Conductive Polymer Aluminum Solid Electrolytic Caps.

[Spork Schivago]

Hello,

Do Conductive Polymer Aluminum Solid Electrolytic Capacitors fail often? The ones I'm talking about are the like the ones found here:



I have an Asus P5N72-T Premium motherboard that's a bit older, I'd say at least ten years old, if not older. It's supposed to have really good caps but I'm having some issues with it. It'll POST, boot into the OS, and then shutdown. It's definitely hardware. The RAM and CPU are good, thermal paste is all good. I normally suspect caps when a board exhibits symptoms like this (after ruling out RAM, thermal paste, everything else). Just wanted to get an idea if you guys think the caps are worth pulling and checking or if you think it might be something else.

Thanks.

[stj]

Re: Conductive Polymer Aluminum Solid Electrolytic Caps.

leakage can slowly increase - i dont know how that effects ripple capacity or anything.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Conductive Polymer Aluminum Solid Electrolytic Caps.

So, if you were to take a guess, would you say there's a good chance it's one of these caps? Or there's a good chance it's something else?

Also, do you have a BGA Reballer Stj? Looking to pay someone money, send them something, and have them replace a BGA component for me.

[stj]

Re: Conductive Polymer Aluminum Solid Electrolytic Caps.

i know someone who does, but they are too busy wih some other stuff to use it currently.
once they have time, i have a few pro boards (not consoles) that i need done myself!

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Conductive Polymer Aluminum Solid Electrolytic Caps.

I think there's a service section here where you can post requests and offer to pay people money to do stuff. Maybe I'll post something in there. So, do you think it's the caps?

[stj]

Re: Conductive Polymer Aluminum Solid Electrolytic Caps.

could be, they do have a rated lifespan.
pull a couple & test them.

btw, i presume you tried a different psu?

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Conductive Polymer Aluminum Solid Electrolytic Caps.

are those the exact caps that appear in the picture as on your board? cuz your board's vintage suggests its from pre-2008 which is before the acquisition of the fpcap line by nichicon. prior to that, the fpcap line belonged to fujitsu and fujitsu caps are actually listed as a probable (50%) badcap brand in the list of badcap manufacturers sticky in this subforum.

fujitsu fpcaps can be identified from their red font and the F logo with a horizontal red line above and below the F.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Conductive Polymer Aluminum Solid Electrolytic Caps.

Maybe on the VRM circuit or whatever it's called?

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Conductive Polymer Aluminum Solid Electrolytic Caps.

are those the exact caps that appear in the picture as on your board? cuz your board's vintage suggests its from pre-2008 which is before the acquisition of the fpcap line by nichicon. prior to that, the fpcap line belonged to fujitsu and fujitsu caps are actually listed as a probable (50%) badcap brand in the list of badcap manufacturers sticky in this subforum.

fujitsu fpcaps can be identified from their red font and the F logo with a horizontal red line above and below the F.

I believe these are the Fujitsu ones, because there is a red F, very small, printed on the very top left of the cap, with a red horizontal line above and below it. There's some blue caps on here too, that look like the red ones but they're blue and don't have the F.

I've attached a picture of both caps, the blue and red. Sorry if it's a little blurry.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Conductive Polymer Aluminum Solid Electrolytic Caps.

I forgot to answer your question ChaosLegionnaire. No, I do not think the ones I linked to are the exact caps on my board. I just googled the writing on one of the caps and started looking for results of capacitors that looked like mine so people would know what kind of caps I was talking about. I should have found the datasheet for the exact capacitors I have. Now I have to work on finding proper replacements. I like the Nichicon brand. Maybe I should just replace every single fpcap on this board with the Nichicon equivalent?

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Conductive Polymer Aluminum Solid Electrolytic Caps.

...
btw, i presume you tried a different psu?

Yes, it's definitely something with the motherboard. I have ruled out every other possible cause.

I've switched the RAM, tested it in another system using memtest86+. I know the timings and voltages are correct and I don't have to play with them because they worked with this board for a year or so before the board started causing problems.

It's not overheating, temperature programs shows everythings good, even though the Extreme runs a little warm. I've verified it's not the CPU. I've unhooked every component minus the RAM, CPU fan, CPU, PSU and video card. Even at the BIOS screen, after a few minutes, it locks up.

I've tried a replacement video card. I've tested the PSU with my PSU tester.

One day, everything was fine. Next day, I couldn't keep it on for more than a few minutes. I first thought over heating and replaced the thermal paste but temp program (when I can get into the OS), shows everything's fine there. The logs didn't show any error messages, which made it a bit hard to diagnose at first. I'm gonna take your suggestion and pull some of those Fujitsu caps and see what the ESR is.

I don't know how to measure leakage current but my ESR meter will tell me if they're leaky.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Conductive Polymer Aluminum Solid Electrolytic Caps.

564 uF, 0.01 Ohm ESR for the:
-
F
-
821K
5 6 1
6.3

This board sucks. My Weller soldering station won't melt the solder. My Weller hot air rework station won't melt the solder. I have to turn it all the way up to 850F or so and leave it on the there for a while before the solder _softens_ enough where I can pull it out. Even at 850F, the solder doesn't melt like it normally does. I've seen this once before with a freaking e-Machine board.

Has anyone had troubles like this before with removing a capacitor? Normally, they come right out for me. I'm using good flux, a Weller preheater to warm the board (after covering up the plastic parts that I couldn't remove) and I've tried the soldering station but it seems only the hot air will do it. I don't like using the hot air at such high temps and for a prolonged period of time on the board. Kind of sucks. I already ruined one cap trying to get it out with the soldering iron. The actual cap pulled apart (I think it melted the plastic inside) and just the legs were left. I tried pulling the legs out with the hot air, nothing...not until I cranked it up to about 850F and left it on there for a good 5 minutes. That's insane!

