The GOOD Capacitors Thread!!

[Rainbow]

Except for GSC

[Chris1992]

Probably except Tayeh also... And thanks Linuxguru.

[furballi]

Are all United/Nippon Chemi-con KZG series Made in Japan? I believe some Panasonic/Matsushita caps are coming out of China.

[linuxguru]

Yes, some Panasonic caps seem to be the result of outsourced manufacturing - I haven't found the specs for series HFA, FF and FJ anywhere on the net, but I've seen all three, in some cases on reputed motherboards.

[furballi]

That's why I figured Chemi-con may also fab caps in China. Are KZG series reliable? I see a lot of these caps on mid-level boards.

[jmdeathsquad]

hey all, I just replaced a dell board motherboard with 6 bulging Nichicon caps on it... I wish I couldve gotten pics but I already sent it back and no camera at work. Still, I was quite surprised...

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by jmdeathsquad

hey all, I just replaced a dell board motherboard with 6 bulging Nichicon caps on it... I wish I couldve gotten pics but I already sent it back and no camera at work. Still, I was quite surprised...

That's quite common. The Nichicon HM and HN series are notorious for this. While Nichicon PM series are good caps, I no longer promote Nichicon as a preferred brand anymore because of this. I just rebuilt close to 300 GX270 mainboards.....all with Nichicon failures.

[jmdeathsquad]

yep that was the model, GX270 Luckily the replacement they sent me was all rubycons. I guess I'll be looking for more of these to fail in the future, as we have about 10 of them from the same batch of comps...

[Rainbow]

Expect all of them to fail.

[jmdeathsquad]

nice, well I hope they're still under warranty when they decide to crap out. The one that failed was a 24/7 machine, so that may have been the reason. Also, it runs folding when idle (didnt find that out til I replaced the board).

[willawake]

imho you might be able to swing out of warranty replacement. there is a lot of info on this forum on dells to assist you. they do not want a class action on the nichicon fiasco.

[kc8adu]

Originally Posted by Topcat

That's quite common. The Nichicon HM and HN series are notorious for this. While Nichicon PM series are good caps, I no longer promote Nichicon as a preferred brand anymore because of this. I just rebuilt close to 300 GX270 mainboards.....all with Nichicon failures.

i have done that many or more.
kinda like brookings boards.done so many i get sick of seeing them.
and to jmdeathsquad-load f@h on all the rest and pound them into failure if dell wont do a preemptive replacement under warrenty.the badcaps team will thank you!

[jmdeathsquad]

haha that's a good plan, I'll try to get Dell to replace them. Usually they'll just send you a mobo if you tell them its not working, but 9 or so all at once may look suspicious. I'll load f@h on them, but they have to turn their comps off before they leave (orders of the boss)... the one that failed was a 24/7 because it runs a tape backup. Maybe just having them running that during the day will be enough. *crosses fingers*

[denyu]

Rubycon made in two country... first one in Japan and other from Indonesia as far as I know anyone have heard they factory ?

[Haraldg]

What a wonderful service to the hardware community. I was sent here by someone helping me with some HD RAID problems. Sure enough, I have some swelling and leaking caps on my MOB

Could I please ask a new question re. "good" caps. I would like to recap my Abit KT7 MOB. I have aquired Panasonic/Matsushita FC series caps. Are these acceptable for the job, or did I miss something with all the different series of the all the different caps? :-(
Thanks so much!
Harald

[linuxguru]

FC is fine for just about everything - with the possible exception of Vcore bypass caps on Prescott-capable mobos and a few overclocker-friendly mobos, where ultra-low ESR caps are indicated. A few choices for these caps are Rubycon MBZ/MCZ/ZLG, Nichicon HD/HZ, Panasonic FK/FM, and Samxon GC/GD.

[hardwareguy]

Cornell Dubilier makes some VERY good caps, although I have never seen one in a mainboard. I usually see them in industrial PSUs and the like.

The company has been in business making caps since 1909!

[Azurael]

What's the long term durability of polymer types compared to decent low ESR caps from the likes of Rubycon, Panasonic, Samxon, etc?

I've heard that they're more temperature tolerant, but no idea what that really means; does it mean they run closer to specs at high temps, or last longer at high temps, or what?

[shadow99]

I just found this site and it's been very interesting reading. I've been an electronics tech for many, many years so have seen alot of bad electrolytics.
In the 80's I spent several years repairing consumer items such as tv's, vcr's, etc. Electrolytic caps have always been going bad which makes them a a good money maker from a service point of view. In the 80's I replaced 1000's of bad caps in tv's. I recall the Hitachi's that had alot of failures in the vertical circuit and the fix was 3.3/160 lytics. The visible evidence on those was usually a shrunken plastic skin. All makes had the cap problem and failures in my opinion were caused by many factors such as heat, cheapness of materials and bad design. That hasnt really changed.

I dont think the bad caps on circuit boards now are that different than 20 years ago. They failed then, and still fail now. Some caps give no visible evidence of being bad. I've repaired many Hyundai crt monitors that go dim, and eventually go black because of a bad cap in the crt filament supply circuit but you could NEVER tell by the way it looks that it's bad, even after removing it. It's a 330/16v I believe.

I've recently repaired some motherboards with bad caps and have gone with the clip em off and solder news ones on from the component side method.

I just bought 25 of 2200/6.3v locally for $8 and they're KMG brand.
Any experience with that brand?

Great site, glad to be here!

[PeteS in CA]

Every electronic component has wear-out mechanisms, though some, absent abnormal out-of-spec stresses could last for many decades. Lytics aren't in that league. One traditional wear-out mechanism, the principal one IIRC, is drying out. While, at a cursory glance, it would appear that the two foils are the electrodes and the paper the dielectric, in reality only the anode foil is one of the electrodes. The true dielectric is a layer of aluminum oxide which has been formed on the anode foil, and the electrolyte is the true cathode. The cathode foil is there to make the connection to the electrolyte. Thus, when the electrolyte escapes - a very gradual process - the cathode electrode disappears. Sealing has definitely improved in lytics over the last several decades (I remember articles that commented on dried out lytics in TV repair magazines from the 1950s), but the leakage still happens. So, as long as parts aren't failing due to out-of-spec conditions or aren't junk, lytics still aren't super long life components. Neither, btw, are fans.

Are those caps KMG brand or are they United Chemicon KMG series? UCC's logo is a shield above the value.