Failed Panasonic FL

[Pentium4]

This is the first time that I've seen an Panasonic cap fail that wasn't installed backwards (at least that I can remember).

It's a 1800µF 6.3V part. It's from a Dell Optiplex 780 SFF from 2010. CPU is a Core 2 Duo E8500 3.16GHz. It was a point of sales machine at a car dealership and was NEVER off! It was on a UPS, and had 82,156 hours on it when I got it. It had never been cleaned, never had the thermal paste replaced. The thing literally just worked for 10 years. It's a cool machine because it's one of the highest end Core 2 Duo CPUs with DDR3 RAM

I got the machine in August 2020. I took it apart and saw that the board had 9 KZG caps on the board, none looked bulged. I took apart the PSU (total PITA, by the way) and saw a bulged CapXon. After taking apart the power supply, I discovered that there was only the one 2200µF 16V CapXon GF for all of the 12V rail filtering. I'm guessing after that bulged, the 12V ripple was really high. I replaced all of the KZG on the board and did a full recap on the PSU (including the primary cap!) and replaced the thermal paste on the CPU and Northbridge heatsink. I instantly started using the machine as a Plex media player in August 2020. I set it up to run 24/7.

The original GPU fan on the ATi video card failed in December 2020 and I replaced it. At that point, the cap was still good.

I shut down the computer to move in June 2021 and I noticed that the cap was failed. So at the minimum, it still ran for 85,0000 hours in a small low airflow case directly in line of CPU exhaust heat. Not bad! The same size/series caps next to it tested perfectly in spec. I was worried at first that the PSU didn't like my recap and was outputting high ripple but it makes more sense that it just had a long stressful life.


Here is a picture after I recapped it so you can have a good idea of where the cap was:

[Pentium4]

Here you can see the PSU before it was recapped or cleaned. You can see that failed CapXon in there:

[linuxguru]

The FL was near the HSF outflow side, about the hottest location in any SFF - no surprise that it failed. However, all the Rubycons (MBZ?) near it seem to be fine - as expected.

[stj]

those compact things are terrible, you should have gone full-polymer

[Pentium4]

Originally Posted by linuxguru

The FL was near the HSF outflow side, about the hottest location in any SFF - no surprise that it failed. However, all the Rubycons (MBZ?) near it seem to be fine - as expected.

Yes the Rubycon were all okay

Originally Posted by stj

those compact things are terrible, you should have gone full-polymer

Even all of the small caps? I replaced the 1800µF 6.3V Panasonic FL with 2200µF 6.3V Rubycon ZLQ.

[stj]

the small caps may be audio - you can use tants for that anyway.

[Pentium4]

I replaced all the KZG with polymer at least. I think it will last a long time. If I need to replace some more caps on the board later, that's fine. I just don't want to have to work on that PSU ever again... lol

[Pentium4]

Here is the PSU all cleaned and recapped

[Per Hansson]

Wow, you can hardly tell it is the same PSU as in the earlier pictures! Nice work!

[goodpsusearch]

Welcome back P4!

Excellent work like the good old days

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by Pentium4

This is the first time that I've seen an Panasonic cap fail that wasn't installed backwards (at least that I can remember).

It's a 1800µF 6.3V part. It's from a Dell Optiplex 780 SFF from 2010.

I've actually seen many Dell toasters roast Panasonic caps ranging from the GX270 all the way up to GX755 era stuff and newer. Not as common as other brands frequented by Dell (Rubycon, Nichicon, and UCC)...but its certainly happened plenty.

Nice job on the refurb! I love seeing this versus it being scrapped!

[momaka]

Originally Posted by Pentium4

I was worried at first that the PSU didn't like my recap and was outputting high ripple but it makes more sense that it just had a long stressful life.

Yeah, that's what happened most likely.

Even Panny FL can take only a finite amount of use/abuse before they fail.

Now I can't recall if this was with FJS or FL series, but I also had a Panasonic cap bulge on me after storing a machine for a while. It was actually the Pegatron M2N78-LA motherboard from an HP Pavilion p6247c PC, shown in this thread:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=90727

^ Basically, I haven't posted an update on that thread, but I pulled out that system in September of this year to use it for testing some hardware... and that's when I noticed I had a bulged cap next to the CPU. I last posted in that thread at the end of 2020... so looks like the cap bulged somewhere in between the 9 months or so in storage.
It's an HP, though, so no surprise. Notice there are only 4 of those Panasonic (FL or FJS) 1800 uF caps total filtering the CPU output... and the CPU is an Athlon II X4 - not exactly light on power usage. The board has space for 6 caps total (so 2 empty spots.) Probably HP decided to be cheap and cut some corners... which made the 4 installed ones have to work harder... and probably why one of them failed. At least that's my guess to why it failed, but I could be wrong too.

So yeah... high ripple current for long enough time will break down even the good Japanese brands.

Originally Posted by Per Hansson

Wow, you can hardly tell it is the same PSU as in the earlier pictures! Nice work!

I know, right.
If we didn't know Pentium4 any better, we could certainly say this was fake and he just pulled a new PSU on us.

Originally Posted by goodpsusearch

Excellent work like the good old days

[Pentium4]

Originally Posted by Per Hansson

Wow, you can hardly tell it is the same PSU as in the earlier pictures! Nice work!

Thank you! Yes, it's much happier now

Originally Posted by goodpsusearch

Welcome back P4!

Excellent work like the good old days

Thanks! Yes, I have some things to work on and post. Maybe even some updates of past projects.

Originally Posted by Topcat

I've actually seen many Dell toasters roast Panasonic caps ranging from the GX270 all the way up to GX755 era stuff and newer. Not as common as other brands frequented by Dell (Rubycon, Nichicon, and UCC)...but its certainly happened plenty.

Nice job on the refurb! I love seeing this versus it being scrapped!

Oh no doubt, just the sample size alone of all the stuff you see No discredit was intended to Panasonic. It did its job and then some. Heat aside - I bet it wouldn't have popped if that CapXon was a quality brand from day one. My company was going to give this to a local company to melt down... I like that better than the dumpster, but still couldn't let it happen. It's been running like a champ ever since I replaced that cap.

[kevin!]

Surely it has failed due to the heat, I would add a fan to keep the chipset and the capacitors that are nearby cool.
How many hours does the hard drive currently have? Out of curiosity.
I have a 500GB Seagate 7200.14 series and it already has 78,000h XD.