[PLUG] Motherboard problems? Watch the capacitors!

[Russ Johnson]

* Dale Zeutenhorst <dzeut at microsharp.com> [2003-04-16 22:13]:
> Leaking capacitors have become a serious problem and are affecting many
> different motherboard manufacturers and their consumers. The following
> web site has a lot of information: http://www.careyholzman.com/

Is this still a problem to this day? 

I know there WAS a problem, about two years ago. That's when I bought a
set of 21 abit motherboards. 18 of them died within the two year
warrenty period. The other 3 lasted until 2 months after warrenty
expired, and Abit refused to honor the warrenty, even though these MBs
had classic symptoms of the defective caps. 

At the same time, I've purchased MBs from many manufactures (Abit, ASUS,
Intel, Soyo, MSI, and others) that haven't shown any sign of failure. 

It was my understanding that the bad electrlyte problem was relatively
short lived, and only affected a few manufactures. 

I suspect that any MB purchased within the last year is probably fine.
Boards purchased 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 years ago may be suspect. 

But that's just my guess, based on the following paragraph from the IEEE
article:

Aluminum electrolytic capacitors with a low equivalent series resistance
(ESR) are high-capacitance components that generally serve to smooth out
the power supply to chips. Throughout 2002, they have been breaking open
and failing in certain desktop PCs. Motherboard and PC makers contacted
by IEEE Spectrum have stopped using the faulty parts, but because the
parts can fail over a period of several months, more such failures are
expected.

-- 
Russ Johnson
Dimension 7/Stargate Online
http://www.dimstar.net

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