Badcaps

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This page shows how to fix motherboards with problems with bad capacitors. There are a lot of counterfeit capacitors on the marked. For reliable performance only use quality (Japanese) capacitors.

Abit BX133-RAID

This board was bought fall 2001 to replaced an old AMD Duron system. The system ran on a Intel Pentium 3 733 Mhz and 384 MB RAM. Main tasks was a simple webserver (Apache) and gaming server.

The system was shutdown fall 2004 because wouldn't power up anymore after a unexpected lockup. Turned out that 3-4 capacitors was blowned. System was replaced by the board below, RAM was moved from the old board to the new.

Old capacitors needed to be replaced:

  • 8x Jackcon 1000uF 10v 8mm
  • 11x Jackcon 1500uF 6.3v 8mm
  • 4x Jackcon 1000uF 6.3v 8mm

New replacement capacitors:

  • <list>

Abit BP6

I bought this motherboard used and got two Intel Celeron 300 Mhz included for fairly good price. This board replaced the dead board above but after running continously for around a year the system started to act weird and continued to lock-up after a few hours after the initial crash. Looking at the capacitors showed a bulge on most of the 1500uF 6.3v caps located around the cpu sockets.

The system was replaced by a used P4 workstation with a Supermicro board I had standing around. The temporary system is still running untill I get a new system to replace it.

<pictures>

Things needed to be done:

  • The 1500uF 6.3v capacitors need to be changed to 1500uF or 2200uF, 6.3v or 10v.
  • Replace all the 1000uF capacitors with their original values, 1000uF 10v.
  • Capacitor 100uF 16v located at EC10 between the top cpu sockets needs to be replaced with a 1500uF 10v (yes!) instead of the wrongly used 100uF.
  • And if board is rev 1.0 ver 0.41, do the VTT fix on the VRM.

This should fix issues ranging from POST problems, stability, loss of CMOS settings and to help overclocking.

Original capacitors

  • 12x Tayeh 1500uF 6.3v 8 mm gold-on-green capacitors
  • 12x Jackcon 1000uF 10v 8 mm gold-on-black capacitors
  • 1x xx 100uF 16v Xmm white-on-black capacitor

New replacement capacitors

The enhanced configuration will enable you to do more extreme things while still have headroom for stability.

Standard configuration

  • 12x Rybycon 1500uF 6.3v/10v 8mm/10mm capacitors
  • 12x Rubycon 1000uF 10v 8mm/10mm capacitors
  • 1x Rubycon 1500uF 10v 8mm/10mm capacitor

Enhanced configuration

  • 12x Rubycon 2200uF 10v 10mm capacitors
  • 12x Rubycon 1000uF 10v 8mm capacitors
  • 1x Rubycon 1500uF 10v 8mm capacitor

Replace capacitors process...

Good Capacitor Series

Listed from left to right, good to best:

  • Rubycon: YXG, YXH, ZL, ZA (disc.), ZLH, ZLG, MBZ (disc.), MCZ
  • Panasonic: FM, FK, HFQ (disc.), FC, FA
  • Nichicon: HZ, HE, HD, HV, PW, PM, PL
  • Sanyo OS-CON: WX, WG, SVP, SEP, SC, SL, SVPA, SVPC, SEPC, SPA, SP, SA
  • Chemicon: KY, KZE, KLH, KZG, KZH, KZJ
  • Unicon: KGM, KXM, KEM

Notes

  • Good capacitor makers: Rubycon, Panasonic, Nichicon, Sanyo, United Chemi-Con and Nippon [More]
  • Bad capacitor makers: Jackcon, Tayeh [More]
  • BP6 capacitors located around cpu socket can be upgraded from 6.3v 1500uF to 2200uF 10v.
  • VRM stands for 'Volgate Regulator Module'.
  • Most original Teyah/Jackcon capacitors are 8 mm, new ones are usually 10 mm and can barely fit properly on some board.
  • The bad caps are all low voltage (probably just 6.3v and 10v, and maybe 16v), high capacitance (probably 1000 uF and above), low ESR (usually identified by gold-on-green or -black plastic sleeve).
  • White-on-black capacitors are usually okay.
  • ESR is 'Equivalent Series Resistance' within the capacitor. ESR acts like a resistor in series with a capacitor thus the name. Low-ESR capacitors are not supposed to create this problem/effect.
  • Only use radial low-esr electrolytic capacitors.
  • The voltage on the capacitor is the rated voltage, it is a maximum value.
  • Better rated capacitors can be used, e.g 3300uF instead of 2700uF, 10v insead of 6.3v, aslong as the impedance is similar. The major problem is whether they fit, 8mm vs 10mm.

Good Vendors

References