Connector Cap Mod

July 6, 2004 admin Uncategorized 0

Moderating drive current draw to prevent system freezes – Ronald Dy Geronimo

Plug

The finished product

An optical drive that’s just starting to spin up can suddenly draw a large amount of current. This can cause marginalized overclocked machines to crash or reset. My overclocked Athlon XP rig at 2.4 GHz at 1.75V on a 300W PSU, crashes when the following conditions are met:

  • 100% CPU load
  • DVD drive spins from zero to top speed

Cap

I removed the pins from the plug and soldered the cap to the 12v leads

I was ready for a PSU upgrade until I decided to try to solder a tantalum capacitor (16V 68uF) across the 12V leads of the connector that plugs into the DVD drive. I figured that the cap would buffer the sudden current requirements of the drive and I was right! All stability problems were solved with this very simple 5-minute mod.

I also tested with a 10uF electrolytic capacitor which worked as well. I don’t think a very large capacitor is needed for this. The 68uF tantalum was used because that was what was lying around.

Ronald Dy Geronimo

Related Articles

No Picture

Math Is Fundamental

May 22, 2003 admin Uncategorized 0

There’s some complaints here and there that a few manufacturers are doing their own overclocking of motherboards. Whether intentionally or not, FSBs have always tended to vary a tiny bit, but by less than 1%. Now we’re getting reports that

No Picture
Uncategorized

A Few Questions 2580

May 5, 2004 admin Uncategorized 0

We have a few questions for AMDers to get an idea of what they’re likely to do in the near future. First, we give you a scenario with a number of likely assumptions about products, pricing, performance and overclockability. Then,

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply