MS-7548 Failed TK Caps

[mazade]

Hello All,
I just wanted to toss out a board that I haven't seen yet on badcaps, but have seen sold as "refurbished" on ebay(I wonder why).
MS-7548 out of an HP AMD setup.
The good caps on the board are Panasonic's as best I can tell.. [M]
I'm seriously considering swapping the caps around the CPU to something like the UCC Poly 2.5v/820uf that's sold here. I've done some reading and I'm thinking that I ought to check to see how many of those particular ones are in parallel just to remove some of the mysteries of 'which is which', and 'do I use 2.5v, or higher'...
As for the rest of the junker TK's, I've got some Samxon 6.3v/1800uf caps(courtesy of Badcaps.net )









Oh geez, just noticed those smaller G-Luxon's too... should I worry about those? ...or was that a trick question?

[PCBONEZ]

The 820uF will work fine for the Vcore caps.
Just check CPU Vcore voltage in a data sheet. No need to break out a meter.
Use a DMM to find out for sure if that odd one off to the side is Vcore or not.

I replace G-Luxon if they are 6mm or larger, or 85C.

You seem to know what your doing.
.

[c_hegge]

I see TK vented on ECS motherboards A LOT. I'm sure it stands for Terrible Kapacitor

[Pyr0Beast]

Socket AM2. Working voltage should be under 1.5V

[Uranium-235]

they choose to use pannys and solids on other parts of the board, but use cheap shit on the vrm, where better quality is needed. that board looks like it was designed to die

[Pyr0Beast]

Not designed to die, to be _cost efficient_ )

[mazade]

So I looked a little more into the CRAPS surrounding the cpu and found that there's two groups, as seen in the picture.
I suppose I can assume the group of greater quantity is the VCore voltages that I can/should Poly.
What are the 3 stragglers(only two of those spots had caps in them), and what should I put in there??


Thank you all very much for the contributions.

[Pyr0Beast]

One is for Vcore, the other one for Vtt (termination voltage) (I think)

A single cap would I think work, but there isn't any objection as to fill other places as well.

[PCBONEZ]

Do not lower voltage on caps when you don't know what the circuit voltage is.
- For the Vcore caps you know by the CPU specs.

Any others you have to check, usually with a DMM but you could bust out a pencil and paper and work out the schematic to figure it out if you REALLY wanted too.


And yes, the row of 8 are the Vcore caps.
.

[PCBONEZ]

What is up with the missing MOSFET?

[mazade]

The Mosfet... that is very weird, I did not do that.
It looks as though one should be there, should I try to find one to replace it?

[PCBONEZ]

I asked about it because it kind'a looks like someone removed it.

See if you can find photos of the board on-line and see if that board has one there.

[PCBONEZ]

Looks like it was never there.

http://www.dhgate.com/msi-ms-7548-am...039005cf5.html

http://www.amdzone.com/phpbb3/viewto...?f=38&t=138381

http://www.serversupply.com/MSI/MOTH...8E/MS-7548.htm

.

[mazade]

Wow, what a sleuth. PCBONEZ, thanks for the helps.

[mazade]

Well, although I took a few days to order the poly caps, I got them in today and 'slapped' them into place.
The previous, failed, setup was lacking a capacitor in that left-end spot, so I'm assuming that these superior caps can allow for it to remain empty.




All I need now is to get some ram and a cpu to test this puppy out with - ebay here I come!!! ^_^

[mazade]

Well, typing on the recapped MS-7548 board.
Managed to get an X2 6000+ processor & failed-cap board from a guy on ebay... borrowed a 1GB
stick of ram from a friend and this Puppy(booted a live-CD of puppy linux) is moving right along.
Temperature hovers between 29C and 31C... I performed some of HardInfo's benchmarks a few times, the CPU temp momentarily touched on 34C

Things seem great so far.
Thanks for all the helps & tips!
Thanks for supplying the caps needed to fix another BadCaps board! ^_^

Til next time - bye for now.

[PCBONEZ]

Congrats!
It works now and it even looks purdier too!
.

[c_hegge]

nice job with the poly mod

[Peacemaker45]

Hello All,

I have an MS-7548 with the same bank of failed TK caps as Mazade, so no need to post new pics.

I am going to attempt the repair myself. I consider myself competent in electronics repair, a hobbyist if you will.

The power supply voltages check out with a DMM but I am going to O-scope it to check for excessive ripple.

A few questions before I get started:

1. What caps should be used? (cost vs. practicality, the thing is 5 yrs old)

2. How many? (I noticed that mazade used 1 more than OEM)

3. Should my CPU be okay? (My wife first noticed it freezing up a couple months ago but now it doesnt even POST)

[c_hegge]

Originally Posted by Peacemaker45

1. What caps should be used? (cost vs. practicality, the thing is 5 yrs old)

2. How many? (I noticed that mazade used 1 more than OEM)

3. Should my CPU be okay? (My wife first noticed it freezing up a couple months ago but now it doesnt even POST)

1. If you want to keep the cost down, then there's probably no need to poly-mod it. Use http://www.badcaps.net/store/product...roducts_id=152 . they are good electrolytics and should be fine for the usefull life of the PC.

2. If you're not modding anything, then just use the nine that were originally there. I think that there might be two similar caps between the DIMM slots and floppy connector. Replace them too.

3. The CPU is *probably* fine. It just may not like getting an unstable voltage.