Taiwanese Capacitors Leaking, Exploding

ackthpt writes "A few astute slashdot readers were on to something back when this article was published. After a tip (at e-insight.net) on failing caps over at amdmb I did a little looking around and found this article by Dennis Zogbi on TTI Inc.'s site, which goes into more detail. In a nutshell, many motherboards are now failing due to electolytic capacitors made with an inferior water-based electolyte. Within days or a few months these capacitors build up hydrogen gas and blow the rubber bung out the end of the capacitor, leaking electolyte and causing havoc. The problem may be widespread, as many consumer electronics made with these capacitors may also fail prematurely. Gary Headlee specializes in Abit motherboards, but as his FAQ states, he will work on other makes and the FAQ has more info on capacitor problems."

Recalls?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good god...how many of these things could be lurking about in automotive airbags, ABS systems, or in any sort of medical device?

Re:Recalls?

[shivianzealot]

Not many, I should hope. Just as we have "server grade" components in the tech industry, other standards exist in different industries.

Re:Recalls?

[Rich0]

Just as we have "server grade" components in the tech industry, other standards exist in different industries.

Hmm - I take it the server grade components only blow up after the server is linked on slashdot?

Re:Recalls?

[victim]

Good god...how many of these things could be lurking about in automotive airbags...

Well I would hope none. The only thing in your air bag should be the sodium azide and an igniter. The last thing you need in an accident is a bunch of loose capacitors and crap being blown into your face.

Re:Recalls?

[Rich0]

The only thing in your air bag should be the sodium azide and an igniter. The last thing you need in an accident is a bunch of loose capacitors and crap being blown into your face.

Actually, I would rather be hit in the face with a bunch of capacitors than aerosolized sodium azide, which is highly toxic [neb.com] by US definition, and is about as healthy as sodium cyanide powder. It is commonly used as a laboratory preservative since it can kill just about anything...

The NaN3 and ignitor are not actually in the air bag - they are in an inflater, with a filter so they don't end up in the air bag.

Re:Recalls?

[Tangurena]

There were an enormous number of electrolytic capacitors that went boom in Car audio systems. Surprisingly, it was only the capacitors made by Nichicon and almost always the 7mm high capacitors. Pity, nichicon was the low bidder on almost everything, and they were the only supplier in the world of 7mm high axial electrolytics.

A previous employer of mine made somewhere near $10,000,000 in repair costs (both in-warranty and out of warranty) because of these capacitors. Radio went poof? $250 repair please. Bose Amp squeals like a siren and pops like a canon? $200 please.

Ford could not believe that our repair shop needed as many capacitors as we were using, and sent out auditors and engineers to get a grip on what they were convinced was out of line repair expenses (or maybe outright fraud). When we showed them radio after radio, and Bose amplifier after another with exactly the same failure mode, they started waking up. We even gave them boxes of ruined circuit boards for them to analyse. The real kicker was the Bose amp used in Chevy Caprices: the board is mounted so that the capacitors are suspended from the board, the electrolyte boils and spurts out of the base of the caps so hard that it splatters all over the board. Once they saw these, and learned how they are mounted in the vehicle, they went after nichicon.

Because of the size of the part, and that nichicon has a stranglehold on the market, we had to order parts directly from them. When you need 2,000 to 4,000 per month, you use them far faster than the US car makers ordered for replacement parts. However, instead of ordering the 65C rated parts, like the OEMs used, we ordered the 105C parts. Still took 12-20 weeks to send the boxes from Japan to Florida. That is real fun committing your employer to buying stuff for a year at a time and having to wait months for each delivery.

Because of heat and humidity issues, the south florida climate accelerates the aging process for these parts. What fails in 2-3 years down here, may take take much longer for you folks who live with frost. Heck, car batteries only last 2 years before they need to be replaced.

Re:Recalls?

[zsazsa]

Good god...how many of these things could be lurking about in automotive airbags, ABS systems, or in any sort of medical device?

(Slightly OT)

While not quite as bad, this is becoming a problem in older automotive ECUs (engine control units). The problem is especially rampant in DSM cars [dsm.org] (Mitsubishi Eclipse, Eagle Talon, Plymouth Laser) manufactured between 1989 and 1994. I know because it happened to me. All the big electrolytic capacitors leaked all over the place, pretty much destroying the board [yimg.com]. One of the symptoms is a 'rotten seafood smell' coming from behind the console. :)

Mitsubishi wanted around $750 for a replacement. Luckily since this is such a problem, refurbished ECUs are available for cheap.

Re:Recalls?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good god...how many of these things could be lurking about in automotive airbags, ABS systems, or in any sort of medical device?

For the most part, none.

Electrolytic capacitors have a fixed lifetime and are by nature unreliable. They don't meet MILSPEC for electronic components. An F16 fighter for example, won't contain a single electrolytic capacitor.

Where reliability is critical, Tantalum capacitors are used, but they're physically larger and more expensive. Any -critical- system manufacturer(automotive safety systems, medical equipment, etc) that uses electrolytic capacitors should be shot.

Want to see some fun stuff? Do a search for "capacitor" and "Bose" on Google. Bose had a TON of problems with bad capacitors in their car stereo systems(installed on millions of vehicles from at least a dozen manufacturers), and it took years for the car manufacturers to fess up to the problem and offer recalls. Bose knew about the problem for years, so one presumes the car companies did. The Ford Pinto incident apparently never taught companies anything; they still don't issue recalls until enough people die/get hurt that it becomes in the company's financial interests to announce a recall.

Some never did announce a recall, until recently. Audi used Bose speakers in the 1991 200 Quattro 20v turbo(car I happen to drive), and the orientation of the circuit boards for the rear speakers were such that the (conductive) electrolytic fluid often caused serious shorts- the Audi enthusiast community knows of at least a few 200q20v's that met their untimely ends due to speaker FIRES. Loud thumping, smoking, popping, etc are more common.

It was pretty much exclusive to the one model, of which only about 2000-3000 at most were imported. The number of reported problems were low(I'd say maybe half a dozen fires), but keep in mind- this wasn't a Ford Taurus will millions on the road.

Audi continuously lied to us- we have proof that they knew from about 1992 onwards that the speakers were defective. A year or two ago we banded together and got a LOT of owners who had experienced speaker problems to call in and report the problem.
When we called Audi, each owner was separately told "we have no knowledge of any problems with your model vehicle"(or something to that effect.) I guess they didn't think we would talk to each other, eh?

Only after several owners submitted paperwork to NHSTA did we see any action; early spring of this year, Audi -announced- the problem and said there would be a recall. It took months to get the replacement circuit boards in and for the recall procedure to get out to dealerships.

Still, guess what? If you report a problem with your car to NHSTA, you can't actually follow up with anyone at NHSTA. The ONLY people you can talk to are a bunch of lazy government call center workers who can ONLY mail you a form or take information on a new case over the phone. You could have evidence of over 50 vehicles that have had said safety problem, and guess what? The call center couldn't care less, they just want to mail you a @#$! form.

