SPCR

Intro:
This summer I ended up re-doing our HTPC, I had an extra AMD BE-2300 (45W) laying around, so I figured I could make the machine into an HD capable HTPC with our HDTV. I found an Asus AM2 motherboard on ebay for under $30 shipped, but when it arrived, I found that the capacitors right at the main-ATX power plug and RAM slots were badly bulging. I had looked into re-capping before but never had the time or inclination to do it--being a construction worker in MI this summer meant I had plenty of free time

I picked up a few affordable tools and I ended up successfully fixing it, and it is now purring away nicely in our living room. I thought I was done with that until coming upon a thread here in the forums. Forum member/moderator NeilBlanchard had a board that he was done with due to bulging blown capacitors.

I ended up PM'ing Neil a couple weeks ago, and so here we go:

Our patient:
It's an Asus A7N8X Deluxe rev 2 board. SATA, dual-NIC, Firewire, and Soundstorm audio. I have DDR, AGP cards, and a trio of socket-A CPU's available, so why not give it a shot?







Scalpel please:
I had a 15/30W soldering iron--it's not really enough for this so over the summer I picked up the 40W and the 45W desoldering iron. I have some solder with flux and some really fine stuff without. Some various snips and pokey implements.



Your nurse:
She really wanted to help. Chased her away when I fired up the irons.



The operation:
No pics during this...the one I did over the summer was easier, was able to vaccum out the holes. This one had much smaller ones, I ended up going with the "melting the solder from one side and pushing the new cap through" technique (not particularly recommended). I really need to add a stainless steel pick to my tool set for cases like this (the solder won't stick to it), as well as a chisel point for the iron.

Post-op:
Gave it a run over night with one stick of memory in, no problems. Threw in another one and it went overnight also with no problems in dual-channel mode.





Put on the Swiftech heatsinks *grunts* and went dual-channel:





Conclusion and more information:
The tools and supplies needed for this cost under $50 to start--and the caps needed for re-capping a board are quite affordable. The iron shouldn't be more than $10-15, same with the solder-removing iron (or you could try just the bulb, or desoldering wick, the pump isn't recommended for this though I have one also). Solder is pretty cheap and a little spool or tube lasts a long time. I have some rosin flux and cleaner also.

I bought the caps both times from the CapKing. To fix this board I bought a couple extra and picked the high end ones, it was still only $6. He has some good instructions there, also has a link to some very thorough instructions here. I also spoke with him via email, I can definitely recommend him as a source for caps. Another site that I had looked at previously and is very informative is BadCaps.net, though I haven't had the opportunity of purchasing from him yet.

So if you are ready to toss a board, stop and give it a shot--if you already have some of the supplies it's very affordable and could save having to get all new parts, reinstall OS, etc.




Final verdict:
Recap your board, and you feel like a complete bad-ass

I may do that just for higher grade stuff. I have nit had a bulging cap since an athlon 900 in the year 2000, reverse cooling and micron changes, it seems to be headed for may more hours than I racked up already. I found they do not like heat from heatsink fans. I am sure they try to gather and recycle through themself more than heat. Reverse cooling proved it to me.

thanks for link to the cap site, I didn't know you could buy them.

Now where to get those sealed fluid filled ball bearing I found in a nidec recently...

Makes sure you use capacitors with a low ESR (Equivalent Series Resistance). If they don't have low ESR, the very high peak currents in the circuit will cause them to heat up, shortening their lifespan.

Hey, that motherboard looks very familiar...

Good job on the fix, and the write up!

Mr Evil wrote:Makes sure you use capacitors with a low ESR (Equivalent Series Resistance). If they don't have low ESR, the very high peak currents in the circuit will cause them to heat up, shortening their lifespan.

Yep--these were Rubycon MBZ 6.3V 3300uF caps with "ultra-low ESR for VRM" according to the spec sheet.

i've done this in LCD monitors, pretty simple...i didn't use all the extra bits though, just a soldering iron, and actually regular caps pulled from dead electronics (as long as they were good replacements).

i just used a normal radio shack 15W iron for it though...it did just fine. used a pair of pliers to pull one lead out at a time, and then putting the new one is was same principal but backwards.

could have fixed a P35 board from the dump doing that, but when i saw a choke was ripped off, and pins in the socket were bent, i stopped trying to pull it out, there's no return from that.

bonestonne wrote:i've done this in LCD monitors...

Electrolytic capacitors are the number one cause of failure of any electronic equipment that I have come across. They are fortunately easy to replace, as you have found, however a lot of equipment, including monitors, has potentially hazardous voltages inside even after being turned off, so nobody should attempt such a repair unless qualified.

Great and interesting write up psiu.