Blown Caps Getting Worse?

Has anyone else noticed this whole blown capacitor epidemic getting worse as time goes on? In our store, probably %75 of the computers that have come in the past 2 weeks have had at least a couple of blown caps in them. Surprisingly, most still work and pass MemtestX86 just fine, although there are a few that error out or some that can't even boot. This is getting pretty bad though, as I've had to warn all of these customers that their motherboard could be going south on them. Usually in these cases there's also other burn spots on the motherboard, especially around the (I'm not sure what you call these lil guys) circular magnets wrapped in copper wire. I've even seen some of those that are burned to a crisp, and the computer is still going. But still, I definitely wouldn't be happy with a motherboard doing that...I guess it's a good thing that I usually get rid of my boards before the 1 year warranty is up But this is really getting pretty bad as of late, and I was just wondering if anyone else is seeing this happening as well, or if this area of Missouri just had a bunch of bad boards somehow. (This hasn't been related to just a certain brand of computer either - I've seen 'internet systems', gateways, compaqs, some of our systems, etc etc...the only main brand I can't remember having yet is Dell, but those aren't really too popular in this area yet that I know of)

What brands of boards are you seeing them on? And do you have any manufactured dates?



BHD

Well, the absolute worst I've seen have been Shuttle AE22 boards...we sold them for a little while and almost every one has come back and had to be replaced...they would have been manufactured around 2 years ago now. I've seen all sorts of brands with them though...two I remember seeing today were an older Gigabyte board (didn't pay attention to model :/ it was a coppermine celery though) and a board that wasn't labeled as anything...had an old P2 333 though. I've had a couple of Abit boards (coppermine era mostly, some in the old PPGA's like the BH6 and BE6's). A couple of Compaq's with MSI boards if I'm not mistaken, and a LOT of the little Gateway 'slim desktop' ones (those small 'desktop' (not towers) that don't have PS/2 ports)...I believe most of those also have MSI boards. A couple of HP's with Asus boards in them. Just overall quite a variety...not really narrowed to anything specific. Only boards with P4's I've had have been the HP's with Asus boards. I've had several AMD systems too...usually the older Slot A's, couple of T-Birds, no XP's that I can remember off the top of my head...it really gets old having to tell customers that their motherboard's borked and there's a good possibility of having to redo the hard drive..

The cap problem I'm aware of flared up on some boards that were made last summer and fall, which is newer than most of the bad ones you've seen.



BHD

Yes I noticed it....

I posted yesterday
http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=191072