Blown cap on a GeForce 8800 GT

[Keios]

So, as the title says, one of the caps on my Point Of View GeForce 8800GT has blown, however I can't find any references that match exactly what it is, so I'm being a little cautious before replacing it. Hence the thread. Anyhow, here's a picture of the offending cap-



I know it's not the best picture, so here's what it says on the top-

JL
1000
16v

I'm assuming it's a standard 1000uf 16v cap, but I thought I'd err on the side of caution and get some second opinions before I try replacing it. Anyway, many thanks in advance for any help you guys can offer.

[Uranium-235]

I think it overheated due to the closeness of that mosfet (the little black square next to it-cause that looks overheated too

its a lytic that tries to make itself to look like a polymer.

it is 16v 1000uf-I would say get a rubycon mcz, but let some guys here figure out the esr and ripple to best match it

maybe you could put a polymer there, but I think its not in paralell with any other caps it might not be a good idea

[c_hegge]

It's a sacon FZ. they don't need to be put next to MOSFETs to make them fail. they are the worst brand of cap in the world. As for a replacment, use http://www.badcaps.net/store/product...products_id=44

[Keios]

Fantastic, thanks for the help guys. As for the MOSFET, I suspect it looks burned out in that picture because of dust accumulation, having cleaned it off a bit it doesn't look to be discoloured or anything like that.

[nickBcap]

Thank you for posting Keios.
I have a POV 8800GT and the capacitor in the same position as the blown cap in Keios photo. A loose power plug to a double plug was my problem and before I found out the problem I blew up a nice Thermaltake 420W power supply. I am glad I paid about $2 for it.

I will try to replace the blown capacitor soon.

[nickBcap]

In the link posted in a reply above the capacitors do not seem to be the same silver aluminium types but a taller black type of capacitor. Would this be a problem regarding the replacing of the blown siler aluminium capacitor in the picture I posted? http://www.badcaps.net/store/product...products_id=44

[c_hegge]

Use http://www.badcaps.net/store/product...roducts_id=169 to replace the busted cap

[nickBcap]

um, the first guy to reply to the thread starter about a replacement capacitor refers the thread starter to the black capacitors when the capacitor is a silver capacitor.
c hegge refers me to another capacitor which is a 6.3V capacitor and not a 16V capacitor and I can not find a 1000uF 16V capacitor named Sacon FZ on Badcaps after I opened an acc ount
Does Badcaps have a silver replacement?

[mariushm]

You read incorrectly.

The first guy is saying that the silver (aluminum case) capacitor failed because the black chip near it is generating a lot of heat.
He's not saying anything about a black capacitor.

Sacon is a manufacturer of really bad capacitors that now no longer exists, they renamed themselves to GSC or some other name. FZ is a series of capacitors they made . 99% of these Sacon capacitors blow up eventually so the general advice is to replace them on sight.

So you need to replace the capacitor with another one that's rated for 1000uF , 16v.

The 16v is the maximum voltage the capacitor can work with, it doesn't mean the video card actually uses 16v, it may only use 3.3v or 5v or 12v.

c_hegge recommended you a 6.3v rated capacitor because he probably assumed the video card uses only 5v, or he was probably tired. It's safer to just keep going with 16v.

From the Badcaps store, you can go with either of these :

http://www.badcaps.net/store/product...roducts_id=173
http://www.badcaps.net/store/product...roducts_id=122
http://www.badcaps.net/store/product...roducts_id=150

The last two are rated for 25v, but like I said, you only need the capacitors to be rated for minimum 16v, they can be rated for more voltage, it won't hurt.

If you're not in US and you don't want to pay 8$ for shipping, tell us the location and we can recommend some good online stores and pick some options for you.

