Xbox 360 Xenon Modern Capacitor Replacements

[burom]

I found my old Xbox 360 in storage and opened it up to see if there was anything that broke since it was built in 2006 (launch era Xenon revision, never red ringed, never been serviced) and didn't want to find out by releasing magic smoke. Upon moving the dust bunnies out of the way I was greeted by a bunch of capacitors with crud coming out of the top; it doesn't seem to have leaked onto the board so at least I have that going for me.

I'm posting here because I want to try to source replacement caps myself from Mouser or Digikey instead of braving eBay or waiting for places to have them in stock. From what I can tell these are the particular through hole capacitors on my motherboard:

• 13x Rubycon MFZ 2700uF 6.3V (these are the ones that burst)
• 15x Panasonic FL 1500uF 16V
• 7x Nichicon VZ(M) 100uF 16V
• 15x Nichicon HE(M) 220uF 16V
• 4x Fujitsu FPCAP 820uF 4V

I want to be thorough so I'm looking at sourcing replacements for all of the above capacitors and not just the Rubycon ones, but I've hit a wall finding what to look for that is still in production and not new old stock. I consider myself handy with a soldering iron but when it comes to actually deciding what parts to use I freely admit that it's new to me. In looking around I have found that the early 00s ultra low ESR electrolytic capacitors (ala the Rubycon MFZ) have been replaced by polymer capacitors but again I don't know what to look for in specifying a replacement.

If anyone here has experience knowing what to find in a modern replacement for each series I would deeply appreciate it.

[stj]

the MF, FL and FPCAP should be replaced with polymers,
not sure about the VZ and HE without looking at the datasheets, but panasonic FR would replace them.

[momaka]

For the Rubycon MFZ, you can use anything from 820 uF to 1500 uF polymers. United Chemicon PSA/PSC or Sanyo (now Panasonic) SEPC or Nichicon RR5 or RR7 or equivalent polymers will be fine. Can use 2.5V, 4V, or 6.3V - at least for the ones around the GPU and the CPU. IIRC, the old Xenon also had a few of the 2700 uF MFZs at the bottom of the board for an auxiliary 3.3V or 5V rail. For those, you'll need 6.3V ones.
All in all, the Xbox 360 boards aren't too picky, so whatever polymers you end up using will be fine. Probably fine to go even with cheaper Kemet from Mouser & Digikey.

As for the other caps, you can leave them alone.
Panasonic FL is pretty robust, and the ones on your board are 16V ones, so you won't run into issues with them in the next 10-15 years probably.
Same goes for Nichicon HE. Actually, these are not ultra-low ESR and they are pretty well regarded. So best to leave those alone.
And finally, Nichicon VZ - these are general-purpose non-aqueous type electrolytic caps, so they tend to not age very much in storage... and also should be good for another 10-15 years still.
Oh, and I forgot, the yellow Fujitsu FPCAPs - these are fine too. They are functional polymer caps (hence the "FP" in the series), which isn't exactly the same as solid polymer caps... but they are pretty tough little boogers too. I still have a few that were bulged from someone overheating a board in the oven back when I used to work in a console repair shop 10+ years ago now. Interestingly enough, the few bulged FPCAPs I pulled from that overheated board still measure fine and one I even have on a GeForce 8600 GT video card still working fine. So they are good caps too.

Really, it's only the Rubycon MFZ series that are known to have issues, and it's specifically with the 2700 uF 6.3V ones. I made a post about it here (scroll down to post # 991 if the page doesn't take you there):
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/genera...50#post1571853
The 6.3V 820 uF "tall & skinny" Ruby MFZ from the newer Xbox 360 boards on the other hand, also seem to be OK. We'll see for how long, of course. I keep a stock of these and the 6.3V 2700 uF MFZ back from those days in the repair shop. Pretty much all of my 2700 uF MFZ caps have gone bad. But the 820 uF, none so far.

Oh, and in case anyone runs into this thread and has Nichicon HZ 6.3V 2200 uF caps instead of the 2700 uF MFZ - those are BAD too, *IF* they have a date code starting with "H05". H06 and newer date codes are fixed. This is a know issue with the Nichicon HM, HN, and HZ series. Interestingly enough, I haven't had any failures with 16V 1500 uF HN series with an H05 date code yet. So it also only seems to affect the lower-voltage caps in particular.

Last but not least: Sanyo WF series - if you have any on your board, get rid of them. They are all bound to fail (and most likely will be in just about every old Xbox 360 board that has them at the writing of this post.)

[burom]

Thanks everyone, I think I've settled on these to replace the MFZs: https://www.mouser.ca/ProductDetail/Nichicon/RR70J102MDN1?qs=sGAEpiMZZMvR1wrj203KOCqOaCjKxmF5LZFfSMLcrz0%3D

I don't have any Sanyos on this board fortunately so this should be all I really need to get things back up and running.

[stj]

your link's dead - lol
but i see it's something from nichicon called RR70 series
make sure the diameter matches or the pins wont fit in the board

[momaka]

Looks good.

your link's dead - lol
but i see it's something from nichicon called RR70 series

Yup, it's Nichicon part number RR70J102MDN1
6.3V, 1000 uF, 7 mOhms ESR, 6k RC, 10 mm dia.
Should work fine for all of the MFZ's (or Nichicon HZ if anyone has the 2005 date-coded ones on their board)

As for the dead link... maybe the new forum software is pulling some shenanigans with the link code?? It should be this (hopefully, let's see):
*edit* or it might be something on Mouser's side. Let's try this:
https://www.mouser.ca/ProductDetail/...WsCMxuFg%3D%3D

I guess so much for HTML standards anymore. Web 2.0 (3.0 now?) is broken in so many silly ways.