Cause of blown caps next to CPU?

[ChefJoe]

I've had a few motherboards die due to blown capacitors (they swell up and sometimes ooze). Soyo BA6+III died that way (old P3 slot katami on it - it only had an overclock of 500 running at 525 with no voltage change) and now a ABIT BE6-II v2.0 did the same thing not long after I put a P3 1.1 CuMine on a Abit slotket-III - with no overclocking. Anything you know of that could cause this sort of behavior? Best guess I have is either some really strange power surges around here (though between the Backups and Enermax, I'd think it'd survive) or maybe something to do with the room getting pretty cold when I leave the window open for too long... any suggestions? I'll probably order a TUSL2-C at this point, but don't want to ruin it.


Thanks

 

[IsOs]

Were all of these boards powered by the same power supply?

 

[Jman13]

If your power is really weird, it might cause that. Do you have the machine running off an UPS? If not, you might want to get one...just to make sure clean power is going into the computer and monitor. Plus, small power flashes don't interrupt you!

-edit: Looking at your post again, I see that you mention the Backups - presumably meaning the APC BackUPS...if so...is it an AVR UPS? It probably is, which leads me to believe that it probably is your PSU...get that thing checked.

 

[Kanly]

With the BA+III and IV, the capacitors blowing is/was a known issue.

Seems like after 11 or 12 months they would just go.

I'm going from memory here based on previous readings in the Soyo newsgroup.

I believe Soyo used a lower capacity capicitor than they should have = 7500 something rather than a 10,000.

I had it happen to two of my 6BA+IV's. One got RMA'ed, the other I just took out the 2 blown capacitors and soldered 2 better ones in.


Had a UPS with line conditioning on both Soyo boards and both had good power supplies.

Don't know about the Abit.

 

[ChefJoe]

Sadly, the abit board was being fed by the cheap old Valueline 300W Power supply for like 9 out of the 10 months. During that time there was no UPS system on it either - i was foolish.

So with the new enermax PSU and UPS, i should be able to breathe a little easier? Now I just have to figure out how brave I wish to be as far as soldering new caps on that board. The old soyo had a number of em swolen across the board, this abit only had a few swolen caps in a row.

 

[Kanly]

ChefJoe, the cases I read about and my own experience with the Soyo was that it was just two capacitors to the left of the serial/printer port connection.

Are you talking about the ones right behind the CPU, or some other ones?

I really had to brush up on my soldering skills, they were pretty rusty, to do it right -- but as the one was out of warranty I figured why not at least give it a try.

 

[ChefJoe]

Duke, going by memory (I chucked the old soyo board a year ago) that one blew a couple caps where there was a few swolen ones near the printer port like you say, but there was also a swolen one down low on the board between some of the pci slots. It's been a while.

This abit BE6-II 2.0 problem developed this past week and all 4 smaller size caps situated between the top 1/3 of the slot1 slot and the wire wrapped donut (I think it's a kind of power recifier) are swolen and two of them have a little leaking out of the center of the imprinted X. I think my warranty on the soyo board had expired (was it a 1 year?) and I can't see anything related to abit having any sort of warranty.

I've ordered a new board, but might try playing around with soldering in some new caps later - worth a shot.

Thanks for the advice though.

 

[geek167]

You don't happen to live in Mexico.... Or some third-world country.....

 

[JonB]

I've got two swollen caps on my MSI K7TPro2a. They are 2700uf sized and are on either side of the Northbridge chip. One is worse than the other and the board became very unstable at the end. Since they are "straight thru" solder jobs, I'll try replacing them with higher quality caps.

I replaced the MSI with its ASUS sister, the A7V133. I got 13 months of overclocking out of the MSI. The caps aren't oozing, just swollen and slightly ruptured on top where it looks like they designed in some stress-relief slits.

 

[ChefJoe]

umm, no, I live in the US. Who knows, maybe the apartment has such horrible power lines that the APC backups doesn't help.

 

[KGB1]

Well you should have learned your lesson from your first encounter with overclocking. I really do NOT endorse overclocking and integrated circuits (Cars are a different matter though) I like to look after my stuff, I place heatsink's wherever I CAN!! (NIC, SOUND, OLD GFX Cards, Chipsets) to run the machine as cool as possible.

I would recommend you not to overclock, not because of Power supply issues, UPS (uninterruptable power supply) issues, or flaky on again off again mainboards. I trust My money on ASUS boards, even OEM computer's, I check the inside to see if Asus made them. Overclocking just shortens the life span of a PC, and that's over a decade and a half of computing power. Overclocking dwindle's down the lifespan to just a few years. It also KILLS Hard Drives, literally it is the worst.

Abit boards are stable and Fast on their own, I really don't understand why you want to mess it up.
P3 CuMine @ 1.1Ghz was recalled by Intel for being faulty (slot 1/FCPGA) Are your referring to Tualiton 1.1GHZ Pentium 3? I'd recommend you hold on to dear life with that TUSL2-C, never try and mess with it. Also I have the Asus P3C-L (Rambus) board, IT Is GREAT!!! I got really good RAM pretty cheap 42 Bucks each for 128MB RIMM PC800. Really reliable.

 

[ChefJoe]

Thanks for your opinion on the matter KGB, but I really didn't do much with the overclocking. I tried bumping the soyo up to 525 for a while, and the performance difference was pretty much nil so I put it back. The abit board was never overclocked. If you want to tell me I'm doing something wrong when asking for the types of things that cause blown caps, you're more than welcome to speak.

The original 1.1 P3s were recalled while they were at the OEM/major manufacturer stage and they were quietly re-introduced with the FC-PGA version which I purchased (which never was sold retail, but was sold as OEM). I'd have to remove the SK-6 to look at it, but I think it was made in 2001 if memory serves correctly. The recall occurred before that. If you want to blame my CPU you may want to chat with some of the other AT'ers who use the same CPU. As you were probably leading into, Tuly's don't run well on 440BX chipsets (Soyo and Abit boards I mentioned were) (well, there's some recent evidence that a rewireing may enable it to work, but I'm not going to try rewiring the CPU slot just yet). I'm glad you're happy with your rig, but sinks on the onboard NIC and sound chips? Must be a real showpiece.

As of yet, I have a nice new power supply (better than the old valueline 300W that came with the case) and I'm thinking I'll take my old mobo to a TV repair shop and have them put some new caps on, perhaps with a higher voltage rating (yes, it still runs with swolen caps, but I don't feel comfortable with it). I also feel pretty silly for haveing built this computer years ago buying the cheapest full tower case I could, and leaving the power supply that came with it for so long. It ran in a room that had wires that would make the speakers pop when the mini-fridge turned on.

Thanks for everyone's help and discussions about this - I wanted to try to rule out some systematic errors more than anything else.

EDIT: I am referring to the P3 1.1 at 100FSB with 11X multiplier, not the original 8.5X multiplier at 133FSB.

 

[ChefJoe]

Aha, I'm not the only one!!!!

Other people having same problem

I feel relieved.

LAST UPDATE: Under a year old. I emailed their rma department and they sent me a form to fill out to get it fixed, their tab. Abit's got surprisingly great customer service/follow up to a problem I had.

 

[Kanly]

Old boards never die -- they just blow their capacitors.


Looks like Abit was probably using lower class capacitors maybe?