[nickBcap]

Hi,
I dont like the idea of being offered capacitors that I can not see before I buy. Thanks for your suggestions, and also you remind me about going to a higher voltage which I usually forget about not being especially familiar with capacitor replacement, thanks for that. Feedback is always a great help to me.
BTW, it is not me who read wrong, I was not talking about the black chip at all, I was talking about replacing a silver encased capacitor with a black cased capacitor. I blame me for my lack of good use of teh English language.
And I think the point I may have unclearly attempted to make was; the black chip heating is very likely not the problem that caused his capacitor to blow. It is more likely a power problem that caused the capacitor on his graphics card to blow just like there was power problem with my computer that blew the same cap that was in the same position as his capacitor on his graphics card.
Thank you for your help, and yes I am interested in your suggestions for traders local to me here in Auckland, New Zealand. I have already made extensive searches for local traders that sell the capacitors I have needed in the past but I do welcome your suggestions.

[c_hegge]

The colour of the can has no impact whatsoever on the caps specs. It's just that some manufacturers use plain silver aluminum cans while others put plastic sleeves around them. Replacing the failed sacon with a black nichicon HN will work fine.

[Rulycat]

The only reason Sacon don't use a black/brown/blue etc sleeve is so they can make their electrolytic cap (usually with a sleeve) look like a polymer cap (usually printed straight onto the top of the can)

[c_hegge]

Whoops. I didn't realise my mistake with the recommendation. I was obviously tired and didn't realise this was a 16V cap. The first one mariushm suggested (the Nichicon HN) might work, except that it is tall and may stop you using the next PCI slot. The others are not appropriate replacements (too high ESR).

http://www.badcaps.net/store/product...roducts_id=174 is a bit shorter, but may still be somewhat taller than the original.

http://nz.element14.com/nichicon/uhm...16v/dp/1823807 would also work, if you want to order from Element14 NZ.

[nickBcap]

I may be learning slowly about capacitors thanks
Being a bit afraid of buying the wrong replacement capacitors for the Nvidia 8800GT graphics card I bought what matches the original caps the best and bought aluminium cases and not black cases and the same diameter and height but next time I will not be so fussy, thank you.

I have all the bad luck with second hand monitors I bought. The last three 19 inch monitors all had problems that made them unusable and I thought this last HP1955 I bought two days ago was the best buy ever and this morning it would not give a picture along with a little burning smell which I could not identify. I found in the internet the HP1955 does this < , lol , and the problem was known to be capacitors. I just hope they are bulging so I know which ones to replace.
I will open the monitor when I find the time and try to repair it.

[mariushm]

They're not black cases. They're aluminium cases covered in plastic foil on which they print the series and information. It's the same thing.

Capacitors have different characteristics... you made the worst choice by picking a capacitor using the color which is irrelevant.

You may have picked a capacitor that's half as good as what we recommended, and one not designed for power supplies or video cards.
Well, you'll see how long it lasts on your video cards. It may work fine, or it may start leaking in a few weeks or it or it may case the video card's drivers to crash or show errors in games.

As for the monitor, keep us informed, snap some pictures and create a thread with that monitor if you need help.

[nickBcap]

Thanks for the good advice. The cap can only be a 8mm DIA cap for space reasons and next time I want to replace a capacitor I will not need to be so picky.
If I have problems with the monitor later I will open a thread.
Thanks
Btw, is there a difference between a capacitor and a solid state capacitor and are low esr capacitors suitable for graphics cards? Is low esr best suited for graphics cards and power supplies?

[mariushm]

Solid state capacitors is sort of an incorrect term.

There are polymer based capacitors (these are like electrolytic capacitors but usually without the plastic foil covering them). These are usually very low ESR but it's not always the case - there are polymer capacitor series that are actually worse than electrolytic capacitors and are not even designed to be low esr, but rather be more resistant to temperature or to be small or to be surface mount.

Next, we have functional polymers or hybrid polymers - these usually are a mix between polymer capacitors and electrolytic with somewhat the best of both worlds (well, before the electrolytic capacitors manufacturing evolved to the current high standards)
A good example is Fujitsu's FP-Cap ... they are low esr and high ripple but they're not quite polymer capacitors.