Ask any Audi owner and they'll tell you- they love their car. My 200q20v is well over a decade old, but(thanks to a $500 ECU modification) does 0-60 in under 6 seconds, has all wheel drive for incredible traction, 5-speed, stealthy looks(looks like a 5000, basically) and huge amounths of interior and trunk space. Galvanized panels(standard in most audis since 1985 or so) means that there is barely a spot of rust anywhere on the car despite living its entire life in the Northeast US.) Audis are the most utilitarian of german luxury cars, and you usually get more for your money(in terms of features and interior quality) compared to a BMW or Mercedes...and Audi's all wheel drive system is still the best(despite what Subaru would like you to believe, Audi has been doing AWD since 1980, dominating the rallying world at the time. Subaru is about 15 years behind the game.)

But, ask any Audi owner what they think of the company, and the answer will probably change dramatically. It is a terrible shame when such a great product is hampered by piss-poor support.

Re:Recalls?

[sigwinch]

I think that's overly harsh on electrolytics. Like everything else, what you get depends on what you buy. You can buy from respected companies that have been making good caps for 20 years, or you can buy from whatever random Chinese company was cheapest this week. You can settle for any specs you can get, or you can insist on caps that are rated for 5000 hours of operation at 105 degrees Celcius (hotter than boiling water!).

There are also system design issues. You can push the caps to the very limit of their rated ripple current, or you can use more caps and share the current around.

Good god...how many of these things could be lurking about in automotive airbags, ABS systems, or in any sort of medical device?

For the most part, none.

Medical stuff routinely uses electrolytics. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to fail a lot less often than doctors and nurses.

Electrolytic capacitors have a fixed lifetime and are by nature unreliable.

They do not. The lifetime depends on the grade selected by the engineer, and how hard the design pushes the cap. A good cap used properly can last for many years of continuous service. That's good enough for many applications, even in safety-critical systems.

Where reliability is critical, Tantalum capacitors are used, but they're physically larger and more expensive.

You can't be serious! Tantalums are notoriusly flaky. Not only that, the usual failure mode is that the cap vanishes in a spectacular flash of purple fire. Every capacitor failure I've ever seen in computing equipment has been a tantalum. An engineer who used to work at Motorola told me that tantalums were banned from pager designs. At the time, Motorola would rather pay the premium for ceramic caps than risk tantalums.

Any -critical- system manufacturer(automotive safety systems, medical equipment, etc) that uses electrolytic capacitors should be shot.

It depends entirely on the service life that is needed, and the degree of redundancy you can afford. Satellites and airbags have to remain in service for decades without repair, so electrolytics are probably unacceptable. Medical equipment generally doesn't need such high reliability, and frequently uses electrolytics. (Seriously. Med equipment is regularly replaced, there's no point in making it more than a couple of orders of magnitude more reliable than physicians, and the critical stuff has spares sitting on shelves.) Telecom equipment can afford redundancy in almost everything, and so it's full of electrolytics.

Re:Recalls?

[chriso11]

I use tantalums instead of electrolytics as a rule. Electrolytic caps have a higher ESR, and the dielectric fluid is prone to leakage. The lifetime of an electrolytic is shorter than that of a tantalum - they have a finite lifetime, as the liquid electrolyte evaporates.
While it is true about tantalumns having a particularly impressive failure mechanism, once you remember not to reverse the polarity you don't have problems. Electrolytics also behave poorly when reversed. In addition, electrolytics have a minimum operating voltage and a maximum operation voltage. And how's this:
"Conventional aluminum electrolytic capacitors which have gone 6 months or more without voltage applied may have to be reformed."
Electrolytics are also physically larger than Tantalums, not smaller. They are indeed more expensive, but worth it.

Yes, I use ceramics whenever possible (esp. NP0/C0G, none of the x7r or worse grades). Ceramics are the best general purpose - no polarity issues, small physical size allows them to be extremely close to the DUT (for bypassing), and they have pretty good SRF. The only problems - the max capacitance you can get isn't too good. Polyprop/polystyrene are better for high fidelity audio type signals (earthquake detection anybody?).

Re:Recalls?

[pz]

You can't be serious! Tantalums are notoriusly flaky. Not only that, the usual failure mode is that the cap vanishes in a spectacular flash of purple fire. Every capacitor failure I've ever seen in computing equipment has been a tantalum. An engineer who used to work at Motorola told me that tantalums were banned from pager designs. At the time, Motorola would rather pay the premium for ceramic caps than risk tantalums.


He was serious, and so am I when I say that I routinely design with tantalums when I want high reliability, electrolytics when it doesn't matter as much. The fellow you mention from Motorola (and his associates) don't understand the problems with tantalums: they are extremely reliable, and have far superior specifications than equivalent electrolytics, if you simply derate the maximum voltage by a factor of 2. Eg, if your design calls for the capacitor seeing a maximum differential of 15V, specify a 30V capacitor.

My father, also an electrical engineer, and I have separately been doing this for decades (him, something like 5, me, something like 2) and not seen a single tantalum failure. My father used to see a lot of tantalum failures until he took the time to understand the failure conditions and derated the specs. But, this applies when the options are electrolytic or tantalum.

When the options are ceramic or tantalum, as you suggest with the fellow from Motorola, there's a huge difference. Ceramics are not available in value ranges that electrolytics can be manufactured in (in part because it's difficult to make a realllllllly thin sheet of ceramic, plate it on one side, and roll it up). Ceramics, for the same value range as tantalums, have superior specifications but larger physical size, as long as you stay away from the lower end of the quality spectrum. Comparing, however, the selection of tantalums over electrolytics against ceramics over tantalums is, well, like two different kinds of fruit.

In sum, given my druthers, in larger values, it's tantalum, unless the value range necessary or cost contstraints precludes them, in which case the choice is electrolytics. In smaller values/higher frequencies, it's ceramic.

Re:Recalls?

[plover]

While you are correct in your assertion that tantalum capacitors are (or at least should be) used where reliability is paramount, there are severe environmental issues with much of the tantalum mining going on today.

80% of the world's supply of coltan, the ore from which tantalum is extracted, is found in the Congo (formerly Zaire). Illegal mining has caused large sections of Kahuzi-Biega National Park and the Okapi Wildlife Reserve forests to be cleared. The U.N. has determined that 90% of the gorillas in these parks have been killed in the last five years, primarily by the illicit miners, leaving only about 3000 remaining. The miners kill the gorillas as a threat to their safety, and sell the meat for extra income.

It's not an easy problem to solve: coltan sold for upwards of $600/kg in the late 1990s (although it's down to about $100/kg today.) A team of miners can produce about one kg per day, and each miner can earn about $200 US/month in a region where the average income is $10 US/month. Technology's demand for tantalum has driven the poorer residents of these nations to take the easy money where possible. And according to the U.N., both sides in neighboring Rwanda have been funding their civil war in large part by sales of this illegally mined tantalum.

