soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

[c_hegge]

Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

I have a Soyo SY-P4S-645DX Dragon Ultra. As you can see from the attached photo, I had a bank of nine Sacon 2200 uF 6.3 volt caps bulging and leaking at the top. Since this computer is used as a dedicated flight simulator (FS2004), I recapped with Nichicon PWM series. I'm sure FAA would not approve of flying with leaky capacitors!.

The FAA would not approve of using the wrong parts either. The esr of Nichicon PW series is way too high for use on a motherboard. Use something like Rubycon MBZ.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

Doubt the FAA cares about a simulator.
I suppose you could chain the PC's case to the concrete just to make sure it doesn't get away when starts flying around the room. Maybe some bars on the windows are in order and optionally a bird bath in the corner. You'll have to check at PetCo to find out what to put in the feeder. My PCs [that move around on their own] eat crickets by way of the DVD tray but none of mine have wings.

PW are good enough for -some- older boards.
I have 2 [never reworked] Intel SR440BX with all Panny FCs [same grade as PW] on both high and low side of the VRM. [These are PC100 'age' boards.]
- That said:
Caps of that low a grade are unusual once RAM hit PC133.
By PC133 most boards had something along the lines of ZL thru MBZ there.
-
You really need to just check specs on the old ones to KNOW what's needed.
One designer might use 5 or 6 ZL [or equivelent] caps to get the same ESR as some other designer that used 3 MBZ equivelent caps for the same application.
.
If you can't find the old cap's specs then default to MBZ, WG, FJ or simialr.

For a flight simulator the first thing I'd look at is how much RAM & CPU the program needs. - Then double what it says for RAM and choose a chipset based on the CPU and how much RAM you're going to use.
.

[everell]

Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

I had many happy hours flying the flight simulator - Soyo board. Then got interesting in fixing power supplies and found this forum. My poor airplane ........ I had been flying with bulging Sacons on the mobo and a PowMax 450 watt power supply! Its a wonder it didn't blow up!!! I am now wondering if the inadequate filtering from the PowMax psu contributed to the demise of the Sacon capacitors.

I thought the Nichicon PW(M) series were low enough esr for the Soyo board. Since replacing the Sacons with Nichicon PW caps, and replacing the PowMax with a Antec SP400 (recapped and 5vsb modified with DM311 chip) I have had no further problem.

[c_hegge]

Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

Pcbonez, I was just joking when I said that FAA wouldn't approve of using the wrong caps for a flight sim pc and I'm sure everell was too. I wasn't saying that PW weren't suitable anything. I realize that they have their purpose. I meant that they probably weren't the ideal series for this motherboard.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

And you thought a trip to PetCo to fill it's feeder was serious?

Sacons will blow all by themselves. [One of the worst.]
A PowMax PSU certainly didn't help any though.

.

[bigbeark]

Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

Must point out that these SOYO boards will fail to post or be flakey posting if the BIOS battery is weak. They are supposed to be 3 volts, if they ge under 2 volts booting gets dicey. I know, happened to me, thought I had a dead board ans it was just the battery.

Also have a close look at your solder joints for any gaps. A not-quite-perfect joint can be enough to cause flakey booting

[gintama]

Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

Not sure how this thread became active, but hello again.

@everell, I also wonder about this seeing as the first PSU I had for this system went bad fairly quickly and drastically (something like 9.3V on the 12V rail).

@bigbeark, I've seen that problem with the batteries too. As for the soldering nothing's really changed since before the operation, so I'm pretty confident the problem is elsewhere.

[everell]

Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

Hello again - your original question on this thread concerned the Sacon capacitors.....and my original post was to show you a picture of a bank of nine Sacon capacitors on my Soyo board which were bulging and bad. At the time, I thought Nichicon PW capacitors would be good enough. I installed them and have had no further problem. There may be something better, but Nichicon PW did work. PCBones added that the overall quality factor of Sacon was not that great. My remaining question...did the PowMax power supply add to the problem and "help" cause the Sacon capacitors to fail? Hopefully we can get more discussion on this subject. Perhaps some of the other "marginal" power supplies might be contributing to the failure of several of the capacitor brands which we consider to be bad.

As for the computer being a dedicated flight simulator .... that part is true and was added only to add some humor to the thread. The "airplane" is still flying, so far no more capacitor failures. I like to fly a Taylorcraft, an Aero Commander, and the Roy Chaffin B-25 in my simulator. So far, any crashes have been "pilot error" rather than power supply blowup or capacitor failure.

[kc8adu]

Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

in the case of your board having 9 caps in the vrm out something like pw or fc will be ok.
considering how many 462 boards i see with only 4 caps in the vrm out.4 ultra low esr vs 9 low esr comes out the same.i have seen those dragon boards run on 2 good caps.all the others had vented.customer did not have any problems but found the bad caps during a clean out.imho pw or fc are higher grade than those sacon's regardless of what they claim in the datasheet.
as quickly as they fail even if they meet spec new they wont hold it long.

[gintama]

Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

What's possibly ironic is I'm still running an Antec PSU. I liked the case it came in, it was modular and it was powerful enough for the components I planned for, so I went with that. It's just passed its first anniversary and seems to be fine, but I've got a bigger, CWT based Corsair on hand waiting to be swapped in during the next maintenance session.

I guess the Truepower series was lasting me just over a year, as it was replaced twice before I replaced it with a higher wattage one. There were no problems at that point (except for the boot issues). It would be interesting to see how long this new one lasts, but based on previous experience I will be dumping it ASAP. Looking at their site though, this one has a 5 year warranty... I wonder what's inside. The Corsair's warranty is for 7 years... funny to think this system will be somehow obsolete long before then.

All this talk about flight sims is making me want to dig out my DOS box and Flight Unlimited floppies.

[c_hegge]

Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

I play flight sim X a lot. I love flying the DC-9, MD-80, MD-90 and MD-95/Boeing 717.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

Must point out that these SOYO boards will fail to post or be flakey posting if the BIOS battery is weak. They are supposed to be 3 volts, if they ge under 2 volts booting gets dicey. I know, happened to me, thought I had a dead board ans it was just the battery.

Also have a close look at your solder joints for any gaps. A not-quite-perfect joint can be enough to cause flakey booting

That battery issue is typical of many boards regardless of brand.
It's not a Soyo-Specific thing.
.

[c_hegge]

Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

Most boards will work just fine without a battery, they will just loose the CMOS settings every time you shut down.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

What is most?
What is many?

I stand by what I said.
That battery issue is typical of ~many~ boards regardless of brand.
It's not a Soyo-Specific thing.

- Nor do ~all~ Soyo's behave that way.
I've had Soyo skt370 & skt478 and I don't remember any that wouldn't boot without a CMOS battery. - It's not like a check I do, but I do pull the batteries from boards being worked on or stored and firing something up without the battery for a quick op-check is pretty normal around here.
.

[c_hegge]

Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

What I meant is that I've never seen a motherboard which will not boot due to a low CMOS battery.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

I've run across it now and then.
See it more often in laptop boards than desktop which is a pain in the butt because laptops don't always have standard batteries.
.