replacing the bulging caps?

[MRD]

I had 4 motherboards (msi, gigabyte, asus) all with bulging caps about 4 yrs ago. These were all Athlon XP systems. One of the boards had become very unstable, one did not work at all, and the others were ok. Several still ran fine. I looked into getting the right caps and doing it myself, but ultimately sent it to the guy at badcaps. I opted for the less expensive caps as they weren't premium systems. All the systems still work, although the MSI is a tad buggy and can freeze sometimes (perhaps because the cooling is not good enough, as it is in a matx case - the caps look fine at least).

I got a proprietary HP motherboard fixed for my grandmother too (P4). It would have been $250 for the mb used with no warranty and the same crappy caps, so getting it fixed for $40 or so was worth it, although she was out a computer for several weeks. Still works fine to this day.

Overall, I definitely think it's worth recapping a motherboard if it is a useful system.

In general, caps do not bulge and explode if they are well made. My abit mb's from the same era used rubycons and they are all still in perfect condition. Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte used cheaper generic caps. There was an incident of corporate espionage in China where an incomplete capacitor design was stolen, and this led to many boards being made with caps that exploded over time, especially in the athlon xp era. It isn't as common a problem now.

If you wait til the caps blow completely, you very well may destroy your VRM FETs as well. These are more expensive / annoying to fix (labor intensive). I'd recommend getting them fixed or fixing them yourself immediately if they are bulging or leaking if the system is still useful to you.

I am not that great at soldering and found it very difficult to find the right ESR caps from the various electronics parts stores online. badcaps.net will sell you kits to recap a board, and it is much less that they ask to recap boards, but I didn't want to take a chance of screwing it up for $20 or so, so I just let the pros do it. (I also don't have all the needed equipment).

 

[Clevor]

I had 4 motherboards (msi, gigabyte, asus) all with bulging caps about 4 yrs ago. These were all Athlon XP systems. One of the boards had become very unstable, one did not work at all, and the others were ok. Several still ran fine. I looked into getting the right caps and doing it myself, but ultimately sent it to the guy at badcaps. I opted for the less expensive caps as they weren't premium systems. All the systems still work, although the MSI is a tad buggy and can freeze sometimes (perhaps because the cooling is not good enough, as it is in a matx case - the caps look fine at least).

I got a proprietary HP motherboard fixed for my grandmother too (P4). It would have been $250 for the mb used with no warranty and the same crappy caps, so getting it fixed for $40 or so was worth it, although she was out a computer for several weeks. Still works fine to this day.

Overall, I definitely think it's worth recapping a motherboard if it is a useful system.

In general, caps do not bulge and explode if they are well made. My abit mb's from the same era used rubycons and they are all still in perfect condition. Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte used cheaper generic caps. There was an incident of corporate espionage in China where an incomplete capacitor design was stolen, and this led to many boards being made with caps that exploded over time, especially in the athlon xp era. It isn't as common a problem now.

If you wait til the caps blow completely, you very well may destroy your VRM FETs as well. These are more expensive / annoying to fix (labor intensive). I'd recommend getting them fixed or fixing them yourself immediately if they are bulging or leaking if the system is still useful to you.

I am not that great at soldering and found it very difficult to find the right ESR caps from the various electronics parts stores online. badcaps.net will sell you kits to recap a board, and it is much less that they ask to recap boards, but I didn't want to take a chance of screwing it up for $20 or so, so I just let the pros do it. (I also don't have all the needed equipment).

I quit the overclocking scene five years ago, and Abit was alive and well at that time. It's too bad they went under, probably due to that dumb class action lawsuit by some greedy lawyers about the Jackson caps. I mean Abit would fix the boards for free so what's the big deal? The lawyers got a percentage of the millions of people who got maybe $3/board from the suit, so it was worth their time.

I still have several Abit boards that were refurbished with Teapo caps. Not sure how these boards have fared since then since I never used them.

I'm pretty surprised that the problem has cropped up with Asus and Epox boards. I still got those 8RDA+ boards. Yup, they were good RAM boards. They were good with BH-5 and that other brand of ram that did 2.2-2-2-5, forget the name.

 

[MRD]

Abit was the most honorable, by far, of the motherboard manufacturers. All of them had problems, with huge problems (bigger than Abit) showing up with MSI, Asus, Gigabyte, and some others. I think the absolute worst was Gigabyte... I had a board I sent back 3 times to them, they kept giving me exploding caps. HP did it too on a proprietary mb for my grandmother.

All the other manufacturers denied the existence of any problems and except when under warranty would not fix the boards. Abit admitted the error, apologized, and fixed everything for free. Also, going forward, they used all Rubycon caps (my 2 nf7-s v2's and my nf7s2 are 100% Rubycon and in perfect condition although 8+ yrs or so now).

I hate that the one honest manufacturer that tried to do right by their customers was the one that got destroyed by it. Their admission of the issue was grounds for a lawsuit apparently. Really unfair, and we lost what was the most consumer friendly (and OC-friendly) of the motherboard manufacturers... also probably the highest quality motherboard maker.

I find myself buying mostly MSI with some ECS today. I've been mostly satisifed, but I don't have the same loyalty I had to Abit.