What can be done? It is reported that deposits of coltan have been found in dormant volcanos in Greenland. And there are legitimate mines elsewhere in the world. MoBo manufacturers can and should agree to purchase and use only "gorilla safe" or "non-Congo" tantalum caps (or they can continue to use better quality electrolytic caps.) But this will only occur if the demand for gorilla-safe tantalum crosses some magical political threshhold. I wish I knew what it would take.

Re:Recalls?

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost accurate except for the following:
- There are exceptions in MIL SPEC to allow for Electrolytic as Tantalum caps are not available for > 60V or so.
- Tantalum capacitors have higher CV^2, so they are SMALLER for the same capacitance.
- For low ESR applications, Tantalum is still better than cheap electrolytics. OSCON, ceremic, POS caps are way better than Tantalum though.
- Caps have pre-stressed "vents" on the top part of the aluminium can so that's what opens up instead of blowing up.
- In audio applications, you don't want Tantalum caps anyway. Electrolytic is better than Tantalum (film caps are better, but can't get high values)

Re:Recalls?

[grub]

..electrolytic capacitors have a fixed lifetime and are by nature unreliable.

You guys are all full of crap.

On Star Trek they use flux capacitors [caltech.edu] which I presume are far more reliable than your Fancy Pants, Big City tantalum or electrolyte capacitors.

so...

[iamthemoog]

there's magic water in capacitors as well as magic smoke ?

Re:so...

[billd]

there's magic water in capacitors maybe so! As soon as I get home, I'm going to check both my taiwanese motherboards for bad caps. If there's any sign of leakage, or if the +ive ends are bulging, out they'll come!!!

Thanks for the warning, whoever.

My MSI board failed.

[dsb3]

My MSI board failed a couple of months ago, and we didn't have a dog to blame the smell on.

I noticed many of the caps around the memory banks appeared blown - there was a lot of brown residue around the top. The smell occured a week or so (perhaps?) before final failure.

For my money, even though the original board cost around $120, I just bought a $50 replacement from ECS. It took most of the original memory (2 DIMM slots only, compared to the 3 slots in the original), and otherwise did what was needed without spending repair money on what's now an old-tech product.

The machine has an Athlon 900 T-bird, now has a 1/2G of ram (did have 3/4) and doesn't really do a great deal other than email, web, games, photoshop. Sure, the extra 1/4G of ram would have been nice to keep but for the money of even thinking about the repair I'd be better off just recycling and buying new with a DDR333 system.

Once again, technology is cheaper to replace/upgrade than it is to repair.

Re:My MSI board failed.

[bogie]

Can you tell which model that was? I've got a K7T266Pro2 which works great, but I'd be interested in hearing which one yours was and then checking into what other MSI board used the same capactitors.

Re:My MSI board failed.

[dsb3]

It was nothing that recent. I believe I bought it in jan/feb of 2001. Perhaps a K7T Turbo 2?

Re:My MSI board failed.

[Mindwarp]

Had exactly the same thing happen to my MSI K7T266A about six months ago. In my case it was two of the 1100uF capacitors to the north of the processor that popped their tops one day.

Needless to say, I won't be buying MSI again.

Ouch

[athakur999]

Imagine having a Beowulf cluster that used these things. That'd be a big repair bill...

Dude... You're going to Hell!

[disc-chord]

Like many /.ers I like to save money by putting together my own machines. Unfortunatly we do not get the benifits of extended warranties you find with Dell, Gateway, etc... This is why I highly recommend you purchase your parts from people who have been in business for a while and offer considerable warranties. Not some gimp who just put up a website and will be out of business next week. And be sure to SAVE your warranty cards!

That is of course unless you do something to void your warranty... But for the rest of us, this should be a good reminder of why warranties on pc parts are really important.

Re:Dude... You're going to Hell!

[sweetooth]

Ordering from sites that offer short warranties isn't that big of a deal since most manufacturers offer 1 year or longer warranties on thier products anyway. All the additional 30 day dealer warranty allows you to do is return the item to the retailer instead of the manufacturer. In my experience it's been cheaper to deal directly with the manufacturer. Depending on the item some will drop ship you a new item while yours is in transit to them, others will pay for shipping. Of course each manufacturer varies, and the companies that have had the worst products also seem to have the worst warranty and rma policies.

Re:Dude... You're going to Hell!

[psychosis]

Minor point of correction - what you describe is a "cross-shipment." A "drop shipment" is when I order an UPS from someone like CDW, and APC ships from their factory to my location.
I only mention because I caused some confusion with an sales account rep by confusing these two shipping methods...

Re:Dude... You're going to Hell!

[sweetooth]

You are absolutly correct, I realized my mistake after submitting the previewed comment and well.... no edit your own comment function here unfortunatly.

Re:Dude... You're going to Hell!

[MyHair]

My (brick & mortar) company had a problem with caps blowing in the power supply of custom mini PCs at customer locations. However this was a major distributor who built these 'custom' PCs for us, so we had warranty protection. I believe we got the PS manufacturer to foot the bill for the replacement PS'es and paid for us service techs to replace them on several thousand units. (We had a special code on our ticketing system to charge our time to 3rd parties.)

However it was still a nasty problem. It took a few months to replace them all because generally every PC was in a different geographical location and we had to coordinate with the customer.

During the time before the problem was discovered and solved the PSes were dying left and right, and they tended to blow chips on the hard drives, mother board, and modems when they went. Many customers lost their data and weren't happy. (I told them to back up and gave them the disks to do it, though.)

A warranty is definitely important for many companies and individuals.

However for my personal PCs I buy cheap parts (not the cheapest, though...motherboards and RAM I now pay more for) and rarely get burned. I figure I get burned seldom enough that it works out in my favor in the long run, but I back up my important data and have the knowledge and spare parts to get myself up and running again when things go South.

Slashdot seems to be slashdotted today, so here goes a submit with no preview.... (takes too long to see the preview if at all)

Re:Dude... You're going to Hell!

[Ryan Amos]

Bad caps take a while to blow. Much longer than the 90 day warranty. I've had caps blow on me on a $9000 Ascend Max 6000 (512-channel dialup router) and it was out of service contract. So what'd I do? I went to ye local electronics store, bought more caps, soldered them back on, and it worked. It's worth a try to fix. Of course, on the Ascend, 3 of the fans decided to die randomly and the caps overheated, but still..

I thought it was because I violated that EULA...

[mog]

That takes a load off of my mind... So THAT'S why my computer blew up!

shopping list?

[visualight]

I'm in the middle of shopping for a new board. Now I'm afraid to make a decision until I can find a list of boards that are "safe". If anyone finds such a list please post it!

MSI K4 Ultra info

[ackthpt]

An associate just picked up an MSI K4 Ultra during lunch. It has Rubycon (jp) 3300uf and some G-Luxon (tw) caps in the power converter and a few Nichicon (jp) scattered around the board.

