DFI PS35-BL Motherboards

[EagleTG]

I have repaired three of these PS35-BL motherboards that were used in GlobalVR's Need for Speed arcade games.

One was having trouble turning on. Would pulse the fans, that was it. Replaced all of the caps and it's happy.

One was working, but everything ran REALLY slowly when it was stressed (3D graphics, full screen video). Recapping it fixed what ailed it.

The last, and most bizarre... Astoundingly worked PERFECTLY. However, upon inspection, I found a badly burned ATX connector and header...



The pins that are burnt are the 3.3v supply. As logic would indicate, the caps were badly swollen on the motherboard. However, I found that there were some very bad caps on the video card as well. Video card was a PNY GeForce 4 Ti4200-8X.



Replaced these two caps (this picture shows a temporary used replacement fan, and this was before I hit it with some compressed air, my apologies.) Prior to replacement, these particular caps were severely failing ESR test, and were obviously swollen. From what I've read, it seems that these video card caps and the bad caps on the motherboard were contributing to higher load/resistance on the 3.3v lines causing the heat issue at the ATX header.



Here's the re-capped motherboard.



I also replaced the power supply and the ATX header on the motherboard on this last one.

And the games live to play again. Two up and running, and one that I stole all of the parts out of as spares.