Blown and Leaking Motherboard Capacitors - A Serious Problem?
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While it may be true that we go through a lot more motherboards at PCstats.com than an average consumer will in a lifetime, it's the boards that fail which seem to get noticed most - especially when they force a dreaded system reinstall. This particular Slot A motherboard was recently retired from active duty because the computer it was in became unstable, and too unreliable.
This system had in fact been reinstalled a few times when no physical capacitor failure was visible, but this last time a quick inspection within the case had shown disastrous events underway. After ripping the computer apart to try an diagnose the strange problems which seemed to point to Windows 2000 instability issues, or possibly bad memory or hard Drive, we found half the low-ESR (Equivalent Series Resistance) aluminum capacitors on the board in pretty bad shape.
Specifically, every single JPCON 6.3v 2200microfarad, and JPCON 6.3v1500 microfarad capacitor were either bulged out at the top about to pop, or had blown out the rubber stopper at the base and were leaking electrolyte (which had turned into a brown crusty stain on the PCB).
The odd part was that every single JPCON 16v 470microfarad capacitor and all of the TAYEH brand capacitors were perfectly fine.
At the time we chocked up the failure to a bad on-board power supply circuit and just assumed something, possibly a MOSFET, had partially failed and was overloading subsequent components. While I'm not an EE, that reasoning seemed to explain why half of the 48 capacitors were blowing themselves up like little aluminum balloons, and the rest weren't.
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While it may be true that we go through a lot more motherboards at PCstats.com than an average consumer will in a lifetime, it's the boards that fail which seem to get noticed most - especially when they force a dreaded system reinstall. This particular Slot A motherboard was recently retired from active duty because the computer it was in became unstable, and too unreliable.
This system had in fact been reinstalled a few times when no physical capacitor failure was visible, but this last time a quick inspection within the case had shown disastrous events underway. After ripping the computer apart to try an diagnose the strange problems which seemed to point to Windows 2000 instability issues, or possibly bad memory or hard Drive, we found half the low-ESR (Equivalent Series Resistance) aluminum capacitors on the board in pretty bad shape.
Specifically, every single JPCON 6.3v 2200microfarad, and JPCON 6.3v1500 microfarad capacitor were either bulged out at the top about to pop, or had blown out the rubber stopper at the base and were leaking electrolyte (which had turned into a brown crusty stain on the PCB).
The odd part was that every single JPCON 16v 470microfarad capacitor and all of the TAYEH brand capacitors were perfectly fine.
At the time we chocked up the failure to a bad on-board power supply circuit and just assumed something, possibly a MOSFET, had partially failed and was overloading subsequent components. While I'm not an EE, that reasoning seemed to explain why half of the 48 capacitors were blowing themselves up like little aluminum balloons, and the rest weren't.
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=195
some nice pics of blown caps.. lol
and looks like they have a forum/thread discussing it here
and PCstats has also put up a poll here. they say, \"Alternatively, please vote on the PCstats.com Poll and let us know how widespread this situation is, if at all. Have you ever had a system failure caused by leaking or blown motherboard capacitors?\"
edit: that forum thread took ages to d/l but it is well worth the read.
three pages long.. (with too many pics) but some intereseting first hand experiences. and the editor \"Max Page\" started this thread Feb 21, 03