G-Luxon has this insightful bit on their news page: [luxon.com.tw]

recently, a rumor says that some of the customers (I company in USA, F company/ M compnay/ S company in Japan) are worrying about the quality of Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor from Taiwan Manufacturers. It has resulted in a storm during Taiwanese suppliers. We are badly worrying this ill news is getting to harm LUXON'S reputation. According to the information, it was caused by some of manufacturers- L company and Y company, have failures in their products and it was raised by that L company and Y compnay used the electrolyte P-50, P-51 which are from a company named "LENYAN". For this reason, many customers misunderstand all of Taiwan Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor Manufacturers are using the electrolyte including P-50 and P- 51. LUXON definitely understands that the electrolyte is one of the most important materials for Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor. In order to ensure our reliability and innovative technology, LUXON always develops the electrolyte by ourselves. We hereby declare that: LUXON ELECTRONICS CORPORATION DO NOT HAS ANY BUSINESS WITH "LENYAN" AND DO NOT EVER USE THE ELECTROLYTE CONTAINING P-50 AND P-51. We are sorry to hear that this ill rumor released by unknown defamer has caused unnecessary anxiety to our customers. We have to make the truth clear. We guarantee that our products do not use the electrolyte including P-50 and P-51. Sincerely wish having your always support and encouragement to LUXON as usual.

Cheap capacitors

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

Nothing new about the annoucement. Cheap electrolytic capacitors have been around and been a problem for years. There are other failure modes. i've fixed several old Mac's where the cap has pissed it's electrolyte all over the motherboard. Usually removing the cap, scrubbing the board and installing a new cap fixes the problem. Even worse is when the electrolyte is lost gradually. The product that it's in gets flakey over time and the problem is very hard to find. These problems are all made worse by exposing your gear to high temperatures. Never leave your electronics in the passenger compartment of your car in the summer.

Re:Cheap capacitors

[Soko]

Going under temp is just as bad, if not worse, as going over temp. The cost-consious id10t who approved using an electrolyte based on H2O should be liberally bathed in it - it's the worst possible thing to put in a cap. Being water based, if the electrolyte in the capacitor freezes, it expands and basically mashes the caps plates together. If they touch, well, hope it was time for an upgrade. The electrolyte would normally act as anti-freeze, but being water based means that it freezes a lot sooner. All the wrong things happen with water in the capacitor.

If you fly, keep your electronic gear with you, since the baggage compartment of an airplane isn't usually temperature controlled. Or, if you live in Sweden, Canada or any place that can get low screen temps, keep that laptop in the car or someplace warm so you con't freeze a cap and blow up your gear. In any event, insulate it from temerature extremes whenever possible.

Soko

Not the only problem

[Bobulusman]

It seems that motherboards in general are being made more poorly lately. Last April I bought a Soyo Dragon Plus motherboard. It has been give me and others problems. Apparently, they screwed something up because the board is not technically PCI compliant on the top two pci slots. So basically, if you use the AGP slot and either of those slots with anything more taxing than a modem, you will be riddled with reboots and the like.

Not to mention that there is something else screwed up with the board because the MadOnion benchmark always identifies it as having twice as much ram as it does (I have 512 mb on two 256 mb's. It thinks I have two 512 mb's) and it can not seem to complete the PCMark test without rebooting during the ram tests. This has happened to other Soyo Dragon Plus users, so it's not like it's just the software.

And don't even get me started on how they ripped me off by not bothering to tell me that they would not give me the accessories needed to make various functions work. Had to by them seperately....

Same case with the motherboard I bought before that.

Anyway, my point is that it just seems that MB manufacturers are cutting a lot of corners, so it doesn't surprise me that they are using cheap capacitors.

Supergeek to the rescuuuuue...

[sheWhoWalksWithToesL]

Depending on whether customers retain their product warranties, this could end up being good or bad for the tech industry.

If the warranties were kept && the failures happen within the warranty period && if companies are nice, this could really cost tech companies a pretty penny.

Else, there may be a surge in people spendng to replace failed devices.

Either way, people aren't going to be happy. How many devices do you suppose are affected by these failures?

This has happened to me

[techmuse]

I just replaced an MSI KT266Pro Motherboard with exactly those symptoms. The computer suddenly started crashing at strange times, and in a week could barely boot. It turned out to be the capacitors, which had ruptured at the top.

Now, who is affected?

[ChicoLance]

Yikes! But what everybody will need to know next is: Who is affected by this? Which board manufacturers used these brands? Will they actually tell us, or will we have to fight for this information?

Ick.

Your motherboard is next

[jmcwork]

many motherboards are now failing due to electolytic capacitors made with an inferior water-based electolyte.

Early indications of capacitor/motherboard demise include failure of spell checking software.

Real Culprit is Chamelionic Mycrobe

[bstadil]

Remember Holly from Red Dwarf?

[A plain starfield. Narrative text draws across the screen:]

"Lone escape pod from SS Hermes - Survivors one.

Ship destroyed by Chameleonic Microbe."

[A pause, then the words 'by Chameleonic Microbe.' are deleted, and replaced with:]

"by Chamelionic Mycrobe."

[A second pause, then 'by Chamelionic Mycrobe.' is deleted, and replaced with the much simpler:]

"by shape changing weird space thing.

Non essential electrics all down, including spell checker.

Massage ends."

Power supplies at risk too

[Wansu]

I'll bet these bad capacitors have found their way into many power supplies too.

Isn't Anyone Doing Qualification Testing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes these are obviously bad components but I am curious. Do consumer electronic manufacturers do any type of development validation or component qualification testing?

In the automotive world, this would have been caught way before production started, unless of course, the component supplier changed the electrolyte type without notifying its customers after start of production.

The amount of testing that occurs on automotive electronics is sometimes thought of as gross overkill. When I hear stories like this, it reminds me of why.

Re:Isn't Anyone Doing Qualification Testing?

[plover]

I'm afraid the only validation most of them perform is: "Are you still the lowest bidder?"

If you want that MoBo to cost you $75 instead of $150, what are you as a consumer willing to sacrifice?

uh oh

[tps12]

If you're trying to boot up, and your rubber bung breaks and leaks electrolyte, then I'd recommend getting tested as soon as possible, especially if you were trying to boot from a strange floppy.

We got hit....

[IpSo_]

The company my parents own bought 30 machines a while back which apparently all had these bad caps on the mainboards. When the first few mainboards started failing we tried to send them back on warranty, but our vendor wasn't cooperating, and shipping them all back to ABIT was resulting in too much down time. (shipping time, etc...)

So we went to the nearest electronic wholesaler in town and bought a box of the equivilent caps and soldered them on ourselves. It doesn't take more than 5 minutes and the caps themselves are very inexpensive.

Of the 30 machines we bought I think almost 25 have failed, just a matter of time before the rest fail I'm sure.

blame the gangs!

[misterhaan]

they're always threatening to "pop a cap," and now this starts happening! coincidence? i think not!

Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[dcavanaugh]

Instead of viewing these as commodity items, we need to insist on a motherboard that does not have self-destructive components. Someday, DRM-enabled hardware is going to be the law of the land, therefore the last generation of uncrippled boards is going to be whatever we own at the time.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[anonymous cupboard]

Regrettably my board may be ATX but it isn't going to support AGP-8x or a 2GHz+ processor. So, eventually I will upgrade. I guess a lot of other people treat the motherboard as another item to be upgraded, after all it isn't expensive compared to CPU chips or graphics cards.

Palladium is optional. You aren't forced to use it. Some s/w (such as the new DRM compliant WinXX) won't run without it, but you should always be able to run untrusted s/w.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[Kombat]

Someday, DRM-enabled hardware is going to be the law of the land

Uh, dude, it may become the law of your land, but that still leaves about 5.7 billion of us who don't give a rat's ass what stupid laws your knuckle-dragging, war-mongering leader foists upon your apathetic populace.

Why do Americans think that they can pass laws for the whole world? It was the same thing with the CDA/CDA-II. They were supposed to eliminate porn on the net. Why would a Brazilian pervert care about American laws when he's downloading his German porn from a Eurpoean fetish site? He wouldn't.

And here in Canada, we're legally allowed to copy all the CDs we want, as long as we do it ourselves (i.e., I'm not allowed to sell a bunch of burned copies of Celine Dion's latest album, but I am allowed to lend you the CD, and you are allowed to copy it yourself). Think those DRM mobos will be popular up here? Ha! And when you pass that silly law, do you think the supply of non-crippled boards will dry up? Sorry, Yanks, you're not that important.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[Mac Degger]

So what cpu are you going to use? AMD and Intel have said they'll be going the palladium route, so they're out. Sure, you can use the newly developed chinese chips, but they're not what you'd call top of the line...hell, they're not even middle of the road yet.

Sure, DRM won't be popular, but when you finally want to upgrade, where's your choice? That's one of the reasons why I've always joked that I want to be able to vote in US elections, even though I live in Europe; what happens in any part of the world affects you, so don't kid yourself.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[Kombat]

Argh, my "Preview" button hasn't been working lately, I keep getting a bunch of thread summaries. Sorry about the excessive bold in my previous post. Here's a version that's easier on the eyes.

Someday, DRM-enabled hardware is going to be the law of the land

Uh, dude, it may become the law of your land, but that still leaves about 5.7 billion of us who don't give a rat's ass what stupid laws your knuckle-dragging, war-mongering leader foists upon your apathetic populace.

Why do Americans think that they can pass laws for the whole world? It was the same thing with the CDA/CDA-II. They were supposed to eliminate porn on the net. Why would a Brazilian pervert care about American laws when he's downloading his German porn from a Eurpoean fetish site? He wouldn't.

And here in Canada, we're legally allowed to copy all the CDs we want, as long as we do it ourselves (i.e., I'm not allowed to sell a bunch of burned copies of Celine Dion's latest album, but I am allowed to lend you the CD, and you are allowed to copy it yourself). Think those DRM mobos will be popular up here? Ha! And when you pass that silly law, do you think the supply of non-crippled boards will dry up? Sorry, Yanks, you're not that important.

Leaky/exploding capacitrors?

[CTho9305]

Sure, they're a problem, but they're a great way to get free boards [cmu.edu] that you can pretty easily fix :)

The pics page is linked to at the very bottom.

Abit BE6-II

[Carbon Unit 549]

I had 8 of 12 Abit BE6-II (Pentium III - Slot1) boards die just after 1 year of operation. I noticed that the some of the capacitors had ooozed, but not being electrically inclined, I assumed that it was only cosmetic.

Could this or other fundamental defects be the new "Y2K" problem?

How to check before you buy

[Jeffrey Baker]

It is easy enough to check this before you buy. Go up to the display case at your local computer parts retailer and ask to see XYZ motherboard that you are thinking of buying. Jot down all the markings on the electrolytic caps. Now go home and look up the datasheet for those caps. A good computer grade capacitor will have longevity of 2000 to 3000 hours or more at maximum ripple current and a temperature of 105 or 125C. Reputable brands are Panasonic HA or NHG, Rubycon, etc.

Forget case mods, maybe we need to start modding our mainboards with better caps.

Re:How to check before you buy

[msblack]

Capacitor lifespan of 2000-3000 hours? That's the equivalent of one work year. Have you misplaced a decimal point or are computers expected to be replaced EVERY year?

Re:How to check before you buy

[CTho9305]

That is at max current and 100C if you look carefully. I would hope your motherboard isn't that underengineered and not that hot!

Re:How to check before you buy

[Jeffrey Baker]

3000 hours is actually a very good rating for an electrolytic capacitor. This rating means that the capacitor will operating within specs after being subjected to its maximum ripple current at maximum working voltage and maximum operating temperature. Electrolytic capacitor lifetime is most directly related to temperature. Panasonic TS-HA types for example will last 3000 hours at 105C but will last 200000 hours at 45C. So, keep the case temperatures down for high reliability.

This is why you should always buy quality.

[Prince_Ali]

It is always important to buy quality components. I for example bought a *shuffle shuffle* Abit... BH6. Dang. Excuse me I have to go check something.

Waddya know...

[ucblockhead]

Funny, my KA7-RAID motherboard blew a capacitor just last week. Up until then, I thought it ruled.

Anyway, I got that horrid ozone burnt-electronics smell and the damn machine powered itself off. Sometimes I can get almost a half hour of uptime before it shuts itself off. I found the casing to a capacitor next to the power hookup at the bottom of the case.

My experience with failing Abit motherboards.

[Lethyos]

I can finally vent about my misery! This experience ought to be useful to anyone who is currently in the market for a motherboard. Simply put, don't buy Abit.

About 1.5 years ago, I purchased two motherboards from Abit. This one [abit-usa.com] for an 800MHz Athlon system, and this board for a dual, 733MHz Coppermine system. Last semeter, my KA7 failed slowly over time. At first, I thought it was the power supply because it seemed all the capasitors around the power regulator were fried (they were encrusted with the carbon of some substance that appeared to boil out of them and burn). I replaced my power supply and motherboard. A few weeks ago, I started having interrupt failures on my VP6 (APIC errors on both CPUs). I replaced the motherboard with a Gigabyte GA-6VTXD [tcwo.com] (sorry for the shameless plug, but Gigabyte denies deep linking, and this is where I got the board - a great buy). Turns out the VP6 also had fried capasitors and I *know* the PS in my that dual proc box is solid (a well tested Antec). The only two Abit mobos I've ever purchased burned out their capasitors. The moral of this story? Don't buy Abit. While this problem is wide spread, Abit seems to have a particular affliction.

Agreed

[GooseKirk]

I've bought dozens of Asus boards over the years, but one day a few years back I needed a mobo quick, and turned to my friendly neighborhood computer store. They only had Abit boards on hand, and I, having read all kinds of glowing reviews online, figured a KA-7 would be fine.

Within a year, it had blown caps. Wasted a lot of time with that PC, trying to figure out the problem.

It was my first and last Abit board.

Re:My experience with failing Abit motherboards.

[shaldannon]

You have me interested...

I have a VP6, two 750's, scsi card, dual-head video card, etc...

Thursday night while I was surfing the web, the system utterly froze. 79 days of continuous uptime, no problems, locked like *that*. Rebooted...worked OK til Saturday. Froze twice in 30 minutes.

Last time I saw this kind of behavior, there were too many computers plugged into the same circuit. With the Friday incident, I figured, "why not?" and turned my other two systems off. Saturday, both were off when the VP6 box went down.

I've had the board for about a year so I'm beginning to wonder if this is the reason for the problems. How can I go about verifying it?

Seen this happen before

[Vampyl]

This is a very widespread problem. The gateway e3400 series falls prey to this, i have replaced no fewer than 30 in the past 4 months, and the gateway tech told me that they had a school with over 200 cases of this. I hate to see that problem is more widespread that a single series of motherboards.

Magic Smoke

[Hollinger]

I suppose they're letting the magic smoke [tuxedo.org] out prematurely.

(Lifted from the Jargon File)

Magic Smoke - n. A substance trapped inside IC packages that enables them to function (also called `blue smoke'; this is similar to the archaic `phlogiston' hypothesis about combustion). Its existence is demonstrated by what happens when a chip burns up -- the magic smoke gets let out, so it doesn't work any more. See smoke test, let the smoke out.

Usenetter Jay Maynard tells the following story: "Once, while hacking on a dedicated Z80 system, I was testing code by blowing EPROMs and plugging them in the system, then seeing what happened. One time, I plugged one in backwards. I only discovered that *after* I realized that Intel didn't put power-on lights under the quartz windows on the tops of their EPROMs -- the die was glowing white-hot. Amazingly, the EPROM worked fine after I erased it, filled it full of zeros, then erased it again. For all I know, it's still in service. Of course, this is because the magic smoke didn't get let out." Compare the original phrasing of Murphy's Law [kotnet.org].

CommPlus PowerSupplies

[malraid]

We had a similar, but much worse case a couple of years ago. We bought some cases that came with power supplies branded CommPlus. After about 2-6 months the power supplies would die in a really fierry death (sparks, high temparature, whatever)

The worst thing was that HDs, CD-ROMs, MBs, and procesors were also trashed. This happened in about 50% of the cases. We lost a whole lot of money. Anyone had this joyful experience also?

Dear Abit,

[uberstool]

Are you planning on doing anything to retain me as a customer other than using good capacitors in the future? I'd like to know because I need a new system. Currently I'm using my old Pentium 233 box because my vp6 is dead.

My mouse exploded.

[mypalmike]

I had a Logitech Cordless Mouseman Optical [logitech.com] which only lasted about a month. Then, at one point, I was just mousing along, and suddenly my mouse made a loud bang, which I heard, felt, and saw. Man did that scare the crap out of me. This was about a year ago, before the whole D.C. sniper news, but my first thought was seriously that a sniper had shot the mouse out of my hand.

Anyhow, I ended up deciding it must have been a buildup of gas leaking from the batteries. However, now I'd bet my money on a capacitor exploding, since it still kind of worked after that, but mouse control would be spastic, possibly indicating failure in voltage regulating circuits.

-_-_-

Re:My mouse exploded.

[antirename]

I had a microsoft natural elite keyboard do something similar. The keyboard was purchased with an Abit VP6 raid MB about a year ago (damn! gotta pull the cover and check for this!). I had never seen a keyboard literally smoke before. Spontaneous combustion, no spills, virtually brand new. I was typing when it did it. It got replaced with an old IBM "clicker". I don't think that'll go up in flames, at least, and the arrow key placement is better for Ksnakerace :)

Tanatlum shortage

[huie]

Do a Google search on "tanatlum shortage" [google.com] and you'll see that there was a flury of articles about a year and a half ago. This prompted development of other electrolytic capacitors, one of which is the aluminum electrolyte that seems to be having problems.

I assume that it's only taken this long to find the problem due to the development time and time to qualify (ha!) and integrate these new caps onto boards. Needless to say, I guess they needed to develop the caps better, but they may have rushed to market since there was little else available (at a decent price).

Re:Tanatlum shortage

[Flakeloaf]

It wasn't what I'd call a shortage exactly.... the suppliers definitely *had* the Tantalum, they'd just wave it in front of my nose & refuse to sell it.

Computer Grade

[Detritus]

In the good old days, when mainframes ruled the earth, you could order "computer grade" electrolytic capacitors from electronics parts companies. I never saw a definition of what exactly "computer grade" was, but they were noticeably more expensive than generic electrolytic capacitors.

Part of the problem may be that the engineers are underspecing the capacitors in an effort to cut costs. A friend of mine used to have a job evaluating component reliability. He had lots of graphs that showed reliability as a function of how hard the component was driven in the circuit, for example dissipating 5W in a 5W transistor instead of using a beefier transistor.

Did anyone read the article brief? Troll Material

[toupsie]

build up hydrogen gas and blow the rubber bung out the end of the capacitor,

Come on /. editors, you just pitched a softball to the Trolls.

Re:Did anyone read the article brief? Troll Materi

[puppetman]

ha ha.

Brings a whole new meaning to the money-shot...

as in...

"That will be $100 for the new motherboard..."

So does this mean I can get my $$$ back?

[Fallen Kell]

Just wondering, cause I had a $140 Abit board blow 19 capacitors last year exactly 12 months after I purchased it... Needless to say that was the last Abit board I bought, I use ASUS now exclusively.

Been there

[Crus7y]

I've seen waves of bad production lots like this before over the last 20 years. What seems to be the problem is the parts are mismarked for operating voltage and are fine at lower voltages. It may have been something as simple as the maker using the wrong heatshrink plastic sleeves over the cans. Sometimes the board makers demand a smaller size cap because of board space limits and the cap makers try to sub a lower voltage (hence smaller) part rather than match the construction of their higher priced (and quality) competitors. BTW, all aluminum based electrolytic caps use a water based electrolyte.

Problems in classrooms

[mmol_6453]

My electronics teacher told me about the shipment of electrolytics they got, whose polarity markings were reversed.

Took them a couple semesters to figure out why, when the circuit was hooked up with everything in spec, caps kept popping.

Incidentally, I was thinking about the functionality of capactiors. They're not always used explicitly to "store charge," they're more often used as a sort of resistor that reacts more to AC(in the case of inductors) or DC(in the case of capacitors) current.

Having a capacitor's plates short out would seem to be just like shorting a resistor; depending on the circuit layout, the device may still work. (Unlikely, though, since adding a ten-cent component to a production design scales up with the number of units produced. For thirty million units, you've added a total cost of three million dollars.)

At least their easy to fix...

[nomel]

if they don't burn something out by blowing up. I've replaced a couple capacitors on computers easily. All you do is solder a new one with the same values in. The first one was on my motherboard, cause by a slip of the hand. The second was on a Vodoo3 vid card (the badly placed ones right at the edge of the card). On the v3, it had power going to it for quite a while, but ran fine after i solderer the existing one back on.

