First Successful Recap

[Deft]

Last week I received my replacement caps from badcaps.net (took 10 business days to arrive) and over the past weekend I removed/replaced the bad caps with ease thanks to my new Hakko 936. I did, however, have a lot of trouble clearing the first few holes for the leads to fit through using the sewing needle method. After some quick reading of these boards I tried wiggling the needle as I pushed it through the hole and the job became so much easier. Now this board will serve as the base for my first low-budget HTPC (which means it's time to start shopping for a tuner card/BD player/case).

Thanks go out to everyone that has ever written anything (useful) on these forums for giving me the knowledge and courage to successfully complete my first recap.

Also, if anyone is reading this and thinking of doing this for the first time, my advice is to read as much as you can on these forums about the process, have the right tools ready and if before you do anything you're not sure of, ask here first!

[Wrog]

Re: First Successful Recap

Outstanding, congrats!! And great advice about reading as much as you can. I think I read non-stop for 3 months before actually doing anything. There are some extremely smart (and helpful) people that love to share advice and experience.

What kind of tuner card are you looking to get? Maybe start a new thread about it, there are a lot of us here that dabble with HTPCs I'm sure.

[shovenose]

Re: First Successful Recap

grats!

[Deft]

Re: First Successful Recap

I haven't spent much time looking at hardware yet because I've spent a lot of time trying to decide on what platform/software to go with. I may start a thread in General Computer Discussion for some advice before I get too lost in all the different software possibilities.

So far all I have is the board (MSI MS-7125), CPU (Athlon X2 4400), RAM (2GB) and video card (1GB Radeon 5450). I also have a 450w Antec Smart Power PSU I need to recap before I include it in the build. If I include the $100 price tag of the Hakko 936 I used to fix that board in the total build cost, so far I'm only out $110 I figure my biggest expense will be the case. A decent HTPC case does not come cheap

[Topcat]

Re: First Successful Recap

Well done and thanks for the feedback. I am surprised that they took that long to arrive, most report it takes about 7 days to reach Canada.

Thanks again, and just let me know if you need more caps.

[WarZ]

Re: First Successful Recap

Thanks go out to everyone that has ever written anything (useful) on these forums for giving me the knowledge and courage to successfully complete my first recap.

Also, if anyone is reading this and thinking of doing this for the first time, my advice is to read as much as you can on these forums about the process, have the right tools ready and if before you do anything you're not sure of, ask here first!

I also would like to wholeheartedly second this statement. I just did my vcore capacitors on 2 shuttle xpc's. Little scary working with the heat & soldering (i havent done any soldering in like 20 years, lol), but I got it all done and effectively too.

Both machines booted right up and have been stable since. They've actually both been running apps for the last 11 hours now. I plan to burn em in for another day and a half. But so far fantastic.

They were such awesome looking boxes that I was heart sick thinking I was going to have to just throw them out. I also thank my friend who first turned me onto the idea it could be caps. This site helped me work out all the knowledge and technical details. Absolutely terrific.

I have 2 older shuttles sitting on a shelf that I put there due to stability issues. A quick look over the board shows quite a few leaky caps. Those will be the next fun projects I dig into.

Its like a whole new world

[Deft]

Re: First Successful Recap

Well done and thanks for the feedback. I am surprised that they took that long to arrive, most report it takes about 7 days to reach Canada.

Thanks again, and just let me know if you need more caps.

Thanks for the site. I'll definitely be needing more caps soon for an antec PSU and a Proview LCD monitor. I've cracked them both open but I haven't identified all the bad caps yet.