Need recapping help for Asus A7N8X

[mariushm]

way too much solder, you may be shorting two traces with the solder or have a bad solder connection.

[larrymoencurly]

How many watts is your solder iron rated for, and how clean is the tip? I think the second photo indicates the iron isn't delivering enough heat to melt the solder to the copper traces of the motherboard. I normally use 40W.

[Uranium-235]

need flux. badly

[booneatl]

I bought a cheap 60 watt iron. It came with a fine point tip which does not seem to hold a lot of heat. I really had to work at getting the solder to melt at times and it would go allover. Should I completely remove solder and start over?
I believe I have read not to remelt solder.

[Koda]

You are using way too much solder, try removing some solder from the joints and use some flux to get better joints, although those joints look shiny they might not adhere to the pads on the mobo. Also, any beeps from the mobo?

[RJARRRPCGP]

And a blonde moment may be the cause. O_O (cracked the core when installing heatsink) (I did that to my T-Bird 1.3 in October, 2002) I got impatient when clamping the socket 462 heatsink.
(Ironically, after just coming back from getting new heatsink paste at RadioShack!)

That will cause the nothing-other-than-fans-and-leds syndrome.

[Topcat]

I do have a kit for this board....

http://www.badcaps.net/store/product...&products_id=8

This all I've ever needed to replace on one of these boards, the tiny ones never fail. As for the non POST issue now, recheck all your solder joints....you probably fubar'd a through hole (this assuming the CPU and RAM are good)....but I have seen bad caps on these boards fry processors, so definitely try another CPU before you pronounce it dead.

[larrymoencurly]

Originally Posted by booneatl

I bought a cheap 60 watt iron. It came with a fine point tip which does not seem to hold a lot of heat.

I think your problem is that the iron has too much power and makes the tip to get too hot, causing oxidation form an insulating layer that prevents good heat flow. This oxidation can be so bad that solder won't immediately melt even when i's pressed directly against the tip. Once a tip oxidizes, it has to be cleaned off (brass wool, steel wool) and retinned to work again. Also high temperatures can prevent the solder from sticking, I think by burning up the flux before it can clean the surfaces.

[Scenic]

random: can someone fix the thread title? It's A7N8X, not A78NX (doesn't exist)

[booneatl]

No beep codes..... I probably rushed my way through this so I will remove and retry. I will clean the iron as suggested and work on my soldering skills (or lack of) and report back. Luckily, I bought extra caps just in case.

I don't think that I cracked the core or anything like that. Other than the sloppy soldering, I really took my time removing the caps and cleaning the holes.

I am confused as to what the flux is for. I don't have any and will have to order if it is necessary.

Would the computer POST or begin to POST if some of these caps were properly placed ? Do all 8 of the caps that I replaced need to be perfectly
installed or will one bad one prevent POST ? Just curious.

Also, I did order the other caps that were suggested but have not considered replacing them yet as I wanted to first replace the obvious bulging ones. I didn't want 30 bad solder joints to have to figure out.

Thanks everyone for the help. I am already shopping for my new build but I am not going to give up on this yet !!

[Koda]

Here's an excellent tutorial on how to solder. Flux is used to remove oxidation from pads and joints so solder can form well and adhere to pads and leads.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_NU2ruzyc4