If one breaks, and you don't want to/can't get your money back, you could always try putting in a new one yourself. The worst that you could do is cover things with solder...heheh.

What, are you gunna break it!?

Same here

[XenonOfArcticus]

Experienced and identified this problem last year when two Abit Slot-A mobos of ours failed at around 6 months of age. Replaced them with Socket-A systems (we were on a time crunch and didn't know if the CPUs were still good or damaged). Later, we tested the damaged systems and found that one CPU appeared to be non-functional, but the other was still ok. Both mobos had substantial black leakage on and around nearly all electrolytic caps. Both mobos were discarded. We bought a cheap slot-A mobo earlier this year and put the working CPU (an 800Mhz Athlon) back into service where it is working fine today.

A customer of ours also had an Abit Slot-A mobo of the same vintage fail about a month after ours. Again, cap leakage was evident. He got the board replaced under warranty from his vendor, and the new one is still operational.

You can live without a PC.

[smack_attack]

But can you live without your heat?

Had some capacitors blow on a heater circuit board recently, looked pretty suspicious, now we know why.

ka-blam

[mikers]

Tag line of the hour:

"If we were meant to fly, we wouldn't keep losing our luggage." /. Corollary:
And if I was meant to use the WWW the pages I'd visit wouldn't be /.ed

m

Had to be done....

[perrin5]

Can you imagine what happened to the Beowulf cluster of these? It'd sound like popcorn...

Is capacitor failure the reason ...

[Lucas Membrane]

Why all my audio equipment starts losing a channel intermittently when it gets old? Seems to happen first with phono input, then the other inputs start picking up the symptom too. Cranking up the volume will usually cause the lost channel to come crashing back to life.

Couldn't resist...

[BigJimSlade]

Within days or a few months these capacitors build up hydrogen gas and blow the rubber bung out the end of the capacitor, leaking electolyte and causing havoc.

Yes, this will leave a bung hole in your capacitor.

Always Suspect Electrolytics

[ONOIML8]

I've worked as a professional electronics technician (radio communications) for 13 years, and grew up around the industry. The one thing I learned early on is to always suspect the electrolytics.

Any electrolytic will change value with age, they simply dry out. Change it enough and the circuit either quits or is way out of spec. But I'm talking about caps that are 20+ years old. It seems like caps made back then could hold up for that length of time.

I've noticed in newer equipment that the caps just don't hold up. This seems to be a trend in the last 10 years or so. Everything else like diodes, resistors, transistors, etc. holds up just fine as long as you don't exceed engineered values in the circuit. But caps, anymore you just cant rely on an electrolytic to stay within spec for more than a year or two.

All this time I thought it was just me and my bad luck. Guess not.

Note that I'm not talking about just computer equipment here. Most of my experience is with land mobile radio, power supplies, and telephone equipment.

If your switching power supply in your computer has gone on to the afterlife, and the fan still worked (they won't take heat buildup)......I'll lay odds it was a cap that croaked.

Sun mainboards too.

[jmajb]

We have 9 Sun Ultra 10 stations. Because there were some problems with the PCI cards (add on PC card), we opened one. We choose the Sun which seemed to have some loose parts inside. After opening it appeared to be the cap of a capacitor, which lay loose inside and was completely swollen. Almost all of the other capacitors were leaking. This was not incidental, then the other Suns had the same problem. We contacted Sun, who said that the problem did not exist... Do the Ultra's work, theya asked. To our amazement, we had to reply: yes. So what's your problem, was their reaction. Jac

Manufacturers not effected?

[Sivar]

Is there a way to tell which manufacturers aren't effected by this problem--that is, which ones do not purchase capacitors from Asia (or at least Taiwan)?
The list may be small, but there to appear to be manufacturers that consistantly churn out good products with only the occasional hiccup. Tyan, Supermicro, MSI, and perhaps Asus are all reliable manufacturers in general.
However, they may all be using the defective capacitors, and the problems may not be noticed until the boards have been around for a while. Remember the IBM 75GXP hard drive--it was hailed as "the" drive to have for enthusiasts at the time. It wasn't until six months and millions of drives later that it was found out they were crap.

Interesting... underpriced hardware?

[bryan1945]

I find this kind of funny after repeatedly hearing about how Apple's hardware is so overpriced, how "I can get the same performance with cheaper hardware".

I guess now we know why it is cheaper?

How does this happen?

[Smallpond]

These electrolytic caps are basically a roll of
aluminum foil. The two electrodes are separated
only by a thin layer of aluminum oxide. We're
talking umeters/volt.

The failure mechanism is due to the series
resistance of the cap. High current through
R generates heat = breakdown.
Cheaper caps have higher series resistance.

For info from a high quality supplier see:

Nichicon [nichicon.com]

By the way, the switch to Al. from Tantalum due to
shortage? Hunh? This is like the Engineer shortage.
Tantalum is widely available, just more expensive.
Tantalum caps explode quite nicely, too.

Happend on my Epox 8KTA+

[gweihir]

The Epox has 14 capacitors with dark green insulation and marked "GEC". These are 2200uF, 16V supposedly low-ESR capacitors arranged in two banks, one to filter the output of the siwtching regulator for the CPU, the other to filter the 5V line on the mainboard after it has be decoupled from the power supply via an inductor.

I had altogether 4 blow-outs, luckily with no secondary damage. I did not observe instability with one blown out capacitor, but when I finally replaced them all, I did not realize that it was two banks and created a different balance between the banks. About 20% difference from the original (~2 blown caps in the wrong place) was enough to totally destabilize my mainboard. What happened was that the 5V line dropped to 4.9V with something like 500mVss "noise". This lead to HDDs not being found, VGA not initializeing and other random failures. After I had a second look, I discoverd that it was two banks and re-created the original values. No problem so far, runs stable again for 3 months now.

As replacement I used Rubycon ZL's, which I hope will last longer. One problem I encounterd is that the "GEC" (could not identify the manufacturer) are 10mm diameter, while the Rubycon ones are 12.5mm. As diameter seems to affect lifetime, maybe that is not an accident...

It is really disappointing to find this kind of low-quality components in a supposedly high-quality mainboard. The 8KTA+ is not low end of the price scale. I thought manufacturing standard electronics components was well understood by now! And components from reputable manufactorers are not that expensive, I paid something like 10 Euro for the replacements.

I just had 2 MSI 694D motherboards die like tihs

[egarland]

I have been having spontaneous reboot problems with 2 MSI 694D Pro (V 1.0) motherboards which is almost certainly caused by these bad capacitors.

They each had completely different hardware and software configurations. One was my Linux server at home and the other was my Windows 2000 desktop at work. One had a single Celeron, the other 2 P3-866's. They had different sound cards, different network cards, different video cards, different RAM. The only thing they had in common was this MSI 694D Pro (V1.0) motherboard and they both had the same symptom, random spontaneous reboot without warning.

They both have black 2700uf 6.3V capacitors around the CPU sockets that have the tops bulged out with brown crusty stuff on top that smells nasty!

