Anything worse than GSC???

[Wester547]

Re: Anything worse than GSC???

Nope.avi

Open up any recent (past 5 years or so) Fortron ATX PSU, or one based on a FSP (like almost all Zalman, most be quiet, some Cooler Master, ...). You're guaranteed to find bad CapXons, even if the unit isn't even 2 years old.

An old PSU I used to have in operation (a DX-PS350W, though on the PCB itself it says it's a HK328-51AP) had a mingling of HEC (for the primary capacitors, NEG/LS, 470uf/200v, rated at 85C), F-con (GL series rated at 105C), G-Luxon, CapXon (of the KM series, in that one), KSC (2200uf/16v), and CD288 capacitors (220uf/16v, I believe). Clearly not a 350W PSU when you see what's inside... much closer to 250W. You probably would be able to reach 300W max without blowing it up. I used that PSU in a fairly warm system for 2 and a half years (12/7 use) and it never gave me problems but I'm pretty sure it became warm (only a sleeve bearing Yate Loon D80SL-12 was used, and that's ostensibly low speed - the heatsinks are not particularly thick either and there aren't many vents). Interestingly enough, I was able to run an AMD Athlon 64 3800+ Venice in there, 2GB of PC3200 DDR-SDRAM, a stock GeForce 8600 GT, a 7200RPM PATA HDD, a DVD-+RW, a media card reader, two USB devices, an external hard drive, and a dial-up card with no problems, at full load or idle, for that amount of time (just about - some of that time was spent on integrated graphics, or in that case, a GeForce 6100, when the 8600 GT died).

It makes me wonder whether A) that PSU is better than I thought or B) it's harder to seriously load up a system to even 300W without a very beefy graphics card. I'm going with the latter. Anyway, I swapped it out for another PSU in October of 2009 and that Dynex PSU has not been in use since. So... I opened it up recently, and nothing was bulging or swelling but a KSC capacitor (16v/2200uf), I believed called "SC" or something, on the 5v rail. I don't know when it bulged because I know capacitors can bulge and swell without being in use, and that they can fail without visual denotation. That said, there wasn't a pleasant aroma stemming from it either, and it came right from that capacitor. My point is that though people may have awful experiences with certain brands of capacitors that which capacitor fails first, I think, strongly depends upon application and use, and what condition said capacitor is subjected to. Jamicons for an example obviously don't do well on motherboards or in PSUs but seem to be okay on (less than cutting edge) sound cards because that's low stress.

I personally feel that applies for all hardware. Some may swear by the notion of detesting Western Digital hard drives because they've had many a failure from them. Others may say the same of Hitachi but love Western Digital. I know that's not a great analogy because quality more than brand is what matters with HDDs and brand is rather important in capacitors even when great specs abound. But truth is, for me at least, that low quality hardware and components will inevitably fail, but how it fails is not the same for any one person, especially since everyone has a different setup and certainly a different manner in using and constructing said setup to their liking (different parts, etc). I don't however doubt that it can be long affirmed and agreed that Japanese capacitors will give off far less issue than Taiwanese/Chinese/Malaysian brands and what have you in that regard.

But I don't think it's saying much to say "CapXon is the worst" or "no, GSC is the worst!" Clearly, they're all poor capacitors, so they will fail, but how they all fail won't be the same. I think PCBONEZ put it better than I did once - just because a capacitor has had issues does not guarantee that it'll fail in the same amount of time if at all for everyone, though that certainly doesn't mean it's obligated to be reliable in the long term, just that its failure is not necessarily predictable (it could also be that not all amounts of aluminum foil in capacitors are the exact same quality because the quality can vary even if slightly in the supply chain).

[goontron]

Re: Anything worse than GSC???

hate to bring this up but you are all wrong its aero-M........shivers

[Scenic]

Re: Anything worse than GSC???

