Mobo, Nackered Caps?

[oshta]

The servers beeing acting up a bit recently.
- I though it was the heat, but ive taken it out of the atic, and its still now happy.

It workes fine for days (like about 10) and then i just dies, and wont reset, or boot at all (having held in the pwr switch to kill it)
- Then if you leave it for an hour, it boots fine, and will do another 10days or so.
- The board is a Kt7pro1 (see sig) and must be getting on for 5years now (came with winME) and two of the electrolitcs near the cpu have blugeing tops, so i though it might be them?
- To these symtoms match with nackerd caps? becuase i could just swap thos two with new ones of the same.


Daniel

[unrealrocks]

I had an early ASUS K8V - the one with the manufacturing problems. Some of the caps leaked although I had no stability problems because of it. The blown caps may be causing instable power to the CPU which means the slightest fluctuation in power and it'll fall over.

[Mike Fishcake]

Oshta - I've tried replacing blown caps a couple of times before now, and they just went faulty again almost straight away.

[Rave]

OTOH, I replaced a dodgy cap on an Epox 8RGA+ and it's run pretty much flawlessly 24/7 for months. It's worth a go.

[Firelord]

Is it worth the hassle when you could pick up a cheap second hand board from here or ebayfor not a lot?

[oshta]

Thanks guys.

- What was really asking is how likly it is that its the caps that are cuasing these problems.
- How can i be sure that its the mobo/caps that are the problem?


Daniel

[Rave]

How likely? There's a reasonable chance. The board I repaired was given to me by OiD (thanks again mate) as it apparently got less and less stable until he got fed up and swapped it out. When I got it it would struggle to even post before I replaced the one bloated cap, now it's rock solid.

How can you be sure? You can't. Since a couple of caps should cost under a quid and it's a 10 minute job if you know what you're doing, there's no reason not to try it.

[Firelord]

How likely? There's a reasonable chance. The board I repaired was given to me by OiD (thanks again mate) as it apparently got less and less stable until he got fed up and swapped it out. When I got it it would struggle to even post before I replaced the one bloated cap, now it's rock solid.

How can you be sure? You can't. Since a couple of caps should cost under a quid and it's a 10 minute job if you know what you're doing, there's no reason not to try it.

This is very true. When I worked for a small IT company we had a couple of KT7As with caps that had gone wonky and were bulging and as Rave said they get less and less stable. Finally one day they went in an almighty bang.

We swapped with under warranty with ABIT but yes if you are good with a soldering iron and can get the same ones from mappers give it ago at the end of the day if it doesn't work your gonna need to swap the board...

[oshta]

Is it worth the hassle when you could pick up a cheap second hand board from here or ebayfor not a lot?

Possibly not.
- Maybe thats the thing to do?

[oshta]

Is it worth the hassle when you could pick up a cheap second hand board from here or ebayfor not a lot?

Possibly not.
- Maybe thats the thing to do?

[Rave]

Moderate thread revival there

Pyle: installing electrolytic caps backwards is apparently a recipe for loud bangs and terminal damage. It's really not hard to double check the polarity though. Apart from that you'll only cause damage if you manage to short connections or strip the traces from your motherboard. When I first installed a modchip in my brothers PS about 6 years ago I managed to short it out enough that it refused to load the game, but it was fine again once I fixed the short. I personally take the view that if I would otherwise be binning something, I might as well spend a couple of quid and an hour trying to fix it.

[oshta]

Moderate thread revival there

Yeah well, sorry about that!
- I've been away for 5weeks, and havnt got anything done about it yet.


Daniel

[SilentDeath]

If your not skilled with soldering iron, find some old peice of hardware to practice on.

Make sure the replacement has a voltage rating atleast equal to the original, or it will go bang.

Also dont overheat them as it could damage them (much like conencting them the wrong way).


It will probably fix it, but as its a via based board, I would use it as an excuse to get a decent new mobo

[oshta]

Im really quite sure i could do the the job.
- Also, what boards are there that would be conpatable with the rest of the (old) system?


Daniel

[Krikkit]

Any old sktA board should work fine with it tbh.

[SilentDeath]

Some newer boards might not support cpus that are pre-palamino iirc...