Epox 8KRA2+ recap for Flailboy

[Super Nade]

This thread will eventually become an article for the FP, but here is a record of what I'm doing for Flailboy's reference.

Flailboy took advantage of my recapping services and sent me his Epox board to work on.

Talk about putting crap on a motherboard... Almost all GSC 1500uF and 1000uF cans are leaking.

Caps are:

Sanyo 3300uF 6.3V (will not be replaced)
Teapo 1500uF 6.3V
GSC 1000uF, 1500uF 6.3V

Slideshow: (Damn I love my camera, a Sony DSC-H2!)

http://img410.imageshack.us/slideshow/player.php?id=img410/8973/119612138350s.smil


Replacements:

Chemicon LXZ and Sanyo OS-CON 560uF, 4V Conductive Polymer caps. You can see the leaky crap GSC and the replacements in this pic.

Phase: I

I merely replaced the blown caps to see if the board POST's. Success. It POST's.


​

 

[Super Nade]

Phase 2 is a success:

Memtesting now for over 1 hr 45 min. I'll let it run all day tonight and tomorrow, I'm going to proceed with replacing the rest of the crapacitors with either OS-CON or Chemicon LXZ. For some reason, this board won't run PC3500 BH5. I'm running PC3200 BH5 with no problems. These are at stock settings. I will not risk running an OC with any GSC's around.

Slideshow:
http://img508.imageshack.us/slideshow/player.php?id=img508/6172/1196217876kd8.smil

 

[Gautam]

Sweet work P. Those GSC's looked disgusting.

 

[Super Nade]

I should be done with this by Saturday. It is going to run memtest all of Sunday and then FB gets it back on Monday.

The black spot in the wall in pic #2 was put by a 20W Argon-ion laser. (Not me)

 

[bing]

Great job , this mobo will last for few more years if he is going to use it !

Could do me a favour, mind measure those crappy cap's ESR if you had a chance, just curious ? TIA

 

[FlailBoy]

Wow-I can't wait to get this thing back.

For some reason, this board won't run PC3500 BH5. I'm running PC3200 BH5 with no problems. These are at stock settings. I will not risk running an OC with any GSC's around.

FYI-yeah she will. I have a stick of 3500 Mushkin lvl 2 blk that I had in there for a while and it would run it by itself, and also ran fine with a stick of the gx 3500 I generally use. It took 2.9v to get it there, though.

Anyway-don't worry about it. This board was always an excellent overclocker until the caps quit on me and I'm sure it will completely rock when I get it back.

Thanks for making a thread out of this.


And I am off work today and will be leaving shortly for the grocery store to make my charitable donation.

EDIT: Delivered.

 

[JamesXP]

You'll probably be getting a K75SA from me soon, Damn G-LUXON.

 

[Super Nade]

Finished the job.

It is going to run memtest till Friday before I ship it back to Flailboy.

Phase#2 Slideshow:
http://img516.imageshack.us/slideshow/player.php?id=img516/3023/119630349558g.smil

bing, my DMM goes crazy and jumps between 0.5M Ohm - 50 kOhm.

James, G-Luxons are as bad as GSC.

 

[bing]

Does you DMM have an capacitor ESR measurement ?

 

[Super Nade]

I'm not sure any DMM can measure capacitor ESR correctly. In fact I have not heard of a conventional DMM that can measure ESR?

 

[bing]

As far I aware of, never seen DMM that has cap ESR measurement, most are a dedicated ESR meter for this job, or use scope to measure it, but it needs a signal generator which quite some hassle.

I use this HERE for most of ESR measurement.

Edit : Just found an old link from my bookmark -> http://octopus.freeyellow.com/99.html

 

[Super Nade]

If you are interested, I can make a quick 2 layer PCB schematic for that circuit using Express PCB. Their Express Protoboard service costs $50 for 3 PCB's. I'm not sure if it can measure milli-Ohm resistances.

Also, I've written this recap thing and sent it to Joe for the Forum Front Page. If you wish to get a pdf version of the article, let me know.

 

[FlailBoy]

Finished the job.

It is going to run memtest till Friday before I ship it back to Flailboy.

And she's back! Found her on the porch this morning. She's up and running at the specs in my sig.

Wow. HUGE shout out and thank you to Super Nade. IMO, our *most* benevolent of despots. I mean that. I'll post more on this in the thank you thread a bit later.

Anyway, while I had a forlorn and empty case I went ahead and cut away the fan grill in the front (I had already removed the rear grill) so she's even a bit quieter as well.

I'm gonna' play with it for a while as is. But...:

I could never get three sticks of 512 of the gx3500 running at the the speed and timings I'm using. She'll run two without a hiccup. Board is supposed to support up to 3 Gb. To what extent would replacing bad caps with better ones affect this? I am aware the it could be a limitation of the chipset itself.

 

[Super Nade]

I think the problem is with any PC3500 RAM. I could not get one stick of 512Mb PC3500 RAM to run. I'm pretty sure you can run 3 x PC3200 sticks though.

It is always nice to see a project succeed. Thanks for the opportunity!

 

[Super Nade]

Article is up on the front page. Download the pdf version here.

http://rapidshare.com/files/76093119/Recapping_an_Epox_8KRA2.pdf.html

http://www.overclockers.com/articles1494/index02.asp