SPCR

The story from several years ago is that there was an industrial espionage by Chinese manufactures of capacitors that missed ingredients that over time caused them to bulge and leak in many famous motherboards and brands like Abit, Asus, Dell, even Apple.

My MSI MSI 975X Platinum V.2 Motherboard Motherboard was made in 2006, unlike Gigabyte ultradurable (which came after I bought MSI) there's no claim of using all-solid Japanese capacitors. I think ASUS also claims Japanese capacitors.

Is it likely an MSI motherboard made in 2006 may have bulging capacitors down the line? Was this issue ever "fixed" by Chinese manufacturers (GB and ASUS goes to great length to claim they get their capacitors all solid from Japanese sources)

How can I tell what kind of capacitor MSI uses in MSI 975X Platinum V.2 Motherboard

I wouldn't worry even soild caps bust it's all marketing. My EVGA Geforce 7600 GS bought in 2007 with soild caps did this all the caps burst after it was 11 months out of warranty. Nothing you can do to tell if this happen.

I hope my MB doesn't bust a cap in my ass!

Michael Sandstrom wrote:I hope my MB doesn't bust a cap in my ass!

Don't let you motherboard listen to Rap and it won't.

Look at the board. If all the power capacitors (the cylinders about 1/4" diameter for the uninitiated) look like metal with a purple D painted on top, they are solid state and likely to outlive the rest of the system. If they look shiny on the top with an indented X then they are electrolytic and subject to failure if they get hot.

How hot is hot? Well, look for a MOSFET (small square chip with three large metal tabs on one side). If you can touch it without YOW! temperature, then your capacitors will last for years. If not, use better cooling, lower CPU voltage, or be prepared to replace your motherboard.

cmthomson wrote:Look at the board. If all the power capacitors (the cylinders about 1/4" diameter for the uninitiated) look like metal with a purple D painted on top, they are solid state and likely to outlive the rest of the system. If they look shiny on the top with an indented X then they are electrolytic and subject to failure if they get hot.

How hot is hot? Well, look for a MOSFET (small square chip with three large metal tabs on one side). If you can touch it without YOW! temperature, then your capacitors will last for years. If not, use better cooling, lower CPU voltage, or be prepared to replace your motherboard.

This is useful. I've owned this product since 2007, I am wondering if its capacitors will burst any day now...could you look here,

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ImageGall ... otherboard

http://www.bcchardware.com/index.php?fu ... _photo.php

http://www.bcchardware.com/index.php?se ... _photo.php

http://www.bcchardware.com/index.php?fu ... _photo.php

http://www.bcchardware.com/index.php?fu ... _photo.php

http://www.bcchardware.com/index.php?fu ... _photo.php

http://www.viperlair.com/images/reviews ... p/mobo.jpg

http://www.viperlair.com/images/reviews ... socket.jpg

http://www.viperlair.com/images/reviews ... 5xp/nb.jpg


I think it's electrolytic?

He's refering to extreme heat and I highly doubt your running that hot since you've owned the board for 3 year now. If your machine was running that hot other components would have failed long ago. Caps bursting is more related to defective poor quality caps then heat. The caps that where on my video burst as I said before and my system was well cooled inside the Antec Sonata II with two 120mm S-flex fans running. My case wasn't issue of heat but defective caps.

dan wrote:I am wondering if its capacitors will burst any day now...could you look here,

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ImageGall ... otherboard

I think it's electrolytic?

Nope. Your board has solid state caps in the VRM (the ones around the CPU socket, which are painted blue on your board). There are lots of other caps on the board that are electrolytic, but they are highly unlikely to fail as they just provide bulk capacitance to various components. The "exploding/bulging" capacitor problem many people report is almost always associated with the capacitors in the VRM circuits that feed the CPU its Vcore (or in the case of a graphics card, the GPU). They fail because they get hot and dry out, then start conducting, then get really hot, then burst. This happens in car sound systems too.

You can stop worrying.

JC7: it's not unusual for the VRM of a graphics card to get really hot even though nothing else in the system does...

re:
cmthomson
johnniecache7

Thanks, with MSI now advertising its Big Bang Trinergy hi-c caps and Gigabyte advertising its Ultra durable 3 "all solid Japanese capacitors" and given I've had my motherboard for 3 years, I'm wondering whether it will mysteriously die soon.

My C2D is 1.8 and NOT overclocked. The hard drive though is 6 years old.

The exploding bursting caps based on inferior Chinese capacitors have gotten a lot of bad publicity. Were the ABIT and Dell motherboards with bursting caps and failure exposed to extreme heat? I understand that at least the Dell/HP ones were NOT overclocked and not tampered with as to create extreme out of spec heat (maybe dust??)



What other components will are prone to failure?

At work I've replaced a number of machines and motherboards due to bursting capacitors. Even replacement machines have popped a cap or more after about a year.

So far I've had zero problems with solid capacitors.

josephclemente wrote:At work I've replaced a number of machines and motherboards due to bursting capacitors. Even replacement machines have popped a cap or more after about a year.

So far I've had zero problems with solid capacitors.

That's reassuring. So if it's not capacitors, what else causes motherboards to malfunction over time? My MSI is out of warranty. I look at GB Ultradurable and MSI Trinergy with some interest if and when my 3+ year MB malfunctions.

Usually you can tell before the capacitor will blow that it starts to swell. If your a handy-type of person, you can even replace the swollen capacitors before it blows damaging the board.

I replaced 3 swollen caps on an old IBM server that was acting up and it worked perfectly thereafter!