[stj]

Re: Conductive Polymer Aluminum Solid Electrolytic Caps.

i have tried making custom iron-tips for this problem.
trying to increase the surface area in contact with the board.

i'v done a v-notch like a pig's foot to heat 3 sides of the pin,
and a deep slot to almost surround the pin.
these tricks help, but it is a problem.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Conductive Polymer Aluminum Solid Electrolytic Caps.

Is it because of something like a grounding plane and the iron I'm using just doesn't have enough wattage? With the e-Machine, I had noticed the whole board in that area was getting really hot. I could unsolder one pin on that machine but the other one, the board would just heat up instead of the solder. Almost like the grounding plane was acting like a heatsink...

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Conductive Polymer Aluminum Solid Electrolytic Caps.

yupp the red ones are definitely fujitsu fpcap. i have those all over the cpu vrm in and out on my faulty gigabyte ep35-ds3 which exhibits similar symptoms to your asus nvidia chipset board. my board freezes up when entering bios setup and i cannot change any of the bios settings. since im a custom tweaker, the board is useless to me as it can only run on stock bios default settings. it has no problems booting a live session of ubuntu though and passes prime95 for hours without issue.

as for the blue ones, i thought they may be ncc polymer caps but when i saw the picture, its dark blue in color. ncc poly caps' font are cyan or light blue in color, so the blue ones are definitely NOT ncc poly caps. perhaps wester547 can identify them.

btw, the best poly caps around are sanyo (now panasonic) oscon sepc caps. they can be identified with their purple font and sepc written in the middle of the caps.

what wattage is your soldering iron too? u need 60w or maybe even 80w for a rohs lead-free solder board. those are a bitch to desolder.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Conductive Polymer Aluminum Solid Electrolytic Caps.

yupp the red ones are definitely fujitsu fpcap. i have those all over the cpu vrm in and out on my faulty gigabyte ep35-ds3 which exhibits similar symptoms to your asus nvidia chipset board. my board freezes up when entering bios setup and i cannot change any of the bios settings. since im a custom tweaker, the board is useless to me as it can only run on stock bios default settings. it has no problems booting a live session of ubuntu though and passes prime95 for hours without issue.

as for the blue ones, i thought they may be ncc polymer caps but when i saw the picture, its dark blue in color. ncc poly caps' font are cyan or light blue in color, so the blue ones are definitely NOT ncc poly caps. perhaps wester547 can identify them.

btw, the best poly caps around are sanyo (now panasonic) oscon sepc caps. they can be identified with their purple font and sepc written in the middle of the caps.

what wattage is your soldering iron too? u need 60w or maybe even 80w for a rohs lead-free solder board. those are a bitch to desolder.

It's a Weller WX2 Power Unit with a WXMP 12 volt 40 watt micro-soldering iron. Definitely not even close to 60w or 80w. I have some money saved up. Wondering if I should purchase the 120 watt iron or the 200 watt...My power unit would allow me to hook two irons up at once. It heats up extremely quick. I believe the max it can support is 200 watt. Not sure if I can have two 200 watts hooked up at the same time, but I can have two 120 watt hooked up at the same time.

How do I read these Fujitsu caps? I'm guessing the 561 is the microfarads? 56 with 1 zero or 560 uF? The 6.3 is the voltage. What the heck is the top number with the k though? Some have 821k, some have 822k. The Fujitsu ones all seem to have 561 and 6.3 on them. Only the 821k and 822k change.

Also, for the BIOS, there's no way to unlock some features? Are they just simply not in the BIOS? I've seen people unlock various features before using various tools...

[stj]

Re: Conductive Polymer Aluminum Solid Electrolytic Caps.

hat the area with hot air before soldering.

btw, i have binned old oscon's for being out of spec.
even poly's arent everlasting.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Conductive Polymer Aluminum Solid Electrolytic Caps.

What the heck is the top number with the k though? Some have 821k, some have 822k. Only the 821k and 822k change.

its the year and week of manufacture. while the letter denotes the factory code. which factory it was manufactured in. they can have different factories in different locations manufacturing the same model of caps.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Conductive Polymer Aluminum Solid Electrolytic Caps.

its the year and week of manufacture. while the letter denotes the factory code. which factory it was manufactured in. they can have different factories in different locations manufacturing the same model of caps.

Okay, thank you. So they're all 6.3v 560uF caps? Probably wouldn't know the Nichicon equivalent for these, would you? It seems all the red ones are all the same. The only thing that differs is the data code. Thanks!

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Conductive Polymer Aluminum Solid Electrolytic Caps.

I was looking for the Nichicon equivalents and I think I found one. It's from the L8 series. The physical size appears to be the same. 8mmx8mm. The part number is RL80J561MDNASQ

But I'm not really impressed by them. It can be off +-20% and only has an expected life time of 5,000 hours. Leakage current is 705.6 uA, ESR is 8 mOhms @ 100KHz.

What would the best cap to buy to replace all of these? Maybe some of those Panasonic caps? I've heard good things about them. I'd need 37 of them.

It also appears that I have one ncc polymer cap. It has the cyan colours you mentioned. It says
M70R
27
25V

Then we have those 16 dark blue / purple caps. I'd really like to just replace every capacitor on here with high quality ones. I'd like to recap the whole board. I'm going to order the WXP120 (120 watt) iron after TEquipment.net gets back to me tomorrow. I had a question about the stand that comes with it. Some places it says WDH10, other places, WDH10T. Not really sure the difference between the WDH10 and the WDH10T but there is a difference.