Cheap recapping

[Rainbow]

Here in Slovakia, the high-quality caps are almost unavailable. Maybe they can be ordered through some vendor, but the price would be too high. So I'm using regular (non-low-esr) capacitors for 85 degrees - so I can keep the price of repair low enough. I order a bag of 2200uF/16V (100 pieces for about $14) and 1000uF (100 pieces for about $4) capacitors with correct dimensions and recap with that. If the caps on board are different values, I check which caps are parallel and approximate the capacitance using the two values.
So far, all repairs except one were successful (board working without any stability problems) and noone came back that the board died again (the oldest recapping done more than 2 years ago). I know that these cheap caps are worse than the high-quality ones. But there are better than the crap that many motherboard manufacturers use. A board recapped like this might work fine for a couple of years - better than throw it away.

[Chris1992]

Re: Cheap recapping

IN that case, you're really lucky. More often thn not, the non-low-esr caps cause most symptoms of bad caps.

[Rainbow]

Re: Cheap recapping

Some manufacturers (e.g. ECS/PC Chips) use low-esr caps (G-Luxon LZ series) only for CPU power, all other caps are standard 105 degrees G-Luxon SM. I've read somewhere that these might be worse than 85 degree ones because they have higher ESR.
My first recapped board was a 486 board 2 years ago (the old caps were not bulging but some of them were mechanically damaged) that runs continuously 24/7 since then in router (yes, there are no switching regulators there so there should be no problem). The second one is Abit BX133-RAID for a friend which works too since then - he came about a year later to recap the rest of 1000uF that were not replaced because they looked good - but they were not, they just died later.

[Chris1992]

Re: Cheap recapping

Huh. Weird. But my ECS K7SEM uses Teapo for VRM and G-Luxon elsewhere. Will check to see what series they are once I can get the board out of the system. What series can be green G-Luxon?

[Rainbow]

Re: Cheap recapping

I've seen green (LZ) and black (SM) G-Luxons on ECS/PC Chips boards (like P6VXAT, P6IPAT, K7S5A).
I remember that I read somewhere that some cheap board had non-low-ESR caps everywhere - but I really don't know where and if it's true. Haven't seen this personally.

[Chris1992]

Re: Cheap recapping

Ok then, my board has LZ for AGP power and SM elsewhere.

[Newbie2]

Re: Cheap recapping

One time I used non-low-ESR caps on a QDI Super Socket 7 board to replace the bad DST caps on the board and then the system would always freeze in Windows after the non-low-ESR recapping. I replaced the non-low-ESR caps with Nichicon low-ESR caps and the board would only be stable with a mere 64MB of RAM. I learned something after that. Do not use non-low-ESR capacitors for recapping. Use only suitable low-ESR caps from a good brand. Only use non-low-ESR caps if high-quality low-ESR caps are unavailable or too expensive. Rainbow had good luck with non-low-ESR recapping while I had bad luck.

[Rainbow]

Re: Cheap recapping

Some boards might be more sensitive to capacitor quality. Also some non-low-ESR caps might be better than some other.

[kc8adu]

Re: Cheap recapping

and some standard parts from a reputable mfr. may be better than the junk the board was built with!

[Newbie2]

Re: Cheap recapping

I think my old QDI board I play with is very sensitive to the capacitors. I guess it only accepts low-ESR caps. kc8adu is right about that good non-low-ESR caps from a good manufacturer would be better than low-ESR caps from a bad manufacturer. For example, non-low-ESR Rubycons are better than low-ESR G-Luxons in quality!