Some caps bulge on the bottom side (near the solder joint) before they bulge on top. If you really want to talk about caps try going to badcaps.net and you'll find plenty of pics and experts. I hung out there back in the day when the Dell GX270 motherboards were failing left and right.

Well I can tell you MSI still has this problem at least until 2009.
More than 80% of the MSI motherboeard I soold to customers I sold in 2008 - 2010 has failed at the moment.
Of the ones that still work about 50% has bulging capacitors to.
I can replace capacitors myself, but I am done with MSI forever.

I make sure to buy motherboards with metal capacitors. Most recently, I used an ASRock and it uses all metal capacitors.

NeilBlanchard wrote:I make sure to buy motherboards with metal capacitors. Most recently, I used an ASRock and it uses all metal capacitors.

I have mostly been doing the same. Anything without 100% solid capacitors I normally ignore.

However, when doing some builds where I wanted good performance with low idle power consumption, I went with Intel's DH61DL. This motherboard has 11 solid capacitors and 10 regular capacitors. Hopefully Intel is a safe choice...

I am still replacing prebuilt brand name machines at work due to this problem. Often the computers just start operating slower than they should. I'd visually inspect the capacitors one day and they all look fine. Two months later they are bulging.

My father had an MSI board (K9A platinum) die recently due to bulging capacitors. I am not 100% sure but I think it was purchased in 2009.
It was exacerbated by an Antec case fan that had died although there was still one working fan in the system. There were several capacitors that were bulging and leaking on the board.
Several were near the VRM and there were a few more toward the memory side.

I'll never buy a board with electrolytic capacitors again.

I don't think all capacitors with a "soft" top are bad.
Actually, I prefer those capacitors because then you can see earlier when they start failing.
All MSI needs to do (imao) is use better quality ones and/or with a little higher max voltage.
Personally, I have never seen structural problems with these capacitors on motherboards other than MSI.

I have an a Biostar M7NCD from 2004 and MSI K9AG Neo2-Digital from 2007 both with traditional capacitors. Neither, touch wood, are displaying any signs of failure yet.

The Dell Optiplex GX270 (or possibly GX260) towers we had at my old place of work almost all suffered motherboard failure due to leaking capacitors (a couple of them failed twice). Dell always denied there was an inherent problem with the model.

Layon wrote:Well I can tell you MSI still has this problem at least until 2009.
More than 80% of the MSI motherboeard I soold to customers I sold in 2008 - 2010 has failed at the moment.
Of the ones that still work about 50% has bulging capacitors to.
I can replace capacitors myself, but I am done with MSI forever.

uh-oh

i own a msi platinum 975x ver 2

what are metal cap and how do I know if MSI or Gigabyte uses them?

cmthomson wrote:

dan wrote:I am wondering if its capacitors will burst any day now...could you look here,

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ImageGall ... otherboard

I think it's electrolytic?

Nope. Your board has solid state caps in the VRM (the ones around the CPU socket, which are painted blue on your board). There are lots of other caps on the board that are electrolytic, but they are highly unlikely to fail as they just provide bulk capacitance to various components. The "exploding/bulging" capacitor problem many people report is almost always associated with the capacitors in the VRM circuits that feed the CPU its Vcore (or in the case of a graphics card, the GPU). They fail because they get hot and dry out, then start conducting, then get really hot, then burst. This happens in car sound systems too.

You can stop worrying.

JC7: it's not unusual for the VRM of a graphics card to get really hot even though nothing else in the system does...

Layon wrote:Well I can tell you MSI still has this problem at least until 2009.
More than 80% of the MSI motherboeard I soold to customers I sold in 2008 - 2010 has failed at the moment.
Of the ones that still work about 50% has bulging capacitors to.
I can replace capacitors myself, but I am done with MSI forever.

I've posted pics of the capacitors from newegg -- is it solid or metal or electrolytic?

thus far my computer seems okay

dan wrote:I've posted pics of the capacitors from newegg -- is it solid or metal or electrolytic?

Um, where?

On a related topic, it's not only motherboard caps that have issues. The main board in my Samsung 244T display failed because of bulging capacitors. Replacing them (with a kit found online) revived this excellent expensive monitor...

cmthomson wrote:

dan wrote:I've posted pics of the capacitors from newegg -- is it solid or metal or electrolytic?

Um, where?

On a related topic, it's not only motherboard caps that have issues. The main board in my Samsung 244T display failed because of bulging capacitors. Replacing them (with a kit found online) revived this excellent expensive monitor...

http://www.bcchardware.com/index.php?fu ... _photo.php

dan wrote:http://www.bcchardware.com/index.php?fu ... _photo.php

That picture is of standard electrolytic capacitors.

Capacitors can go bad without even showing signs of bulging.

As dhanson865 mentioned earlier, badcaps.net has a lot of information. I have even ordered a kit from them to repair a Shuttle brand computer which is still going strong.

josephclemente wrote:

dan wrote:http://www.bcchardware.com/index.php?fu ... _photo.php

That picture is of standard electrolytic capacitors.

Capacitors can go bad without even showing signs of bulging.

As dhanson865 mentioned earlier, badcaps.net has a lot of information. I have even ordered a kit from them to repair a Shuttle brand computer which is still going strong.

oh, but i understand the most important ones feed vcore voltages --

dan wrote:oh, but i understand the most important ones feed vcore voltages --

The caps in that photo are standard electrolytics. But they are around the south bridge, which rarely gets hot.

The most important caps on a motherboard are clustered around the CPU socket. They get hot because the CPU and the VRM that feeds it both get very hot.