Just fixed a PC at work cos the PSU had expired. I noticed that some of the capacitors had pushed their tops up a little and there was some brown deposit on the tops.

The PC now seems to be working but could these failed capacitors have caused the PSU to go?

Given that the PC is working should I be worried or should I be getting a new MB ready?

Cheers

Mark

Sounds like the caps have been over charged...

If you overcharge a cap suddently the top blows clean off and you get crap everywhere...

I would suspect that the PSU has over voltaged and fucked anything that was plugged into it..

If the caps are distroted... expect them to fail soon!

Yes, there was a whole batch of dodgy caps manufactured and sold cheap a while back (interestingly it was due to some botched industrial espionage).

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/02/06/stolen_formula_torpedos_big_brand/

Whatever the reason leaking caps will almost certainly have caused the PSU to go phutt.

If it's now working with a new PSU then the MB should be fine (though it will presumably have been manufactured at the same time as the PSU so may also have got some of the dodgy caps).

I'd not worry about it myself, though I'd always recommend having recent(ish) backups around of any files you care about anyway.

IMHO you should be.

Had a batch of power supplies a couple of years ago fitted with a weak capacitor out of the 12 or so fitted none of them lasted longer than a year.

They used to pop the capaciter top off.

Non of the Pc's have had any Mother board trouble.

regards

Agriv8

They tend to do that if they have got warm during use. Did the fan fail on the PSU at all? Or was the air flow obstructed?

You will probably find that replacing all the electrolytic capacitors in the PSU will make it work again, although for the price of a PC power supply it's hardly worth the effort.

When I did my apprenticeship at the BBC I spend hours replacing capacitors in bits of equipment that had gone wrong. In fact, we usually did this first before even investigating whether there was a real fault!

Chris

quote:

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Originally posted by ChrisW
They tend to do that if they have got warm during use. Did the fan fail on the PSU at all? Or was the air flow obstructed?

You will probably find that replacing all the electrolytic capacitors in the PSU will make it work again, although for the price of a PC power supply it's hardly worth the effort.

When I did my apprenticeship at the BBC I spend hours replacing capacitors in bits of equipment that had gone wrong. In fact, we usually did this first before even investigating whether there was a real fault!

Chris

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Over the years i have replaced loads of electrolytic caps in radio tranmitters, power supplies etc and quite often replaced with a slightly higher voltage rateing, but haveing said that elecrtolytics have always been a problem after quite a few years use.

Mike

[Edited on 5-8-2009 by miikae]

Mil spec Tantalum caps charged and left around the bench can make one see stars.

They look good and always attract attention by passers by.


Mike

[Edited on 5-8-2009 by miikae]

I should say that the popped caps are on the MB - I didn't make this clear on the original post

ahhh in that case if its an important PC I would be making sure I had spare MB availble.

regards

Agriv8

Yeah, popped caps on the MB are a really big sign that a new one will be needed soon. It may take out another PSU on the way out so preventative replacement might be sensible. Depends on what kind of company you work for and/or how important that PC is.

Well it's a very important company - it's mine

Worse it's an incredibly important PC - SWMBOs

I'll source a MB right away

Had 3 pcs fail at work all at the same time due to the faulty batch of caps.
Its not a Dell is it?

Thousands (probably tens/hundreds of thousands) of motherboards have suffered from failing electrolytic caps. The first symptoms (if they don't actually go pop whilst you are next to the PC) are usually instability of the PC, crashing regularly for no apparent reason etc. It's possible to replace the caps, but they aren't the easiest things to unsolder from multi-layer boards and for the cost of the new motherboard it's rarely worth while.

It depends where on the motherboard the capacitors are, and a lot on luck.

If they're voltage regulation caps, you can usually get away with losing a few, it's not ideal, and the mobo is at a much increased risk of sudden death, but as they're only there to keep the electrickery smooth and ripple free, they're not entirely essential.

Course, it's best to be safe, but cheap is good too.

I extended the life of my GFX card for about 4 months last year when I replaced the blown Caps, but in the end the card failed