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fried capacitors resulting from overclock, watercooling, or crappy manufacturing?

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nebben

Member
Joined
May 1, 2002
Location
Salt Lick City, UT
fried capacitors resulting from overclock, watercooling, or crappy manufacturing?

I hadn't run my computer since mid December, when it was having some serious problems. I had wrongly assumed that the problems were related to file system corruption because I was too aggressive in searching out/destroying spyware.

Anyway, long story short-

I was hosting a LAN party last week, and I didn't have a chance to try reinstalling XP until 2 hours into the party. I couldn't get the disc to go. The same file kept refusing to copy. Switched CD-ROM drives, no dice. Switched IDE cables/channels, still nothing. Got a new, unused OEM disc, and same thing.

I throttled the computer back (XP 1600 running at 1596MHz) to stock voltage/FSU settings. The computer continued to falter on the XP installation when copying files to the freshly formatted partition. I gave up, pulled the video card, and used a spare motherboard/PSU that was lying around (no case- a naked motherboard/HDD/PSU on the desk!).

The next day, after waking up late and my head still ringing with "your watercooling setup is going to break and blow up that thing", I decided that although watercooling is definitely cool, I didn't care for the maintenance required with it, as well as the extreme custom'ness of it. The tubes didn't fit properly in my case, the case was duct taped together near the fan shroud....etc. Although it seemed to function properly, it looked like poop and I wanted a change. So I disassembled the water cooling system and started ripping the machine apart.

When I took the CPU block off, I found that I had four burst capacitors on the motherboard, directly underneath the CPU. They had hard brown goo sticking out the tops of them. I decided that it was without a doubt that the motherboard caused all the instability in the past two months.

Now my question-

Is it possible that my overclocking (1.8v CPU settings) caused the capacitors to fail? Is it possible that condensation (the system was never in a cold area so I'm not sure if this is possible) or a hairpin leak could have caused this? I've heard capacitors can explode when introduced to excessive moisture....is this true? Is it more likely that my motherboard (Soltek) was just using some bad quality capacitors and this would've happened without overclocking too?

Just thinking whether or not I should attempt to repair the board with new capacitors, or if I should cut my losses and move on..?

-ben
 
It sounds like you just got a bad motherboard or maybe it was its time to check out. I would just get a different board... I have a Gigabyte board that is awesome & only cost $140.00 to run my Athlon 3000+ it also has dual bios security.


Sad it isnt working though, But Im sure you'll find out something or the other.
 
more likly from overclock, most likey because your motherboard couldn't handle it. My old p4 (willy) mother did the samething and i didn't even have water cooling on it yet. I wouldn't attempt to fix it IMO, plus the parts would be hard-impossible to find..
the new e8rda+ epox mobos can handle a lot though, they are not too expensive either. just a thought..

//edit
btw, condensation doesn't happen that way.
its with something colder then room temp. that causes condensation and watercooling (unless u use a peltier) can only bring it down to as low as room temp. (which is impossible unless.. dammit just impossible) thus no condensation.
 
I read in Maximum pc that a few of the manufacturers were using a bad batch of capacitors on a few of their b oards. YHou might have just caught the aftermath of all of that. You might want to contact the manufaturer or check their boards and see if you can find somebody with the same issue .
 
What PSU are you using? I have heard bad power supplies can cause capasitors to blow. It could have also been a bad mobo. If you are using a generic power supply I reccommend you getting a good, name brand one when you get a new motherboard. I don't think overclocking was the direct cause of the capasitors going out, but it might have sped up the process.
 
Re: fried capacitors resulting from overclock, watercooling, or crappy manufacturing?

nebben said:
Is it more likely that my motherboard (Soltek) was just using some bad quality capacitors and this would've happened without overclocking too?

Just thinking whether or not I should attempt to repair the board with new capacitors, or if I should cut my losses and move on..?

-ben

For curiositys sake, what was the brand name of the caps?

I had two on an Msi board and one in a Fortron Psu die.

All three were green and made by the same company, CHHSI.

You should be able to replace them if you can find replacements and your soldering skills are good:).

Al
 
ZachM said:
What PSU are you using? I have heard bad power supplies can cause capasitors to blow. It could have also been a bad mobo. If you are using a generic power supply I reccommend you getting a good, name brand one when you get a new motherboard. I don't think overclocking was the direct cause of the capasitors going out, but it might have sped up the process.

I have always had an Enermax Whisper 350. Hopefully that wasn't the problem.

I just ordered a Biostart Ipeq or something like that...The previous machine weighed a ton, so I'm going small and light now.

-ben
 
i'm going to vote for bad board. Definitly not a condensation problem, i would guess you would have noticed a leak and it would have dripped etc. 1.8vcore isnt excessive imo so either just a bad board or a board that is junk to begin with and couldn't handle a moderate increase in voltage. Either way unlikely to be your fault

Rich
 
Re: fried capacitors resulting from overclock, watercooling, or crappy manufacturing?

nebben said:
Is it possible that my overclocking (1.8v CPU settings) caused the capacitors to fail?

Is it more likely that my motherboard (Soltek) was just using some bad quality capacitors and this would've happened without overclocking too?

Just thinking whether or not I should attempt to repair the board with new capacitors, or if I should cut my losses and move on..?

There has been a problem around for a couple or three years with low ESR electrolytic capacitors used on motherboards that still crops up from time to time.

What happened is basically two engineers working for a company that makes low ESR caps left that company and went to work for a different company (not in the same country), when they left they took the formula for the low ESR dielectric material used in the caps with them.

This new company, not really understanding the formula, made some substitutions in the dielectric formula for the sake of economy, and sold their version of the low ESR dielectric to several manufacturers of components.

Unfortunately the modified dielectric wasn't all that flash and causes the problems you outlined above. All the manufacturers are pretty much aware of the problem and dont use capacitors from known affected companies (those companies are also now aware of the problem too and use a known good dielectric). But the problem still occurs occasionally when older stock slips through the cracks.

When the capacitors go, you can just replace them, as 99% of the time no further damage has been done to the motherboard (there are always exceptions of course).

Hope this helps ya!
 
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