Bad capacitors in MB

[zephyrprime]

I've been hearing a few people complain about bad capacitors on Anandtech recently and thought it was a little strange. Well I ran into this article that sheds light on the issue.


"Failing capacitors are sending shock waves up the electronics food chain?literally. PCs are crashing and televisions and camcorders are going on the fritz, and the problem is becoming more widespread, according to those who replace those components.
......
Holzman is far from alone in issuing warnings. In fact, entire news groups have sprung up on the Internet to deal with this matter, and many of them are naming names and posting photographs. The most commonly mentioned are capacitors made by Tayeh and Jackcon Capacitor Electronics Co. Electronic News acquired motherboards with leaky capacitors made by one of those companies and numerous photos taken by integrators around the globe of failed capacitors made by both companies. Jackcon did not comment by press time. Tayeh could not be reached for comment."

More at: link

 

[Adul]

link?

 

[Technonut]

Thanks... Interesting reading.

"When you see hundreds of boards fail, you realize what the problem is," Headlee said. "I started fixing boards as a favor to people and I quickly got overwhelmed. I was getting hundreds of them. So I started experimenting with the capacitors. I hooked them up to a 5-volt DC battery, which is a really clean source of power, and the capacitors would fail. They should charge, but they would short out or explode and blow their guts out."

Headlee has fixed about 1,000 motherboards so far. He has a collection of about 10,000 dead capacitors in a large box as proof?something he needs to keep because he said motherboard and capacitor manufacturers have threatened to sue him. But the problem doesn't stop there. He's also starting to see capacitor problems in name-brand camcorders and televisions. He said most camcorders have 40 to 50 capacitors, making the potential for failure about five times greater than a PC motherboard.

 

[Wolfsraider]

shiznat

started noticing the problem about 10 months ago and has been contacting motherboard vendors to get them to acknowledge and fix the problem. So far, no one is owning up to it

Some involve boards that were made a couple years ago, but most of the problems began earlier this year.

Good capacitors also cost more than the ones showing up on boards. In quantities of 10,000, board repair houses say the difference is about 5 cents per capacitor, which amounts to about 50 cents per motherboard.

zephyrprime thanks for the read

 

[Gstanfor]

Further insight on the bad capacitor problem can be gained from this article also.
Low-ESR Aluminum Electrolytic Failures Linked to Taiwanese Raw Material Problems

Greg