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8RDA Needs Surgery

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WyrmMaster

I'm a little teapot Senior
Joined
Dec 17, 2000
Location
Montana, USA
This monday i got up to find my system hard locked. Was fine the night before. Reset button didnt even work. Had to power off, and reboot. Got almost to the logon screen, and hard locked (black screen, reset didnt work). I noticed it was making a funny noise right up to the moment it locked. My first thought was harddrive problem, but then i noticed the 4 capicitors next to the mosfets were slightly buldged, and one has a small stain on the top.

I dropped the overclock (severly underclocked actually) and voltages, and it works mostly ok, not making the capicitor singing noise any more. I was originally going to wait till school got out to try to fix it, but as of yesterday i cant read CDs any more (but funny enough i can still burn cds), and my sound (sound card, not on board) has a slight static in the background, so i think im gona try the repair sooner rather than later.

Anyway, just thought id let people know, see if anyone else had heard of (or experienced) this, and il let you guys know when the repair is done. Wish me luck:)
 
The capacitors of my 8rda+ seem to be doing the same thing your's are. Although they really havn't caused a problem, they've been that way for monthes. Here's a pic of what mine look like, did yours look simalar?

caps.jpg
 
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Ouch!

My 8K3A+ died last winter for the same reason, although mine was much more sudden:
worky
No worky.

I replaced 12 caps and a burnt choke coil (from a dead 8KHA+) and it has been fine since. :)

I also have an 8KHA= that is now suffereing as well: replaced 4 caps but ran out of dead mobos. ;)
Now I have to BUY caps!

It really isn't tough to replace them: take your time and work one leg out at a time.

edit: {BC}Helix- yours are definitely on the way out! I'd replace them as soon as you can.
 
wow, yours look 10x worse than mine do... Im amazed you havent had a problem yet. One difference, the 5th one below the mosfets is also buldged on my board, maybe that one is more critical than the others or something.

I havent actually been able to fix mine yet (on my roommates comp right now). Radio shack doesnt have the parts, and the Electical / Computer Engineering stock room wasnt open all weekend. Im gona do it this afternoon though. I could have left my computer together over the weekend, but with the cd drive issue and the sound issue i didnt wanna keep using it for fear for causing some other dammage.

rogerdugans: mine was pretty sudden too... although i was able to keep using it when i wasnt pumping 1.9v to the CPU. System had been on for something like 19 days (close to a record for me... i usually have to reboot for some reason), and then woke up one morning and it was locked.
 
well... seems that i better do this soon I don't want to ruin anything elts in my comp due to 4 ruptured capacitors. let me know when you find out what µF they are. i'll change them out when I put in my WC system
 
{BC}Helix said:
well... seems that i better do this soon I don't want to ruin anything elts in my comp due to 4 ruptured capacitors. let me know when you find out what µF they are. i'll change them out when I put in my WC system

those 4 are 2200µF, 10v. The voltage can be higher, except that higher voltage caps will be larger, and might be tough to fit in there. I havent been able to find direct replacements anywhere, so im going to be taking them off of another 8RDA i have that i killed with the vdd mod last year. You can get them at allelectronics.com, i know that, but im not sure about the quality of those. They may be a lower grade cap that will fail quickly in a high heat environment (like right next to the mosfet heatsinks on an 8RDA...)
 
fixed it. Finally.... Got my mom to send me my old broken 8RDA, took the caps off of it, replaced them, and everything is working fine. I havent tried to overclock yet, but my CD drives work again, and the static in my sound is gone. So no permanant dammage.

In addition to the bulging and leaking some of the caps have some melting of the plastic cover, so they must have gotten REALLY HOT. I think im gona go to active cooling on the mosfets / caps from now on.
 
WyrmMaster said:
but then i noticed the 4 capicitors next to the mosfets were slightly buldged, and one has a small stain on the top.

I have read that this is a known problem for the board. Mine never did it but it was less then a year old before I replaced it.
 
What revision of this board do you have? What are the markings on the capacitors?

I'd like to know if my board is going to do this. If it does, I'll pro'lly just RMA it, but I'd like to know if it's a risk.
 
Board is revision 1.1.

The caps are green with gold markings. One side says the specs of the cap, the other says "GSC" and "RE 105*C" and "T2NB". Not sure if that will help you or not though.
 
I am sure everybody knows this, but just in case some one doesn't, electrolytic capacitors are polarity sensitive, unlike normal disk caps. Connecting an electrolytic cap in reverse polarity will have very undesirable results, ie...small explosion.
Just a word of caution, pay attention to the arrangement before you remove the old ones.
 
I went and picked up some new 2200µF 16v capacitors at my local electronics shop to replace the busted ones that were currently in there. Since I put them in I haven't had any problems so I guess it was successful. I just hope they don't blow like the former ones did. Here's a pic of them.

EDIT: This is also version 1.1

caps1123.jpg
 
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the only worry i would have is that they arent as high a quality (lower heat limit). You might wanna put a small fan over the mosfet heatsinks / caps, just to keep the air moving so it doesnt get TOO hot there.
 
I just added some active cooling on the mosfets and the caps using a 50mm fan. For some reason I'm seeing lower CPU temps as a result, which I didn't think was a benfit of mosfet cooling. And not just less, considerably less temps; from 45C full load to 38C full load. I was under the impression that the only possible benifit of mosfet cooling to the CPU was better stability and not lower CPU temps. Anyone know whats going on here? I can't say that i'm not pleased :D
 
Happened to me too.
It's because the mofsets heat up the pcb of the board and since it's really close to the cpu the cpu temp rises up.

Suma.
 
Is this a case of heat influencing the thermal probe or do they really heat up the CPU That much? I wouldn't think MBM5 would be wrong since it deosn't use the thermal diode, but insted uses the sensor inside the processor right? So by just cooling your mosfets you can accually lower the processor temps?
 
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