First time recapping a motherboard, need advice!

[Gwynz]

Hey guys, I just picked up an old Athlon motherboard (Chaintech 7AJA2) to build a vintage PC system around and noticed it had a leaking cap and a few others that appear to be bulging




It does boot up fine though, just finished installing Windows XP and it ran through a few 3dfx demos successfully (using a Voodoo3 3000 AGP card) but it does seem to have issues when I have more than one stick of RAM installed, should I also change out the little squat capacitors that are around the DIMM slots even though they appear fine?




And did I pick up the proper capacitors, I pretty much went by what they had in stock that was closest to size, temp, voltage and uF ratings but should I have also looked at low ESR ratings as well?

[stj]

Re: First time recapping a motherboard, need advice!

what make and series are those?

[Per Hansson]

Re: First time recapping a motherboard, need advice!

There is a picture at end end too stj, it shows those are FR and FS caps.
Hard to tell what the original crap is but I can't imagine these causing problems.
Since this is a pretty old board I think they will be a excellent replacement.
And yes, I would replace those skinny super low caps.
That is just out of previous experience:
I have never seen such special caps fare good in the long run...

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: First time recapping a motherboard, need advice!

noticed it had a leaking cap and a few others that appear to be bulging

yea replacing the whole set of caps that are grouped together is a good idea because if one goes, the rest will follow soon after.

it does seem to have issues when I have more than one stick of RAM installed, should I also change out the little squat capacitors that are around the DIMM slots even though they appear fine?

those little caps with a Y vent and three notches are teapos. they are junk and dont belong on motherboards and in psus, they are barely acceptable. replace those as well.

And did I pick up the proper capacitors, I pretty much went by what they had in stock that was closest to size, temp, voltage and uF ratings but should I have also looked at low ESR ratings as well?

panny fr and fs series are great very low esr series caps for recapping p3 and p4 boards. u did pick the right cap series indeed. caps for motherboards must be at least low esr rated.

[Uy181]

Re: First time recapping a motherboard, need advice!

Yes, they should be low-ESR as well. Most capacitors on motherboards are typically low-ESR.