Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

ASUS A8N-SLI Premium re-cap questions

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    ASUS A8N-SLI Premium re-cap questions

    Happy Labor Day to one and all.

    It's Labor Day and I'm doing what all men do on Labor Day. I'm laboring. At the moment, I'm laboring on my desktop PC that won't boot past the splash screen (Windows XP Pro). I've done enough troubleshooting and visual inspecting to narrow it down (at least for now) to 9 bulging/leaking KZG caps on the motherboard.

    All but one of the caps are located around the CPU. The ninth one is located at the upper right corner of the board. The cap values in question are 820uF (8x12) and 1500uF (8x20), 6.3V, 105 degree caps. I would like to replace just these nine caps for now to see if doing so will bring the board back to life. If it does, I would go ahead and consider replacing the rest of them.

    After doing a search on the Badcaps forum, I've seen that Rubycon MCZ, Panasonic FM or Nichicon HM/HN series caps are recommended but the posts I found this info on are old and maybe no longer valid. I did find a source that has the following parts available:

    Panasonic EEU-FM0J821L (8x15) for the 820uF cap and Panasonic EEU-FR0J152L (8x20) for the 1500uF cap.

    Here's where I could use some help/advice. Can anyone verify that the above parts will work or, if not, what parts will work and where to get them? Thanks in advance for any help.

    BTW...I have swapped/minimized the memory modules, tried a different hard drive with a mirrored version of the XP OS and it still won't boot past the splash screen. All of the board LED status indicators are indicating normal operation, the board posts (beeps) normally. Just won't boot. I have not re-greased the CPU yet or tried to boot from the DVD drive with the XP disk. Can't do either now as the PC is apart but the nine caps I found bulged are obviously bad.

    Mark

    #2
    Re: ASUS A8N-SLI Premium re-cap questions

    If you do a search for A8N* and below the search box tick: "search titles only"
    Then you will get allot of hits, maybe browse through them quickly and see if you find anything relevant... (Maybe you already did?)
    But generally people recap the CPU VRM area with polymer caps on newer boards like this, it's up to you though.
    Since you say it still boots I'd say it's close to 100% that it will be fixed by a recap.
    But you should replace all KZG caps on the board!

    https://www.badcaps.net/store/produc...products_id=76
    https://www.badcaps.net/store/produc...products_id=39
    "The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it."

    Comment


      #3
      Re: ASUS A8N-SLI Premium re-cap questions

      It may be the caps, but it may also be the chipset. Nvidia chipsets from this era are all affected by what is known as the 'bumpgate' defect (essentially, where the chip's substrate material melts at a very low 60*C, which the chips often run at)
      I love putting bad caps and flat batteries in fire and watching them explode!!

      No wonder it doesn't work! You installed the jumper wires backwards

      Main PC: Core i7 3770K 3.5GHz, Gigabyte GA-Z77M-D3H-MVP, 8GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600, 240GB Intel 335 Series SSD, 750GB WD HDD, Sony Optiarc DVD RW, Palit nVidia GTX660 Ti, CoolerMaster N200 Case, Delta DPS-600MB 600W PSU, Hauppauge TV Tuner, Windows 7 Home Premium

      Office PC: HP ProLiant ML150 G3, 2x Xeon E5335 2GHz, 4GB DDR2 RAM, 120GB Intel 530 SSD, 2x 250GB HDD, 2x 450GB 15K SAS HDD in RAID 1, 1x 2TB HDD, nVidia 8400GS, Delta DPS-650BB 650W PSU, Windows 7 Pro

      Comment


        #4
        Re: ASUS A8N-SLI Premium re-cap questions

        "It may be the caps, but it may also be the chipset. Nvidia chipsets from this era are all affected by what is known as the 'bumpgate' defect (essentially, where the chip's substrate material melts at a very low 60*C, which the chips often run at)"

        I thought the nForce4 MCP chipset was one of the few chipsets that didn't have that issue. The chipset in the OP's board is 'cool pipe' cooled, no heatsink, or fan. The heatpipe goes between the CPU and the VRM section and is actually cooled by the air moving out of the CPU heatsink. Yeah. Right. Probably not as effectively cooled as my old A8NSLI Deluxe. It has a tiny 40mm fan on top of the nF4 chip. I would be checking the condition of that heatpipe and the CPU fan.

        A recap, replacing all KZG's is in order for this board. IMO, I would pull the trigger and recap if it was my mobo.
        Stupidity should be a crime, especially for drivers. I have NO patience for them.

        Comment


          #5
          Re: ASUS A8N-SLI Premium re-cap questions

          Originally posted by delaware74b View Post
          I thought the nForce4 MCP chipset was one of the few chipsets that didn't have that issue. The chipset in the OP's board is 'cool pipe' cooled, no heatsink, or fan. The heatpipe goes between the CPU and the VRM section and is actually cooled by the air moving out of the CPU heatsink. Yeah. Right. Probably not as effectively cooled as my old A8NSLI Deluxe. It has a tiny 40mm fan on top of the nF4 chip. I would be checking the condition of that heatpipe and the CPU fan.
          According to Unique (who I don't doubt), the bumpgate defect actually goes all the way back to the GeForce 2, maybe even all of nVidia's BGA chips prior to the corrected GeForce 9 series if that's really true. I wouldn't be surprised if nVidia's choice of underfill material was always poor for their chips, just that only in more recent years have the thermal cycles been wide enough and harsh enough to exacerbate the issue that c_hegge speaks of (temperatures of 60*C slowly softening the underfill and 80*C and higher turning it to mush, essentially).

          A recap, replacing all KZG's is in order for this board. IMO, I would pull the trigger and recap if it was my mobo.
          +1000. KZGs are very failure prone capacitors, even in storage.
          Last edited by Wester547; 09-07-2015, 08:15 PM.

          Comment


            #6
            Re: ASUS A8N-SLI Premium re-cap questions

            + over 9000! i was once at an electronics shop and i saw they had about 100 kzgs in their shop stored in a plastic drawer. many of the kzgs were bulged and were leaking a rusty looking goo and the shop assistant was grumbling about caps going bad on their own without being used and causing a loss.

            so i told em not to get anymore kzgs cause those are known bad caps and they are known to fail even without being used in storage. the assistant thanked me for the info. next time i went there, i saw they had gotten rid of the kzgs and gotten panny FJs and FLs instead. heh.

            Comment


              #7
              Re: ASUS A8N-SLI Premium re-cap questions

              Just ordered the following caps:

              EEU-FR0J821 (Digikey P14360-ND) 8x13 .056Ohm $0.49ea
              EEU-FR0J152L (Digikey P14363-ND) 8x22 .03Ohm $0.65ea

              I think these will work. If the board boots, I'll replace the others.

              Comment


                #8
                Re: ASUS A8N-SLI Premium re-cap questions

                Hello, i am in the process of re-capping and further troubleshooting a A8N-SLI premium.

                Are there any schematics available ? I am diagnosing a short-circuit in a pair of capacitors near the NF4 chip

                Comment

                Working...
                X