Taicon caps???

[davmax]

I have just received an ASUS P4S333/C mobo. It is erratic with I suspect cap problems. It is loaded with Taicon caps in the critical areas of VRM input and outpur and DIMM decoupling.

There are no obvious signs of bulging yet.

Any feedback welcomed.

[willawake]

Re: Taicon caps???

what do you mean by erratic? do you mean that vcore is unstable in bios, because that is a "feature" of new asus boards from that era. or do you have instability

we have mixed experience with Taicon. personally i would recap it and see what happens. i assume the rest of the caps are rubycon?

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...ghlight=taicon
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...ghlight=taicon

[davmax]

Re: Taicon caps???

Erratic means suddenly presents a black screen or freezes. I have now recapped the whole board (24 caps). I will not be able to test until I recap the PS, there I have to find 3300u 16V that I will have to buy in.

The Taicon web site does not allow access to any cap data. But they have a heading NICHICON LINE. The caps have the same ID code. The green caps are HD (Nichicon high reliability) and the black and gold (3300u 6.6V) for VRM output are HI, not a currently listed Nichicon code.

I have also replaced a 470u 16V Licon on the AGP card.

Thanks Willawake. Maybe the above is of interest.

[Toxic Cap]

Re: Taicon caps???

the brand Taicon could be a strategy employed by Nichicon to compete in the medium-to-low price market segment. Obviously Nichicon doesn't want to slash its price while they also want to take advantage of the mass low-end market.

Taicon is good in my opinion.

[linuxguru]

Re: Taicon caps???

AFAIK, Taicon is a Taiwanese company established over 35 years ago with Nichicon collaboration/equity participation. I haven't seen any failed Taicons, but then again, I haven't seen too many of them recently - they probably make them under the Nichicon brand these days.

[davmax]

Re: Taicon caps???

Thanks guys. Taicon may be alright. But time was pressing so I replaced all caps in PSU, motherboard and one on graphics card. 30 in all.

The system is now very stable.

[Topcat]

Re: Taicon caps???

I have an Intel SAI2 motherboard thats packed with Taicon caps. The board has been running 24/7 for almost 2 years, rock solid. The caps still look just fine.

[davmax]

Re: Taicon caps???

Just to contribute a little more. Here is the pic of the recapped mobo.

[Chris1992]

Re: Taicon caps???

What's that backwards PCI slot positioned a little forward of the others at the extreme bottom?

[tiresias]

Re: Taicon caps???

That's one of those less-than-totally-useful ACR slots...

[Spacedye69]

Re: Taicon caps???

Has anyone ever used an ACR slot? I havn't used a modem since before they were created!

[Rainbow]

Re: Taicon caps???

AMR, ACR and CNR are totally useless slots. I've always used external serial modems - they simply work. Software modems (like PCI, AMR/ACR/CNR and many USB) are crap.

[tiresias]

Re: Taicon caps???

AMR, ACR and CNR are totally useless slots. I've always used external serial modems - they simply work. Software modems (like PCI, AMR/ACR/CNR and many USB) are crap.

I still have a wonderful little US Robotics serial modem attached to the "main" computer here! It's very convenient for sending the odd fax...

As for AMR/ACR, I think it was one of those pseudo-great ideas that never had any success, like 2.88M floppies...

[Rainbow]

Re: Taicon caps???

I still have Microcom DeskPorte FAST+ (with LCD) but haven't used it for some time.
I also played with 2.88MB floppy drive taken from some old IBM machine. There was no power connector! Power was connected to some pins of the data connector that are not used on standard machines. That was not hard to "fix". The drive worked. I didn't have any 2.88MB floppies so I used 1.44MB. And it was able to format it to 2.88MB and read/write the data without any problems However it had some problems with floppy type detection as 720KB floppies didn't work at all. Once I put it on a metal surface and forgot that and then turned power on. And it has never worked since

[Chris1992]

Re: Taicon caps???

How stupid about the floppy drive!!! I use a Motorola cable modem connected via ethernet. We have a fax machine for faxing.

[linuxguru]

Re: Taicon caps???

FWIW, I just bought a batch of Taicon 1200/16v 10x25mm HD-series caps today. Couldn't find specs on Google, but there's a link that shows it to be same as Nichicon HD, except for the sleeve color (dark green for Taicon, black for Nichicon). The markings, finish and vent pattern are identical to Nichicon. The Nichicon HD 1200/16 has great specs - 4000 hours, >2A ripple current. I'm going to try this for recapping +12v secondary caps on PSUs - if it endures, some of the issues with Channel-Well and Deer/L&C 10mm/16v caps will be resolved. It looks like a good replacement for the Fuhjyyu 1850/16v often found on Channel-Wells. It's also a good candidate for a universal bypass capacitor for motherboard use - just use it to replace any large electrolytic, it's 10mm.

The only downside seems to be that it's aqueous.

[tiresias]

Re: Taicon caps???

FWIW, I just bought a batch of Taicon 1200/16v 10x25mm HD-series caps today.

Good to know - I'd be interested to know what you make of those Taicons - the awesome (highly opinionated, I know ) 0060 and 0056 SM PSUs have Taicon for all the caps on the DC output.

There was some discussion about Taicon caps on the (second half of the) second page of the 0060 thread too : https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...ghlight=taicon

[linuxguru]

Re: Taicon caps???

Here's there product list:

http://www.taicon.com.tw/product/product_index.htm

The HD is not shown, so apparently it's discontinued - perhaps not RoHS compliant? I snagged a bag of NOS caps (date code 0214 - 14th week 2002?), which worked out fine for me at ~5 cents each. Among Nichicon aqueous series, I actually prefer the larger HD/HE over the 'miniaturised' (and disastrous) HM/HN - there's more bulk volume and surface area to dissipate heat. I haven't seen a HD failure yet. I also like the >2A ripple current and the 0.020 ohm ESR of the 1200/16.

The first two have gone into a Deer, and it looks OK. +12v seems to be pretty stable at 12.08v on light loading. I'll know if it lets out smoke over the next 24 months :-).