Do I have to change the caps?

[victor_ro]

I have a K7SEM motherboard. I've used it for 3 years with no problem at all. Two weeks ago, the board started to cause problems. The image was freezing after 10 or 15 minutes of using the computer. The only solution was to restart the computer. I opened the box and I looked at the capacitors, but they are not bulged, all seem to be OK. I know for sure that the board is causing the problem, but I don't know if I must try to buy new capacitors for replacing the old ones or just buy a new mainboard?
Do you think that the problem is caused by bad caps?

[willawake]

Re: Do I have to change the caps?

what are the brands on your caps 470uf and above?
check the caps inside the psu also are they looking good?
run memtest86 in dos to check your ram. If found bad check it on another board to confirm.

[victor_ro]

Re: Do I have to change the caps?

The caps are QST (is that a cap brand?) I looked at the board for 40 minutes but I haven't seen any damaged cap. Please note that I have seen bulged caps before and I olso replaced bulged caps in the past.
I know that the motherboard is causing the problems because I've asked a friend of mine to test it for me (the board only) and he encountered the same problem.

Please excuse my poor English.

[Chris1992]

Re: Do I have to change the caps?

Your english is good, Victor, and you misread QST. The caps on your K7SEM are OST. It's easy to misread with the logo being as it is.

[MD Willington]

Re: Do I have to change the caps?

Well, biting my tongue here...I've ran my OST's for a year...no problem yet, but my next board will NOT have OST on it...

[einhverfr]

Re: Do I have to change the caps?

I don't know if there is enough information to determine at this point whether the caps are the problem or not.

If your computer is locking up after 10-15 minutes of use there are a number of other things to check out. The first one is heat. Make sure your fans are working and your heat sink is not overly warm to the touch. Make sure your case and especially the heat sink and air intake areas are relatively free from dust. But the hallmark of this sort of heat issue is that the more you fight with it the worse it gets, and then when you turn it off and let it sit for a while, the problem gets a little better.

Of course heat can affect faulty capacitors too but I would think that if you had overheating capacitors, you would see bulging (what happens here is that the electolyte mixture boils and puts pressure on the casing).

Also this board has an integrated video card. If the circuitry here is damaged or overheating this can cause similar issues. You might try disabling this in BIOS and trying it with a borrowed video card if you are using this feature. Also try in safe mode (if you are running Windows). Safe mode uses a generic VGA interface with no hardware accelleration. If the problem goes away, then either it is a bad driver of a bad GPU on the video card chip set.

[victor_ro]

Re: Do I have to change the caps?

Ok, thank you all. I'll test it again.

[victor_ro]

Re: Do I have to change the caps?

Let me ask you about another board of mine. The board is a K7VZA. It had bad caps. The image was always freezing at the point when the operating sistem started to load. Initially I didn't knew what the problem is and I tryed to reinstall Windows again and again and again... After three days I observed the bulged caps and replaced them with new ones. I've replaced 8 caps of 3300uF and 4 caps of 2200uF. The board still has four 1000uF caps witch are not bulged and I didn't replaced them.
Now, the board is functional but still has a small problem. Once a day, the image is freezing and the only solution is to restart the computer. After restarting, the computer is working for many hours without any other freezing problem.
Do I have to replace the 4 caps of 1000uF? I am afraid that I damaged the board when tryed to reinstall windows...?!
The PSU is OK (I think) and also the temperature of the board is OK (I've tested it outside the box).

[victor_ro]

Re: Do I have to change the caps?

"I am afraid that I damaged the board when tryed to reinstall windows...?!" = I wish to say that the board was ON for 2 days and it is possible to overheat it considering that the capacitors were bulged. Ohh, I hope you understand...
I don't know if the 4 caps unreplaced are causing the problem or is there somthing else damaged on the board... What do you think?