'First Tier Caps'

[goodpsusearch]

Re: 'First Tier Caps'

Capxon = One of the worst capacitor brand ever

[kaboom]

Re: 'First Tier Caps'

And what is FH and GH Series in your opinion?!

FH is specced for 4-10kh and called ultra low ESR (and long life) ones.
GH is specced for 4-10kh and called high temperature and long life ones...

Are you kidding?! Just because dubious specs are "on paper" doesn't mean they're true!

Capxon (all series) for myself and others, are replace on sight. I've had brand new power supplies (Manson bench supplies) "hiccup" on turn-on, as their aux supplies were unsteady.

Now take a computer SMPS, and replace those 22/50s (or whatever) and DVD players/LCD monitors with their "unimportant small caps" and replace them with general purpose electros. Your typical TinySwitch for example.

Apply AC power and they come up right now. With GP caps.

Just how bad were the capxons, supposedly long-life, that GP caps bested them? Pretty damn bad.

I just pulled some GP caps out of a Panasonic VCR SMPS, 85 degree, that were still OK. It was a '99 model

Capacitors of the same quality may cost about the same, even if it is a CapXon...

The only caps "the same" as capxon are F-Yoos. Actually, I take that back. The F-Yoohs are sometimes "defective" in that they sometimes work for more than a month. See above example with Manson bench supplies and bad capxons out of the box...

Do you actually work on the stuff, or just take questionable cap makers' so-called literature at its word? And then go, just like someone from dork squad, "all datasheets are equal, therefore all caps are equal- provided specs are the same."

Real world failures be damned- capxon's datasheets suggest we're all imagining the failures/fake parts.

Oh,by "work on the stuff," I mean soldering and component level troubleshooting/repair, from caps/power supplies to scoping no-boot mobos for activity at the BIOS ROM.

Something beyond taking pix and tearing power supplies apart for "reviews."

[Behemot]

Re: 'First Tier Caps'

You've been scoping BIOS chips?

[kaboom]

Re: 'First Tier Caps'

You've been scoping BIOS chips?

Back in March, I found a P4P800-E on fleebay for a great price, CPU included.

I sort of wanted a challenge. After checking all MOSFETs for shorts, I subbed some of the KZGs and Teapos/Elites for testing. This was before ordering replacements, since I wanted to be sure the board was OK- it was an ASUS after all.

I had power at the CPU and the RAM power and bias/termination were OK, as were the rails for the NB.

But no POST. I thought the CPU could be bad. To rule that out, I let it overheat to see if the CPU-NB-SB overheat shutdown was working. Sure enough, once TMAX was reached (90*C?), the failsafe triggered and PS-ON was de-asserted.

If I kept trying for 20 minutes or so, I'd sometimes get a POST. It was especially repeatable if I heated the board; this really suggested bad small caps around the NB/SB and elsewhere.

So I went and recapped it. But no POST again! Having ruled out the caps (and solder splash/poor connections), some would condemn the BIOS EEPROM. But not so fast- it was randomly POSTing right before the recap. Did I really miss a bad connection somewhere???

It can't POST if it doesn't have the BIOS program to execute. I scoped the chip select pin on the EEPROM, and sure enough, no activity most of the time. Now again, just as before the recap, it eventually began to randomly POST, seemingly related to my playing with the CPU heatsink...

But I checked that CS line, and just before every time it POSTed, it was pulled low, as in it was being called for reads. Examining the address lines also showed this. Sometimes, CS would go low, but the address lines would show no activity- obviously, no POST in this case.

Having proven that it did POST when the EEPROM was read (not just a CS pulldown), ruled out that component.

Going back to my experience with the CPU socket/heatsink, when I first got the board, I used an undersized heatsink that got quite warm with the Prescott- which was when POSTing was more consistent.

Hmm- hotter CPU socket=better results? It was looking like a bad BGA joint somewhere on the CPU socket, which was affected by temperature and heatsink pressure.

Socket 478, excessive clamping force, extreme heat&cool cycles? It all added up.

I ground down the cams on the heatsink I finally used, to provide a more sensible clamping force, without bending the board, and got one POST after another!

It would seem that the original heatsink used, before I got the board, flexed it too much, affecting either the socket contacts or solder balls.

A happy medium was reached in that the poor connection was "fixed" and no parts (EEPROM) were needlessly replaced.

Intel really did it with "Netbust."

[Behemot]

Re: 'First Tier Caps'

Yeah it all went right down the toilet with that stupid retention mechanism of 478 (not that 775+ is any better) and when they started using BGA sockets. Some, mostly early, 478 were pinned though. Usually after the years the boards look like a piece of ball, that much bent they are.

[coreAngel]

Re: 'First Tier Caps'

What about epcos/tdk i thought they were just crap but they are showing up quite a bit in mouser, to me if they're polymers (teapo or tdk/epcos) it's already first tier,

tdk epcos electrolytics, maybe 2nd to 3rd tier, not my first choice but if there's not anything else,except lelon() ill jump at tdk.

Now Wurth Elektronik is the real ? they say they have production facilites in "Germany, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, the U.S., Mexico, Taiwan and China" i have seen in many caps i have looked up in mouser sometimes they are the cheapest, sometimes they are more expensive than nichicon's or UCC's by almost 50% are they good, or just meh