MS 7360 P35 Neo F V1

[banger]

Anyone know what caps are fitted on this board. Not having any problems but it is coming out of warranty soon so was just wondering without removing the board from case as it was bought pre-built.

The caps appear to be brown cases with light grey writing difficult to see what make they are. No bulging caps as yet. Tried looking at the pics in the good caps FAQ but couldn't see them.

Also another quick Q, I recently repaired a Thomson router with Panny caps as the CapXons were bulging and it was unstable. Have replaced with NHG series as these were the only caps in stock. Anyone know if the NHG Pannys are any good. Thanks.

[c_hegge]

Re: MS 7360 P35 Neo F V1

The caps could be chemi-con KZG, which are a known problematic series, or they could be KZE which are really good.

Panny NHG caps are reliable, but they are not Low ESR caps, and thus are unsuitable for motherboards, although they may be OK for the router.

[banger]

Re: MS 7360 P35 Neo F V1

Thanks for that. Looking round the board there seems to be quite an assortment of radial caps, some black, some light blue and some brown so maybe there is some good caps in there. Impossible to tell makes and/or series with the board in the case.

[CapBlown]

Re: MS 7360 P35 Neo F V1

Hi!

I just made "pre" -fix into similar mobo. I wondered how it was still working when I took cooler off. Eight small caps are located under the processor cooler 680uF (4V). As you can see, those caps were bulging from bottom really badly. Could not figure out the maker.

Did not find compatible caps either so I replaced these with 4 * 1500uF (6,3V). I just had to install them lying on the board.

Simple fix as caps are connected parallel, so "upgraded" from 5440 uF to 6000 uF just to be sure .

[PCBONEZ]

Re: MS 7360 P35 Neo F V1

If you "upgraded" from 5440 uF to 6000 uF but raised ESR or lowered Ripple in the process then it was a downgrade.

Those caps are probably OST.

[CapBlown]

Re: MS 7360 P35 Neo F V1

Would it have been better to use one 3*1500 & 1* 1000uF caps instead? That would have made it 5500 uF? I'm using low ESR caps.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: MS 7360 P35 Neo F V1

No.
And, you are missing the point.

There are MANY 'grades' [levels] of Low ESR.

The higher grades of low ESR can have ESR 10 to 15 times lower than 'entry level' grades of low ESR caps.

Crap brand [quality] does NOT imply crap grade.
There are many crap quality caps that are very high grades as far as their ESR goes.

If you did not check the ESR of the old caps [in data sheets] to know and ensure the ESR of the new caps is the same or better then you have no idea if it was an upgrade or not.
.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: MS 7360 P35 Neo F V1

Both of these are 'good brand' low ESR caps..

Nichicon HZ 8x20mm ,, ESR = .009 Ohms ,, Ripple = 2880 mA
Panasonic FC 8x20mm ,, ESR = .065 Ohms ,, Ripple = 995 mA

[CapBlown]

Re: MS 7360 P35 Neo F V1

I'm still learning .

But I have to admit that I have not actually ever checked the datasheets when replacing bulged caps on monitors or mobos. I've been buying only Panasonic FM, FK or FC series caps as replacements because they are sold here as "low esr" -caps. As the failed caps in mobos and monitors seem to be total crap, I see no reason to believe anything their datasheets tell me. I rather just take my chances with expensive caps. This approach has been working quite well so far.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: MS 7360 P35 Neo F V1

It's not the design engineer that cheaps out and uses crap caps.
Should stick specs of the caps you found there.
Especially if it's not for your own use.
-
I've seen caps in monitors up to MBZ specs.
If you slap a few FC's in those spota and it might only last a week.
Then you'll get to do it all again and maybe get to replace some transistors too.
.

[CapBlown]

Re: MS 7360 P35 Neo F V1

Thanks PCBONEZ, I'm going to pay some attention on those specs in the future. I quess I've been lucky so far as none of the stuff I've fixed have failed yet as far as I know. Or my habit of replacing caps with next bigger voltage value has helped a bit.

With luck more than skill

[PCBONEZ]

Re: MS 7360 P35 Neo F V1

Using a higher voltage doesn't ensure anything unless you are replacing caps with the same brand/series.
- Now who would want to do that.??

Going just by voltage you could be using a higher voltage in a lesser grade and end up with a lot worse ratings than the original cap.
- Easy to do...

There is no school for this stuff and there is LOADS of bad info on the web.

The 'common knowledge' [or rather commonly accepted misconception] a few years ago was that raising uF helped in some way.
Many doing that weren't looking at ESR either. [Especially on other sites.]
If you look at old posts on 'gamers sites' [maybe 2002-2005-ish] you will come across 'stories' where someone took a mobo that started out working fine but with known bad brands and in doing a preemptive recap they up'ed the uF with good brands [but unknowingly lowered the ESR big time] and the result was a less stable board or sometimes one that wouldn't even boot.

One of my own 'experiments' with uF was rather interesting.
I took an old Gigabyte P3 board that had scads of 330uF caps all over it.
I changed them all to 1000uF while keeping the ESR comparable.
The board started and ran fine but when it came time to shutdown it took a good 2 minutes for the +5vsb light go out.
2 minutes is a LONG TIME when you are standing there waiting to disconnect something or pull a card or change RAM.
.