Actually, OST and capxon are about the same IMO. I've never personally seen a CapXon fail before, other than in monitors where they get no ventilation. I'd rate both as being way better than Teapo

We know you're an avid Teapo/Yageo hater, but I'd honestly put Teapo and OST waaay higher up the reliability list than any Capxon (in PSUs.. and ONLY there)

My box of junk caps is filled to the brim with Capxon KM/KF/GL/GF out of monitors and ATX PSUs
Even some of their primary caps (KF and HS) are in there, bulging or having a perfectly flat top, but oozing electrolyte out at the legs.

Complete and utter junk..

[goodpsusearch]

Re: Anything worse than GSC???

My experience is like that:

Teapo

------

OST



------



Capxon

[c_hegge]

Re: Anything worse than GSC???

Actually, OST and capxon are about the same IMO. I've never personally seen a CapXon fail before, other than in monitors where they get no ventilation. I'd rate both as being way better than Teapo

[goodpsusearch]

Re: Anything worse than GSC???

I wasn't saying CapXon were good lol. Just in my experience, they seem to do a lot better in desktop PSU's. I still trust my FSP350 filled with CapXon's to power 65W 24/7...They seem to be more sensitive to heat than other caps so if they have a low load they should do fine. Just curious, how much better are OST than CapXon?

A lot

[Pentium4]

Re: Anything worse than GSC???

I wasn't saying CapXon were good lol. Just in my experience, they seem to do a lot better in desktop PSU's. I still trust my FSP350 filled with CapXon's to power 65W 24/7...They seem to be more sensitive to heat than other caps so if they have a low load they should do fine. Just curious, how much better are OST than CapXon?

[SuperDuty]

Re: Anything worse than GSC???

I have a Soltek SL-75V motherboard with GSC caps call around, and guess what, they're all buldged.
From my dumpster finds, the worst caps are Hermei, GSC, CapXon, and Teapo. Oddly, I haven't found many buldged Fuhjjyu. Also had a few Nichicon HM fail.

[tom66]

Re: Anything worse than GSC???

I've heard of a CapXon primary cap drying out in an FSP PSU. In an APFC Circuit, it will sometimes blow up the PFC transistors.

It has been seen in Vestel TVs. One particular generation had a fake 150uF cap (turned out to be closer to 100uF IIRC) which would dry up and blow the PFC FET with a nice "pop".

I'd still rate CapXon WAY above GSC/Sacon, though.

Well, they have different uses... you wouldn't find CapXon in a VRM because they don't make low enough ESR caps (at least not electrolytic, I think they make polymers.) For PSUs, the worst is CapXon, for GPU/CPU it is GSC/Sacon.

[c_hegge]

Re: Anything worse than GSC???

I've heard of a CapXon primary cap drying out in an FSP PSU. In an APFC Circuit, it will sometimes blow up the PFC transistors.

I'd still rate CapXon WAY above GSC/Sacon, though.

[goodpsusearch]

Re: Anything worse than GSC???

Keep in mind that a badly designed Active PFC can kill nearly every brand of primary caps.

[tom66]

Re: Anything worse than GSC???

Has anyone here seen CapXons bulge if used as primary capacitors in PSUs or just on the secondaries?

Yes, it has been seen in some Samsung monitors. Can't find the post right now but a user had a problem with their monitor flickering occasionally, turned out to be a dried CapXon main filter cap. (And not bulging!)

And a bad primary cap can kill secondary caps.

[lti]

Re: Anything worse than GSC???

edit: @ lti: that's not an ISA card.. that's the controller board out of a CD-ROM drive lol

Those aren't GSC caps either.

[momaka]

Re: Anything worse than GSC???

It sounds like CapXon are as bad as GSC and Fuhjyyu.

They're worse, IMO. Granted I've seen much more equipment with CapXon than with Fuhjyyu and GSC. But again, if I look at ratio of failed CapXon caps to total number of times I've seen CapXon, it's very high (i.e. very high failure rate - I'd say 75% or over). Fuhjyyu and GSC (especially Fuhjyyu) have been much less unreliable. Also, I have a pair of some older "330uF" CapXon KM primary caps that both measure very close to 220uF. We had a thread last month or so on this matter about crap cap manufacturers overstating the capacitance on their HV caps.
I also had one CapXon in a Bestec PSU bulge and hiss randomly one day while the PC was in use - it made my room stink badly.
Too many screw ups for CapXon for me to give them slack.
CapXon

[Wester547]

Re: Anything worse than GSC???

