Blown capacitor?

I'm getting continuous beeps from my mobo. All hardware was tested and work fine (still have to check CPU, but I think it's fine). But then during a visual inspection, I noticed this near my onboard sound...

A capacitor is blown, and theres some kind of resedue beneath it. Could this spell death for a motherboard, or is this the likely culpret of all my problems?

This board cost me an arm and a leg, and its not something I'm willing to go out and replace (its gonna cost me around $100, even though its an old KT333).

Would such a tiny capacitor leak me the source of my problems? I've seen some repair articles. Sounds too much of a pain to me.

yep u have a blown cap if u have any soldering skills u could pull the blown cap out a stick another one in of the same size of coarse (as in value)
and clean up the electrolite of the board it's not a hard thing to do
or RMA it if u can back the manufacturer
yes it could be the root to the boards problems

Yep, that's your problem. RMA it or replace the cap.

It could be easy i think if you solder one on raised up about an inch off the mobo.

I have no soldering skills whatsoever. Anyone know of any newbie guides for soldering capacitors on. I know there was an article on the front page, but it didn't get into the specifics of how to.

The only soldering I've ever done was stained glass and sweating brass barbs onto a copper heatercore. Ugh... small circuitry... I hate working on small things... my hands are NOT steady enough for this work...

Anyone know where I can take this for cheap to have a 'pro' do it for a relatively cheap price?

I don't know where a guide is or anything. Use a 15w soldering iron.. you can get one at Rat Shak for like 8$. When i started soldering i just took some resistors and started soldering them on an old motherboard and removing them and just soldering crap on the old mobo.. i never even looked at a guide or anything, i just figured it out myself.. now i can solder about anything perfectly in 2 seconds.

q149 said:

I don't know where a guide is or anything. Use a 15w soldering iron.. you can get one at Rat Shak for like 8$. When i started soldering i just took some resistors and started soldering them on an old motherboard and removing them and just soldering crap on the old mobo.. i never even looked at a guide or anything, i just figured it out myself.. now i can solder about anything perfectly in 2 seconds.

Click to expand...

Solder can be usefull. I have saved 2 mbs with blown caps (both va-503As), 3 hard drives, and 2 cases from the dumpster. Also don't try to use a 35W gun on a MB . You will melt the board before you melt the solder. Also a solder wick helps, alot.

Ok, I can either pay a few bucks for some capacitors and do it myself, or I can ship my mobo to SOYO ($3.85) and include an RMA handling fee ($5.00).

I don't have an 'original' reciept, but I managed to get a copy of my invoice from computerhq.com, and I disabled url and date footers/headers when I printed, so it might pass as an 'original'.

So that's $8.85 to get a cheap $.15 part repaired, or I might just get a new dragon if they don't feel like repairing it.

So what do you think I should do.

Fix it myself and risk really screwing up, or have them fix it for $9.00 + a few weeks (7-12 days)?

But I always thought when something was under warranty, you didn't have to pay to get it repaired. What kind of BS is that! GRRR...

Get the soldering iron and do some practice - just get some old wires and things, and practice soldering them together... paperclips work great!


Then practice unsoldering things quickly (to remove the cap)


If you feel good, then remove the offending capacitor from the motherboard, clean up the gunk with some alcohol, and replace the capacitor.

If you don't have the courage to solder your nice board, then don't worry - you WILL find a good use for the soldering iron... trust me, those things come in real handy