[Scenic]

Re: MS 7360 P35 Neo F V1

^ 25V 330uF Choyos huh?
gigabyte loved these back then for some reason.
funny thing is that 95% of them weren't even in places with anywhere close to that voltage. i've usually recapped these with 16V 470uF because that was the closest "standard" value and i didn't have to measure the voltage at the spots where the originals were. (to decide between 6.3V and 16V caps)

as for the 5VSB 2minute issue.. pull the plug (or use the PSU switch if it has one) and hit the power button. problem solved


As for the ESR.. i was curious about that once, so i grabbed a crappy socket A board (ASRock K7S41GX w. SiS chipset) and replaced all the caps (mostly KZGs, 6.3V 3300uF in the CPU VRM) with general purpose Rubycons (16V 1000uF YK).
so i raised the ESR like crazy and at the same time decreased the capacitance for most of the important caps (less than 1/3 of those 3300uF KZGs). two no-go's at once.

to my suprise, nothing really bad happened. board still ran stable as a rock ... and it still does more than 1 year later

i surely wouldn't ever do something like this normally, but this experiment kinda had me puzzled. either the board was designed with totally crappy caps in mind (beancounters anyone?) or this is just... well.. i don't know what it is.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: MS 7360 P35 Neo F V1

I had many of those boards. [40 to be exact.]
Still have maybe 20 left because I got tired of recapping them.
Some had Choyo, some GSC, some G-Luxon, for the 330uF caps.
The bigger caps were either MBZ, KZG, OST, or Choyo.
Only two bloated caps in the entire lot.
The two bad ones were 1200uF OST in Vcore on the same board.
[Could have been a PSU issue....]

That board is still around. Sometimes I test IDE drives with it.
BIOS handles 48-bit addressing as stock so it's a good board for that.
[Takes any size drive.]
Also fully supports 1.4Ghz P-IIIS [Tualatin] with the stock BIOS.
Down side is it's an i815 variant so 512Mb max RAM.

I do pull the plug,, or rather kill it at the power strip switch.
Still takes a good 2 minutes for the caps to discharge.

Your experiment is interesting too.
What PSU do you have it on?
[Speculating]
They probably build mobos to handle any PSU, so if it can tolerate the Ripple from a gutless wonder then with a good PSU the caps won't have as much ripple to deal with as the design called for.
.

[Scenic]

Re: MS 7360 P35 Neo F V1

the PSU is a stock Fortron FSP250-60GTV
caps in there are still the original Teapos. haven't powered that thing up in a while as it's currently under a pile of other halfway assembled computers..

as for pulling the plug.. the trick is to hit the powerbutton afterwards. 5VSB will immediately drop down. at least it does that on all the boards i've tried so far where 5VSB stays up for quite some time.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: MS 7360 P35 Neo F V1

I see what you're saying but I'd rather wait.
If +5vsb is still up the so could be +3.3, +5, and +12 and the switch isn't going to discharge those.
.

[CapBlown]

Re: MS 7360 P35 Neo F V1

Both of these are 'good brand' low ESR caps..

Nichicon HZ 8x20mm ,, ESR = .009 Ohms ,, Ripple = 2880 mA
Panasonic FC 8x20mm ,, ESR = .065 Ohms ,, Ripple = 995 mA

So probably my four Panasonic FM's are good enough to replace 8 OST's:

1 Panasonic: 1500 uF - Impedance:0.019 ohm - AC Ripple Current: 2180mA
2 parallel OST's 1360uF - Impedance 0.014 ohms & AC Ripple Current: 1500 mA

OST lifetime 2000 hours, Panasonic 5000 hours.

[CapBlown]

Re: MS 7360 P35 Neo F V1

Both of these are 'good brand' low ESR caps..

Nichicon HZ 8x20mm ,, ESR = .009 Ohms ,, Ripple = 2880 mA
Panasonic FC 8x20mm ,, ESR = .065 Ohms ,, Ripple = 995 mA

So probably my four Panasonic FM's are good enough to replace 8 OST's:

1 Panasonic: 1500 uF - Impedance:0.019 ohm - AC Ripple Current: 2180mA
2 parallel OST's 1360uF - Impedance 0.014 ohms & AC Ripple Current: 1500 mA

OST lifetime 2000 hours, Panasonic 5000 hours.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: MS 7360 P35 Neo F V1

Assuming you did the math right for the OST's in parallel then:
- Yes, in theory that will work.
In real life it will sometimes work, there are some gotchas.

I'm assuming you are referring to the situation in the photo in post 4.
In that situation:
- 'Electrically', yes it would work with the number you gave.
- FM's tend to be big and that may give you heat-sink installation problems.
- And note: you don't want the caps in Vcore grouped together. Put one at each end and spread the rest out in between. This is because the with the small voltage even the tiny resistive and inductive properties of the trace runs can cause a slight voltage difference or difference in ripple from one side of Vcore to the other. [Your meter won't 'see it' but the CPU will.] Spreading the caps out will help keep voltages flat [the same] for the whole foot-print of the Vcore.
.

[This doesn't apply in a Vcore but in other situations...]
When you do something like this be careful that there isn't an inductor between the two caps that appear to be in parallel. The resistance of an inductor is so small that a continuity check may make them appear to be in parallel when they actually aren't. [Think like two caps in a pi filter.]

What series of OST are these?
1500 mA sounds really low for two Vcore caps in parallel.
.

[CapBlown]

Re: MS 7360 P35 Neo F V1

Can't tell if I did the math right. Thought that OST's (if they were OST's) might have been those 4V 680uF caps -> with 0.028 ohms impedance and 750mArms ripple.

I can't be sure if caps were OST's as I did not ID originals (was really interested about the voltage and capacitance at that point) and threw them away when I fixed the board some days ago. Though they were OST blue . If these new caps don't last, no harm done as I can fix my mobo again as this PC happens to be on my daily usage . Fitting FM's was not a problem when I layed them on the board.

At least processor temperatures are allright and I've been using this PC now in heavy usage for couple of days.

I'm not too worried about the caps as 7 out of 8 originals had blown their electrolyts out and the board was still functioning well. I bet even one 1500uF cap would have made it better than it was in #4's picture.