It sounds like CapXon are as bad as GSC and Fuhjyyu. I was hoping they'd at least do okay on primary capacitors in PSUs. I was also hoping that CapXons would do okay in audio equipment, or at least on sound cards, though I don't condone the idea of using potentially bad capacitors in any hardware to begin with, of course. I know it was said in this thread that Fuhjyyus aren't that bad and I think for certain purposes that are lightweight enough, they may not be, but I honestly don't think they can take long term stress and heat on any echelon. I know the ones in my old FSP300-60BTV couldn't, since they were leaking on the secondary after a few years (and boot issues denoted that) and that particular PSU had nice heatsinks and a nice fan as well, and never felt hot at the back of the PSU. I honestly don't think that PSU was stressed that much, either.

But again, I agree on some level. Part of me would rather use the bad caps until they go and then replace them (not in a PSU but on other components like a motherboard or add-in card), since it kind of feels like a squandering to me otherwise. ^^; I used KZGs for 20,000 hours in a now-defunct eMachine T6536 (that computer had a MSI-7207/K8NGM2L) I used to have and they were never trouble for me until last year, though they would rarely cause me to have to power cycle twice to POST and boot without locking up at a black screen. But that was very, very rare (maybe once or twice every year?) until a couple days before it died, where I had to power cycle 5 or 6 times for it to POST/boot and reboot. I know it was the KZGs because there was a foul smell in the case after it died.

But that said, no, I don't think there are many capacitors worse than GSC.

[momaka]

Re: Anything worse than GSC???

Has anyone here seen CapXons bulge if used as primary capacitors in PSUs or just on the secondaries?

Not in my own equipment (I don't like CapXon and I replace CapXon primaries when possible), but if you have a look around the Audio forum here, you're bound to find more than a dozen amplifiers with bad CapXons on the primary.

Also, IIRC, there was a picture somewhere (not sure if on badcaps.net or elsewhere) showing the 2 CapXon caps of a PC PSU completely burned, and it wasn't the MOVs or anything else that caused it either - it was the CapXons.

CapXon caps also like to go O/C or high-ESR when used on the primary of a PSU with APFC.

[Wester547]

Re: Anything worse than GSC???

Has anyone here seen CapXons bulge if used as primary capacitors in PSUs or just on the secondaries?

[tom66]

Re: Anything worse than GSC???

CapXon are the worst in power supplies! Never, ever say they are good!!! I have pulled loads of them from LCD TVs and computer PSUs. They bulge like nothing else after about 2 years. They are completely incompetent when it comes to engineering a good cap.

[Scenic]

Re: Anything worse than GSC???

And CapXon are pretty bad but seem to do decently in power supplies.

Nope.avi

Open up any recent (past 5 years or so) Fortron ATX PSU, or one based on a FSP (like almost all Zalman, most be quiet, some Cooler Master, ...). You're guaranteed to find bad CapXons, even if the unit isn't even 2 years old..

Same thing happens in a lot of LCD monitor PSUs.

CapXon seems to be the modern capacitor plague for PSUs of any kind, much like Sacon was (is?) for graphics cards.. (or Fuhjyyu for Antecs)

They'll last a bit longer than 1 1/2 years till they start to bulge. By the time the 2 year warranty runs out, it's just a matter of weeks or months till the device stops working properly.

For recent Fortron PSUs, it seems like there's always a 25V 100uF cap in the 5VSB circuit that dies first, preventing the PSU from starting up (ticking or completely dead). Most of the time, some of the secondary side caps are already puking as well (oddly enough, the ones on 3.3V seem to go first)

edit: @ lti: that's not an ISA card.. that's the controller board out of a CD-ROM drive lol

[Pentium4]

Re: Anything worse than GSC???

Aren't Viva pretty terrible too? And CapXon are pretty bad but seem to do decently in power supplies.