bad mobos

[partime]

in previous posts I beleive it was noonoo who posted

"Then take a look at the motherboard carefully - looking for the capacitor (cylindrical shaped) these should have flat tops - if any one of them are bulging even slightly this would be enough to cause this"

is there a place one could read up on this capacitor issue?

I have been seeing quit a few mobos with this problem even more lately since our region has had an out break of storms/power outages

[Radical Dreamer]

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY...eb03/ncap.html

There ya go

[Ruslan]

It was in previous posts:

http://www.careyholzman.com/caps/thumbnails.html

Impressive enough, even for me (I have replaced 1000+ of them already)... but check out also another components (like power MOSFETs - they could be also defective)...

[NooNoo]

Hey Ruslan, good to see you are not completely buried in work!

[confus-ed]

'Leaky caps' is not necessarily terminal ... it depends on which ones where, on what motherboard .... my own particular motherboard has leaky caps right now but still goes ok.

It's not by any means 'good' but dependant on the design it might not have anything to do with any 'failure' at all ... if your 'deaths' are caused by 'power surges' there's more likely candidates than leaky caps ...

Capacitors generally are used to eliminate noise or smooth out current, what happens is the board manufacturer buys the cheapest components they can lay their hands on, the electrolyte in the capacitors becomes chemically unstable, the capacitor pops and starts leaking, the capacitor stops doing its job, and system stability goes for a long walk....

So if you get leaky caps on a new motherboard don't do a straight swap ... get another brand ! All you are doing if you swap is saving up the trouble for later, you'll just get a newer version of the same 'cheapo' components !!!

[Atodini]

Confus-ed has got it right, leaky caps are not often troublesome as they're used in the main for smoothing out internal supplies.

If your caps are showing signs of distress take a serious look at your PSU. Many, if not most generic PSU's are the culprit. A quality PSU is much more stable so gives the caps an easier life!

John

[partime]

thanks all for the help!