from
the left. they are located south of the cpu socket A, with the north
bridge to the south east.
2. of a good performance/integrity testing software that fits on a
floppy, as I don't want to risk damaging my hard disks if the
replacement of the capacitors fails.
3. any advices, other than "be careful, it could screw the whole
motherboard/graphics card up!" Thank you, I know.
4. ideas how to protect/isolate the capacitors from the large
heatsink.
5. suggestions, or anything that could be helpful that passes through
your mind.

Thanks a lot for your upcoming help, really.
Bernd Haller

PS: When this happened, I wasn't doing any cpu intensive task. I was
creating some rythms with an X app called hydrogen, running the ALSA
sound driver under linux gentoo 2.4.20, so this was rather an I/O
intensive task, if this can help.

--
Homie and BigBadger repair boards and have many happy
customers:


Homie (AKA Capman), in the US, at:

http://home.att.net/~garyheadlee/


(look for posts from BigBadger if you're in the UK or try him at
with the obvious
spam protection removed...)



--

Thomas Geery
Network+ certified

ftp://geerynet.d2g.com
ftp://68.98.180.8 Abit Mirror ----- Cable modem IP
This IP is dynamic so it *could* change!...
over 115,000 FTP users served!
^^^^^^^




"0" wrote in message
om...
Hi NG!
I'm having a big problem: One of the 2200 µF chemical capacitors near
the cpu socket of my abit KT7 has exploded yesterday.
It just separated in two parts, with a loud 'pop' sound. I was lucky
that it just damaged his neighbour capacitor, but nothing else
(apparently) on the mainboard was broken. I was also lucky to be able
to shutdown the computer without problems (in a haste though, you
could imagine! )
As this capacitor was touching the cpu heatsink, I think this
malfunction was due to too much heat on the capacitor (up to 60 °C),
and now I want to replace it by hand.
Does anyone know:
1. what these capacitors are good for on my Abit KT7/KT133 mainboard.
The damaged caps are the third and the fourth capacitor, starting from
the left. they are located south of the cpu socket A, with the north
bridge to the south east.
2. of a good performance/integrity testing software that fits on a
floppy, as I don't want to risk damaging my hard disks if the
replacement of the capacitors fails.
3. any advices, other than "be careful, it could screw the whole
motherboard/graphics card up!" Thank you, I know.
4. ideas how to protect/isolate the capacitors from the large
heatsink.
5. suggestions, or anything that could be helpful that passes through
your mind.

Thanks a lot for your upcoming help, really.
Bernd Haller

PS: When this happened, I wasn't doing any cpu intensive task. I was
creating some rythms with an X app called hydrogen, running the ALSA
sound driver under linux gentoo 2.4.20, so this was rather an I/O
intensive task, if this can help.

Fishface wrote:

For fifty bucks, I will be happy with my 1.46 MHz Celeron for a
while longer.

Well, I probably wouldn't be happy at that speed! Multiply that by
a thousand and we're in business...

Hi NG!
Thanks for your massive replies, especially Doug for all your
interesting links! I looked on my motherboard and in fact there are 5
2200µF caps that are leaking, the one that exploded and the one he
damaged that I will try to replace ASAP. (btw: this is a mainboard I
bought two years abo on ebay, so it has no warranty anymore)
Unfortunately my electronics store is closed til August 25th, and
sending it to motherrboadrepair.com isn't worth the $50 as I'm living
in europe... But I have another question:
Don't you think that when soldering the caps on the mainboard, heating
the nearby sensible components would be dangerous for them?
Anyway, I feel reassured to see that I'm far of being the only one in
that case.

Thanks again,
Bernd

0 wrote:

Hi NG!
I'm having a big problem: One of the 2200 µF chemical capacitors near
the cpu socket of my abit KT7 has exploded yesterday.
It just separated in two parts, with a loud 'pop' sound. I was lucky
that it just damaged his neighbour capacitor, but nothing else
(apparently) on the mainboard was broken. I was also lucky to be able
to shutdown the computer without problems (in a haste though, you
could imagine! )
As this capacitor was touching the cpu heatsink, I think this
malfunction was due to too much heat on the capacitor (up to 60 °C),
and now I want to replace it by hand.
Does anyone know:
1. what these capacitors are good for on my Abit KT7/KT133 mainboard.
The damaged caps are the third and the fourth capacitor, starting from
the left. they are located south of the cpu socket A, with the north
bridge to the south east.
2. of a good performance/integrity testing software that fits on a
floppy, as I don't want to risk damaging my hard disks if the
replacement of the capacitors fails.
3. any advices, other than "be careful, it could screw the whole
motherboard/graphics card up!" Thank you, I know.
4. ideas how to protect/isolate the capacitors from the large
heatsink.
5. suggestions, or anything that could be helpful that passes through
your mind.

Thanks a lot for your upcoming help, really.
Bernd Haller

PS: When this happened, I wasn't doing any cpu intensive task. I was
creating some rythms with an X app called hydrogen, running the ALSA
sound driver under linux gentoo 2.4.20, so this was rather an I/O
intensive task, if this can help.