I troubleshot this problem for a long time and decided the problem must be something to do with the CPU power supply. Both of these boards now reboot once they get to the CPU-initialization part of boot when they have 2 CPU's in them (They have MSI DR-LED's so I can tell what part of the boot they are in.) One of the boards will run for a while with only a single Celeron 600 and all the on-board devices disabled. It runs a lot less stably with a P3-866 and won't get through the boot with a single P3-1ghz They both failed slowly, starting out rebooting just once then staying up for a month or so. All this is why I thought it had something to do with the CPU power supply. They started out rebooting every once in a while, then once a day, once an hour, now with 2 CPU's it's up to once a second.

I suspected it might have something to do with the capacitors but now that I've heard about this I'm sure that's what it is. It really bothers me since both machines were in nice, big, well-ventilated cases with good power supplies. I designed and built both machines with well-supported name brand parts. It has taken me a long time to track the problem down, and since the reboots were random I though I had them fixed many times. I have replaced one of the motherboards but the other system was using the RAID controller and I'm having a hard time finding a good replacement board. I can't believe MSI would use these shoddy capacitors in a high-end dual processor board. It cost me hours of down time, hours troubleshooting time, a new motherboard, and the time to install it, just to save a few dollars on parts! I will never buy a MSI part again!

umm

[ZipR]

Someone set us up the capacitor?
It had to be said.
On second thought, no. No it didn't.

I fixed my dead MB, you can too!

[malloc]

If you've got a motherboard that has the usual symptoms (won't start up when you press power though PS is OK, suddenly shuts off during heavy use), then take heart:

My brother's Q-lity CPV4-T motherboard died. Before buying a new one I did a little googling, and 'bingo' I found the Abit/Garry Headlee info: Same symptoms, bulging caps. We picked up a few new caps and soon had them all replaced using $15 radio shack soldering equipment. It's still getting a burn in -- on initial testing the AGP video card didn't want to work though PCI would, but it decided to work later. Right now everything is working!

Moral of the story:
Take...

• an hour or two of time
  
• a soldering iron
  
• $3 worth of new capacitors
  
• and a bit of patience
  

...you too can fix your dead motherboard (or whatever). You don't need expensive equipment or lots of skill, just try it!

Re:Abit KA7

[Anonymous Coward]

So did my roommate. However, as bad as this is, ABIT has a lot more stability issues other than capacitors:

http://www.xtremetek.com/info/index.php?name=kt7 -r ant&page=1

This site isn't very large and the article writer received over 100 emails about faulty ABIT mobos and to say the least, ABIT's tech support is horrible.

I say electOlite, you say electROlite...

[ackthpt]

Doh! Yeah, I know how to spell electrolyte (and even some stuff about dialectrics.) I was more focused on getting details right and assembling information.

This is a bit of a bugger, though, because myself and a coworker are shopping for new boards, at the moment, and concerns over lower grade commodity components to increase the manufacturer's profit is a worry.

Hopefully MSI and ASUS use Rubycon or Panasonic.

Re:That's disturbing

[gezerk]

>> seems like this has been going on for about a year but it hasn't been solved

Many manufacturers buy their parts in massive lots. They may not have known about the problem till those lots were exhausted.
If they did discover the problem, they probably chose to accept the failure rate and honor the warranties if they were called on to do so(not likely). Their only other choice would be a recall.

I find it amazing we don't have more problems with components. In light of the growth of the PC market in the last few years it seems electronics parts makers have been doing a pretty good job.

Re:Product of globalization

[Usquebaugh]

Rubbish. What are you xenophobic?

Unless you buy a known grade of electronics you have no hope of getting stable, reliable kit. American or otherwise. Quality costs period.

If you've used a cheap board for a mission critcal server then who is at fault? It ain't the supplier.

Re:Product of globalization

[lostchicken]

Yeah. The Toyota product I drive every day is a real piece of unreliable crap.

Re:Product of globalization

[Velox_SwiftFox]

What a comfortably short memory you must possess.

The reason electronic parts manufacturers in the United States lost market share to foreign makers in the first place was the shoddy workmanship of the US companies' products. Like the US Auto companies, they exaggerated the importance of their own prestige and assumed that this guaranteed competition did not matter, so they inflated their profits by shipping bad parts. The machine control manufacturer I worked for in the 1980s, when trying to purchase parts, would receive shipments that fit into two classes: The ones where the 10-15% non-operating parts were scattered throughout the shipment, and the other variety where the manufacturer had tested the parts, then placed what they already knew were the bad ones in the bottom of the cartons in the hope that they would thus slip by incoming inspection.

It was not until foreign companies began to supply the parts as well, usually with failure rates so low the incoming inspections were no longer necessary, that the US companies realized they could no longer get away with this crap, and began to get their own act together.

Worst case scenario: protectionism placing non-US manufacturers under a handicap with regards to US electronic parts makers - inevitable result would be the domestic suppliers slacking off on their quality again.

OK, you weren’t trolling.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you really are that naive. Memorize this phrase: "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it."

if the best example you folks can come up with is "cars from the 70s", you need to find a better example and get with the times

Get back on your tricycle, you're too young to play with flames. I picked that example because it is well known and understood and I don't have to write 10,000 words of background. You may substitute any of a number of industries. Electronics and steel come to mind. Or perhaps one that a young pup like your patronizes - toys.

My point is that if you think that something will be better just because it was "made in the USA", then you are sadly deluding yourself. All the flag waving and in the world doesn't make products better. It's about progressive attitudes and long term thinking (i.e., contrary to the greedy American fast-buck stock market driven mentality). If it's one thing that the Asian automobile manufacturers learned and then taught the Americans, it's that quality DOES matter and sitting on your fat overpaid asses instead of improving things is the fast track to obsolescence. American auto manufacturers deservedly had their asses kicked for skimming all the profit instead of re-investing it in improvements like the Japanese auto industry. Lessons learned.

I'm just saying that all these things people consider "commodities" where one is no better than the other, are full of problems like this where corners are cut, etc to make things cheaper
CHEAPER IS NOT ALWAYS BETTER

There we agree. In fact, that was my second point. But don't blame the far east or Mexico for American consumer stupidity. People more often want to buy cheaper rather than better. This is because they would rather live in a house full of cheap crap than have a few quality items. The crap wouldn't exist if there wasn't demand.

Re:The slowness issue

[StarHeart]

The net seems to have been having problems off and on especially today, but for the last 3-4 days. I don't think it is a dns issue. I run dns on my machine and one moment a site works and then it doesn't. Had a problem with www.webmin.com eariler and Slashdot seems to be slow right now.

Re:Third world countries

[aussersterne]

Welcome to the real world, slick, in which Taiwan and Hungary are not 3rd world countries.

In fact, probably 80% of the electronic components you own were manufactured in Taiwan, which is at least as large a hi-tech center as Japan in the global electronics game.

Re:Explosive potential of electrolytic capacitors

[falzer]

Try this [amasci.com] for highly dangerous capacitor experiments.