hi guys, i have two soyo-based machines here, and both of them are experiencing some weirdness (and have been for a while)... i'd heard about the capacitor debacle, but never suspected that it could be causing my problems.
meet system one: a sy-kt266a dragon plus! i've seen several postings about this board, but this one has always performed very well. the system itself takes a lot of crap though, being under the control of three mostly tech illiterate people (*cough*family*cough*).
it was having some baffling windows problems (certain programs not starting at all, others randomly "crashing" by completely disappearing, window, process/task listing and all). but once i would clear off spyware or reformat it, it would seem to be fine.
until one day, when it would drop a BSOD every time it booted, without fail. eventually narrowed it down to the ram slots - two identical 256MB modules, which (separately) both showed as fine in memtest86, but as soon as they're both inserted, windows just barfs. i don't know of any other problems, but that one's big enough. i tried switching psu's, and there was no change. i haven't checked the caps yet, but what would you bet that's what the problem is?
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system two: sy-kt400 dragon ultra. this is my system, and i've loved working with it. unfortunately it is on its third power supply: a 550W antec truepower III, which was sent to replace a truepower II, which was sent to replace the original truepower. it's also gone through a mess of hard drives, but i attribute that to the constant heavy processing it does.
it's always performed very well, but somewhere along the line it started having power-on problems: once shutdown from windows, it has a 50/50 chance of booting next time i ask it to. if it boots, it works fine. if it doesn't boot, i have to wait between 4 and 5 minutes to try again, at which time it will have a 50/50 chance of booting. repeat. it's pretty annoying, but i couldn't find the problem, as changing psu and removing/switching other components didn't help either.
anyway the final straw was a few weeks ago, when it dropped another hdd on its head, this time the system drive which has been in use for 4+ years. as you might imagine, it was a mess to clean up. now that windows is reinstalled, my creative audigy2 (sb0240) has started to flag. its digital coaxial output is attached to a sony str-de597 receiver. this card has worked flawlessly until now, but suddenly there two distinct problems. when no sound is playing and it's in pcm (48KHz stereo) mode, there are single, loud, clicks audible from the right channel - it's random, but at least once every 45 seconds. the second and bigger problem, is that it has started dropping the signal when using passthrough mode for dolby or dts (no matter how many channels or what bitrate it's output at). i tested the receiver and cable with a $30 dvd player, and it didn't misbehave.
when i was racking my brain trying to figure out what's wrong i noticed a milky stain around the base and... above? a single cap on the board between the northbridge and agp slot:
(note that this is a stock photo, i'll be uploading proper ones tomorrow when there's more light)
these are all sacon caps, and they all appear to be in good condition. what are the chances of the leaking electrolyte travelling upwards across the board, anyway? it doesn't look "dirty" like most of the pics i've seen, it's more like the trail of minerals you see when a splash of water dries on a mirror. sorry this was a long post, let me know if there's any other information (other than the photos) that might help.
meet system one: a sy-kt266a dragon plus! i've seen several postings about this board, but this one has always performed very well. the system itself takes a lot of crap though, being under the control of three mostly tech illiterate people (*cough*family*cough*).
it was having some baffling windows problems (certain programs not starting at all, others randomly "crashing" by completely disappearing, window, process/task listing and all). but once i would clear off spyware or reformat it, it would seem to be fine.
until one day, when it would drop a BSOD every time it booted, without fail. eventually narrowed it down to the ram slots - two identical 256MB modules, which (separately) both showed as fine in memtest86, but as soon as they're both inserted, windows just barfs. i don't know of any other problems, but that one's big enough. i tried switching psu's, and there was no change. i haven't checked the caps yet, but what would you bet that's what the problem is?
---------------------------------------------------------
system two: sy-kt400 dragon ultra. this is my system, and i've loved working with it. unfortunately it is on its third power supply: a 550W antec truepower III, which was sent to replace a truepower II, which was sent to replace the original truepower. it's also gone through a mess of hard drives, but i attribute that to the constant heavy processing it does.
it's always performed very well, but somewhere along the line it started having power-on problems: once shutdown from windows, it has a 50/50 chance of booting next time i ask it to. if it boots, it works fine. if it doesn't boot, i have to wait between 4 and 5 minutes to try again, at which time it will have a 50/50 chance of booting. repeat. it's pretty annoying, but i couldn't find the problem, as changing psu and removing/switching other components didn't help either.
anyway the final straw was a few weeks ago, when it dropped another hdd on its head, this time the system drive which has been in use for 4+ years. as you might imagine, it was a mess to clean up. now that windows is reinstalled, my creative audigy2 (sb0240) has started to flag. its digital coaxial output is attached to a sony str-de597 receiver. this card has worked flawlessly until now, but suddenly there two distinct problems. when no sound is playing and it's in pcm (48KHz stereo) mode, there are single, loud, clicks audible from the right channel - it's random, but at least once every 45 seconds. the second and bigger problem, is that it has started dropping the signal when using passthrough mode for dolby or dts (no matter how many channels or what bitrate it's output at). i tested the receiver and cable with a $30 dvd player, and it didn't misbehave.
when i was racking my brain trying to figure out what's wrong i noticed a milky stain around the base and... above? a single cap on the board between the northbridge and agp slot:
(note that this is a stock photo, i'll be uploading proper ones tomorrow when there's more light)
these are all sacon caps, and they all appear to be in good condition. what are the chances of the leaking electrolyte travelling upwards across the board, anyway? it doesn't look "dirty" like most of the pics i've seen, it's more like the trail of minerals you see when a splash of water dries on a mirror. sorry this was a long post, let me know if there's any other information (other than the photos) that might help.
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