Bernd, could you tell us which brand of capacitor blew?

thanks,
-Leon.

--
cut out spammed

On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 20:27:30 GMT, seeker wrote:

It's well known that Abit (and lots of other MOBO producers-even
Intel) have fallen prey to a several year problem of out-of-spec
(defective) caps.. Some boards run years, other only days.

It's even possible that your caps were in the death-martch for a long
time...maybe maybe, replacing the caps will even fix the other things
that seem to be wrong. The heaksink (I think) didn't hurt the
caps....the caps were just CRAP from day one.

The capacitors may have been CR*P, but you have made an
incorrect assumption about the effect of heat.

The following comments apply generally to electrolytic capacitors
on all high-performance PC motherboards.

Prolonged heat is EXTREMELY damaging to the long-term reliability
of conventional electrolytic capacitors (the non-solid-slug variety).
The electrolyte gradually begins to dry out, the ability to handle
ripple current is reduced below the design specs for the circuit and
starts a vicious cycle of internal overheating of the capacitor, with
bulging and leaking of the remaining electrolyte leading to eventual
failure, sometimes spectacularly. Ventilation near the motherboard
surface and close to the CPU heatsink is chronically poor in most PCs.
Electrolytic capacitors on motherboards near the CPU heat-sink and/or
the CPU power regulators should all be the 105 degree C variety, not
the cheap 85 degree C version. The printed temperature ratings are
guidelines for short-term overheating and NOT continuous
temperature-ratings. As with voltage and ripple current, also with
temperature it is wise to continuously run any conventional
electrolytic far from its rated maximum.

Hopefully those repairing motherboards or supplying capacitors for
repair are exclusively using only 105 degree C parts. The temperature
rating is normally very clearly marked on the body of the
electrolytic.

John Lewis

There are about 20 brands of capacitors with the electrolyte that was probably part of
an anal leakage experiment gone wrong in Taiwan.
The most common are
Teapo
Tayeh
I.Q.
Lealon
J.P.con
Jackon
The list is much larger but this is such old news.....do a search on google.

More interesting is the list of motherboard manufactures and how ONLY Abit has stood
up and agreed the problem exists and is trying to help the customers when practical.
Some of the names that I am seeing EXTREME ( I love lawyers)capacitor related failure
rates are :
IBM
Hewlett Packard
Gateway (seems to be limited to a few low end models)
Shuttle
ECS
Epox
Soyo

The list is much larger but I am too busy fixing boards to remember all the
brands/models


Homie

--
Mainboards, Videocards & CPU pin repair.

http://motherboardrepair.com


"0" wrote in message
om...
Bernd, could you tell us which brand of capacitor blew?
jpcon 2200 µF 6.3V TM105°C

Bernd

I would use an Antex soldering with their unplated needle tip , and
radio-shack silver solder for surface mount devices only !!!
( and be very quick with soldering ) a little practice on junk smd
boards is best !!! ( before attempting to solder a comp-board )

tim CET-MD238

(0) wrote in message . com...
Hi NG!
Thanks for your massive replies, especially Doug for all your
interesting links! I looked on my motherboard and in fact there are 5
2200µF caps that are leaking, the one that exploded and the one he
damaged that I will try to replace ASAP. (btw: this is a mainboard I
bought two years abo on ebay, so it has no warranty anymore)
Unfortunately my electronics store is closed til August 25th, and
sending it to motherrboadrepair.com isn't worth the $50 as I'm living
in europe... But I have another question:
Don't you think that when soldering the caps on the mainboard, heating
the nearby sensible components would be dangerous for them?
Anyway, I feel reassured to see that I'm far of being the only one in
that case.

Thanks again,
Bernd

Yes,
Just like sheep, I do em all .....

:-)

Homie

--
Mainboards, Videocards & CPU pin repair.

http://motherboardrepair.com


"Brian Brunner" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 29 Aug 2003, "Homie" wrote:

There are about 20 brands of capacitors with the electrolyte that was probably part
of
an anal leakage experiment gone wrong in Taiwan.
The most common are
Teapo
Tayeh
I.Q.
Lealon
J.P.con
Jackon
The list is much larger but this is such old news.....do a search on google.

More interesting is the list of motherboard manufactures and how ONLY Abit has
stood
up and agreed the problem exists and is trying to help the customers when
practical.
Some of the names that I am seeing EXTREME ( I love lawyers)capacitor related
failure
rates are :
IBM
Hewlett Packard
Gateway (seems to be limited to a few low end models)
Shuttle
ECS
Epox
Soyo

The list is much larger but I am too busy fixing boards to remember all the
brands/models

As I understand it, Motherboards with cap problems are like sheep... you
do them all... yes?

e.g. my ABIT KT7-RAID may come in for repairs someday, how about my
wife's ECS K7S5A?


--
Brian Brunner
911: Gov't Sponsored Dial-a-Prayer.
1911: A gun in the hand beats two on the phone.
9-11-01: Four Hijackings, and thousands of deaths,
because Gun Banners disarmed the pilots to keep us safe.
..45ACP: Cure for the Common Criminal.

This is not a .sig, it's a .glock! *jeesh*