Here's my recap job in progress.
After 4 years of 24x7 good service, now it's not POSTing anymore.
Symptoms:
- green led signals "under power", fans start, 12V wire is 12V (at the PSU)
- with everything removed but the CPU, the board beeps "I miss the memory"
- with memory plugged (two memories, used both, used one at time, used in every one of the 4 slots) it doesn't post, doesn't reach the point to beep "it's all ok, now I'm booting"
Every connector has been unplugged, cleaned, replugged with no success.
This happened in the last few months: usually it's always on, but every 3 months it needs cleaning. 3 months ago it didn't turn on, and I went straight to the memory. Some unplugging and "replugging as it was" seemed to fix the issue, but now I see this was simply compatible with "try many times until it works".
Now I've put it offline for a system update (Wheezy
) and "many times" has become a rule, just for few days: yesterday "many" meant "infinite".
Googling around eventually led me here where I found some threads with the same issue for the same board (and at least one successful story after recapping), then I watched closer and saw this:
CPU seems ok:
This seems to be consistent with how I used this PC for 4 year: low consumption router and HTPC. I used IGP every second, not even the classic putting the graphic on idle when not used (you want to turn on the TV without having to move the mouse around for waking up things) while CPU was on minimum power: the board is rated for up to 95W CPUs, but I used it with a 45W processor, undervolted.
When needed I soldered, in the past I've soldered on 4-layers PCB: not so much practice, but I'm careful and I'll train with an old board. Besides I've no chance to get a replacement; in the worst case the money will be worth the experience.
I know nothing about how to choose new capacitors and what I'll find in my city, then I'm reading everything on this forum I think it could help (by the way am I wrong or this is one of the lucky ASUS PCB with every single capacitor polarity printed reversed?)
After 4 years of 24x7 good service, now it's not POSTing anymore.
Symptoms:
- green led signals "under power", fans start, 12V wire is 12V (at the PSU)
- with everything removed but the CPU, the board beeps "I miss the memory"
- with memory plugged (two memories, used both, used one at time, used in every one of the 4 slots) it doesn't post, doesn't reach the point to beep "it's all ok, now I'm booting"
Every connector has been unplugged, cleaned, replugged with no success.
This happened in the last few months: usually it's always on, but every 3 months it needs cleaning. 3 months ago it didn't turn on, and I went straight to the memory. Some unplugging and "replugging as it was" seemed to fix the issue, but now I see this was simply compatible with "try many times until it works".
Now I've put it offline for a system update (Wheezy
) and "many times" has become a rule, just for few days: yesterday "many" meant "infinite".Googling around eventually led me here where I found some threads with the same issue for the same board (and at least one successful story after recapping), then I watched closer and saw this:
CPU seems ok:
This seems to be consistent with how I used this PC for 4 year: low consumption router and HTPC. I used IGP every second, not even the classic putting the graphic on idle when not used (you want to turn on the TV without having to move the mouse around for waking up things) while CPU was on minimum power: the board is rated for up to 95W CPUs, but I used it with a 45W processor, undervolted.
When needed I soldered, in the past I've soldered on 4-layers PCB: not so much practice, but I'm careful and I'll train with an old board. Besides I've no chance to get a replacement; in the worst case the money will be worth the experience.
I know nothing about how to choose new capacitors and what I'll find in my city, then I'm reading everything on this forum I think it could help (by the way am I wrong or this is one of the lucky ASUS PCB with every single capacitor polarity printed reversed?)
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