What causes....

[gss03]

...motherboard capacitors to blow up?
I had to go see a charitie's machine today and it wasn't till I took away the PSU I saw 5 out of the 9 giant capacitors on the board had erupted.
It has to be noted that the machine was back up agains a ROASTING radiator...and the temperature in the room was in the mid 80F !



I have my suspicions it was the heat...but I just want confirmation.

[Stoo]

Looks like heat damage to me, causing the electrolytic compound to expand and cracking the casing..

[Nox]

using crap & cheap capacitors are the cause of blown capacitors on mobo's (recently) what make and model mobo is it? and is it still under warranty?

i'll try find a few links for you.

Nox

[Nox]

infact...

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13962

and while your at that site, go to search and type in 'capacitors' they even have links to sites with capacitor 'galleries' of motherboards with the dodgy caps.

Nox

[Rabs]

ahh the good old MSI capacitor problem....

I had a board last year (KT133 based one) where one of the capacitors had blown. Guessing that this was the only problem I bought a similar specced capacitor from Maplins, removed the old and soldered the new one on, the boards been running fine since.

Afaik older MSI boards use cheap crap capacitors, I dont know of the boards actually overvolting them slightly or they are just crap but just so you know, its common and from my experience easily fixed

In case your wondering mine (the dead one) looked exactly the same as the ones in the piccy.

[gss03]

The board says it's a KT7 Pro2: Version 1

[Nox]

well abit did for a time use the dodgy capacitors from what i've read, but they also held up their hands and said 'we used dodgy cheap capacitors, they are crap, we learnt our lesson, promise not to do it again' kind of thing. you may need to do a bit of research (abit actually have working forums at forums.abit-usa.com so could be a good place) to see if your mobo was an affected model or not.

Nox