- Joined
- Dec 14, 2010
Forgive me if this is in the wrong section, I wasn't entirely sure where to put a thread about capacitor replacement.
Long ago I decommissioned this motherboard due to failing capacitors and voltage-regulation issues. Stopped using it in 2010 after two caps failed around the same time, just so happened I got lucky when I found a deal on a board and picked up a CPU and some RAM for cheap not long after I started noticing these odd behaviors from my board and so I stopped using this one after upgrading to a new platform.
So, I stashed it away in the original box and forgot about it for a few years.
After searching for another board of this same model and being unsuccessful I decided to start looking for someone that could repair it (and others). Found four different people that offered to do the work, but one of them wanted way too much to repair it and the others stopped communicating with me once I had decided I wanted them to do the work and asked where to ship it. I didn't find all of these people at one time though, I'd find one person and then they'd go MIA, then I'd find another person and that person would go MIA as well, and so on.
Finally, I managed to find someone who agreed to show me how to recap boards myself. After watching them do one or two and helping them out with them I got up the courage to attempt this myself on my own board.
Why did I want to recap this old board in the first place? It's a socket 754 board with a PCIe x16 slot (which is rare in and of itself), but it also has an nVidia nForce 4 chipset (which is next to impossible to find). Motherboard is an MSI MS-7135, K8N Neo3 H (nForce 4-4x). Also, I had someone that gave me some socket 754 CPUs a while back, but without a working board I've been unable to test them and want to get this board working so that I can.
After opening the box and taking out the board I was surprised to find that during its long storage another of the capacitors had its top push up and had begun to leak. Luckily I was prepared though, because by chance I had ordered extra capacitors in case I had to replace more than expected.
Only ran into two minor problems, (1) A pin from one of the old capacitors broke off and got stuck in the hole when I was removing it, which then required an additional half-hour to figure out a way to get it out. (2) I bought the wrong physical size of capacitors to replace the two that were side-by-side, so I had to lean one at an angle to attach it since they are too wide (which is why it looks so weird).
Before:
After:
Long ago I decommissioned this motherboard due to failing capacitors and voltage-regulation issues. Stopped using it in 2010 after two caps failed around the same time, just so happened I got lucky when I found a deal on a board and picked up a CPU and some RAM for cheap not long after I started noticing these odd behaviors from my board and so I stopped using this one after upgrading to a new platform.
So, I stashed it away in the original box and forgot about it for a few years.
After searching for another board of this same model and being unsuccessful I decided to start looking for someone that could repair it (and others). Found four different people that offered to do the work, but one of them wanted way too much to repair it and the others stopped communicating with me once I had decided I wanted them to do the work and asked where to ship it. I didn't find all of these people at one time though, I'd find one person and then they'd go MIA, then I'd find another person and that person would go MIA as well, and so on.
Finally, I managed to find someone who agreed to show me how to recap boards myself. After watching them do one or two and helping them out with them I got up the courage to attempt this myself on my own board.
Why did I want to recap this old board in the first place? It's a socket 754 board with a PCIe x16 slot (which is rare in and of itself), but it also has an nVidia nForce 4 chipset (which is next to impossible to find). Motherboard is an MSI MS-7135, K8N Neo3 H (nForce 4-4x). Also, I had someone that gave me some socket 754 CPUs a while back, but without a working board I've been unable to test them and want to get this board working so that I can.
After opening the box and taking out the board I was surprised to find that during its long storage another of the capacitors had its top push up and had begun to leak. Luckily I was prepared though, because by chance I had ordered extra capacitors in case I had to replace more than expected.
Only ran into two minor problems, (1) A pin from one of the old capacitors broke off and got stuck in the hole when I was removing it, which then required an additional half-hour to figure out a way to get it out. (2) I bought the wrong physical size of capacitors to replace the two that were side-by-side, so I had to lean one at an angle to attach it since they are too wide (which is why it looks so weird).
Before:
After:
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