I horse traded KC8ADU something for this Intel SAI2 server board over 2 years ago (I honestly don't remember what I traded). I built a server out of it, which has been cranking out websites for the last 2+ years, without a hitch I might add.... I start getting nastygrams from clients who had sites on this box, saying their sites weren't working, so of course I immediately look into it... Upon first glances, everything is fine, sites are working, everything is hunky dorey, right?! Wrong..... Just as I went to hit the button on the KVM to switch back over to one of the other servers, it decides to reboot itself....... So of course, I'm now thinkin, awww f*ck.... I yanked the HDD and stuffed it into a VP6 server I had sitting dormant in the closet, thankfully, it booted right up, I reconfig'd the NIC, and all was well with the sites.
Ok, so what was ailing this SAI2 then... From the outset, nothing... No swollen caps, PSU is good, RAM is good, CPU's are good.....wtf is wrong with it.... Since it POST's, I know the FET's and VRM's are good.....so out comes the ESR meter.... 9 of the 26 1500uF 6.3v caps were wide open, no reading. The remaining 17 caps read between 5~15 OHM's ESR. As bad as some of these read, I'm amazed the box wasn't giving me trouble sooner. None of them vented or swelled, but failed all the same (a good lesson for those who think caps that haven't vented are good). I recapped it with some Rubies, and its running strong again.
I've seen some bad taicons on Asus boards many times before, but these appeared to be a different series. These are green, marked "0130(M)" on the sides. Here's a few pics of them, just for the record, incase anyone else encounters them.
While I was at it, I decided to clean the 2 years of dirt and scum out of the box....
Abit VP6 with Rubies to the rescue!!
KC8, she's going strong again....
Still a great board!
Ok, so what was ailing this SAI2 then... From the outset, nothing... No swollen caps, PSU is good, RAM is good, CPU's are good.....wtf is wrong with it.... Since it POST's, I know the FET's and VRM's are good.....so out comes the ESR meter.... 9 of the 26 1500uF 6.3v caps were wide open, no reading. The remaining 17 caps read between 5~15 OHM's ESR. As bad as some of these read, I'm amazed the box wasn't giving me trouble sooner. None of them vented or swelled, but failed all the same (a good lesson for those who think caps that haven't vented are good). I recapped it with some Rubies, and its running strong again.
I've seen some bad taicons on Asus boards many times before, but these appeared to be a different series. These are green, marked "0130(M)" on the sides. Here's a few pics of them, just for the record, incase anyone else encounters them.
While I was at it, I decided to clean the 2 years of dirt and scum out of the box....
Abit VP6 with Rubies to the rescue!!
KC8, she's going strong again....
Still a great board!
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