Then there are ceramic and tantalum capacitors - for the first the most common type is surface mount but they are available as through hole as well.
These don't have an electrolytic substance inside so they're "solid state" but they're not polymer capacitors.
Also, I'm not sure now about this (just woke up and I don't feel like double checking so I may be wrong), but I don't believe the ESR applies to these as it applies to electrolytic and polymer capacitors.

ESR and Ripple are two characteristics that matter when it comes to power supplies of any kind.
Capacitors are used for several reasons, some are used for purposes where the quality of the capacitor and these characteristics don't matter that much, that's why there are all sorts of series of capacitors, cheaper or more expensive.

The video cards have a miniature power supply on them, which converts the 12v it receives from the computer's power supply to 0.9-1v that's needed by the video card processor and 1.25v or 1.5v or 1.8v (or something around this value) for the memory (ram) on the video card

Think of the video card as something that needs a lot of water and the computer power supply as a big bottle of water. Depending on what the video card does, it needs to drink a half a glass of water or take just a small sip of water, so the power converter's job is to ask for the bottle and make sure the video card can always get either a glass of water or several sips of water.

The large capacitor, rated for 16v is like a big glass of water, it stores energy for the converter so that it can poor this energy into several small capacitors (those rated for 4v-6v) that are sort of like "half a glass of water" or "several sips of water"
The converter requests a big glass of water from the power supply, which fills it up and goes on to give power to the processor or other things in your computer.
The converter then does its magic and fills up all the smaller glasses of water and as soon as the video card uses a bit of energy from those small capacitors it fills them up again with what's left in the big capacitor. At the same time, the converter keeps checking the main large capacitor and keeps telling the power supply to fill it up as soon as it can and keep it filled up (but since the main capacitor never really goes completely empty, the computer power supply can fill up this large capacitor much faster and it's easier for it to fill it)

The ripple is sort of how much tolerance the capacitors have for big bursts of water pouring in into them... it's like pouring beer in a glass. A low ripple capacitor can't handle big bursts of beer so there's going to be lots of foam pouring outside the glass but little actual beer inside.
So a capacitor with low ripple will not like when those bursts of energy come into it, it may overheat and maybe die.

The ESR is a sort of resistance which is a bit harder to explain and only matters when the circuit is designed in some way.. in very simplified terms it's how well the capacitor pours out the water inside and puts it in... it's like the friction between the glass walls and the water inside... high esr capacitors heat up when there's lots of energy moved in and out due to that "friction".

So anyway, for that 16v capacitor, esr doesn't matter that much but ripple does, because the converter takes large chunks of energy from it and puts it in those smaller capacitors. The ESR matters a bit more for those smaller capacitors because those are always in us by video card processor and the memory but ripple matters a bit less because the video card power converter constantly pours energy into them at a somewhat constant flow.

[UserXP]

Mr. Mariushm, you must be an electronic professor, and a good one! This is the best yet most simple and understandable explanation I have read so far about what each value means and does regarding capacitors.

Excellent!

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Originally Posted by mariushm

Then there are ceramic and tantalum capacitors - for the first the most common type is surface mount but they are available as through hole as well.
These don't have an electrolytic substance inside so they're "solid state" but they're not polymer capacitors.
Also, I'm not sure now about this (just woke up and I don't feel like double checking so I may be wrong), but I don't believe the ESR applies to these as it applies to electrolytic and polymer capacitors.

It does, it's exactly the same. However you do not normally need to worry about the state of ceramics or tantalums on a typical video card, as it's always the lytics taking all the hard work. In smaller devices however, such as cellphones, PDAs, PMPs, failed ceramics are not uncommon.

[nickBcap]

Would this capacitor be ok?
Nippon 16V1000uF KZG Motherboard Capacitor 8X20 LOW ESR
this one?
Rubycon Ultra Low ESR Radial Capacitor 16V 1000uF 8x20mm MCZ