Things you can find on that dead motherboard in the closet

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

I was pulling random stuff from a Gigabyte 865 chipset board i had lying around. I had already stripped all the big things and was going for the more interesting SMDs.

After pulling a bunch of 1N4148s and schottkies, some FETs, and a couple SOICs i thought i'd need, my attention focused on the 1206 ceramic capacitors around and in the middle of the CPU socket.

I was expecting them to be 100nF, maybe 1uF. But when i measured them... 10uF. I didn't even know they made 10uF ceramics in 1206. They're definitely gonna come in handy. And they were more than a dozen. I'm off to look on the other dead boards. Edit: Found 22uF on a LGA775 board... yay!

[tmcw]

Re: Things you can find on that dead motherboard in the closet

I always face the dilemma of recovering components from a board, or just leaving them on the board.

I usually end up removing items that protrude quite a bit off the board, like heatsinks or big caps, and either desolder or break off a FBT if it's near a corner and the board already has cutouts around the FBT, which they often do. After that, the fairly intact boards go into large plastic container boxes.

Besides, if I was to be recovering individual items, it would mean having to get sorting trays or bins, and possibly worsening an already mild OCD illness!

[Uranium-235]

Re: Things you can find on that dead motherboard in the closet

I was going through some dead laptops work gave me last year and found a Socket 478 desktop P4...3.4 HT in one

don't see many of those, at least I don't

[shovenose]

Re: Things you can find on that dead motherboard in the closet

I was going through some dead laptops work gave me last year and found a Socket 478 desktop P4...3.4 HT in one

don't see many of those, at least I don't

I don't want to know how hot that thing got!!

[PeteS in CA]

Re: Things you can find on that dead motherboard in the closet

Th3, be careful how you use those caps. They are probably rated for 16V, and the tempco is probably Z5U or Y5V, which means the value probably changes 5% if you warm it for 2 seconds with your finger. I'm not sure that's an exaggeration, BTW. Also, if you apply more than 3VDC across it, you've changed its value significantly.

Those are two of the reasons I consider SMT monolythic cerammic caps eeeee-vile ... necessary, but evil.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Things you can find on that dead motherboard in the closet

Will check with my hot air gun about the tempco. I don't intend them to be anything else than standard bypass caps, and for that they should do okay.

[momaka]

Re: Things you can find on that dead motherboard in the closet

I always face the dilemma of recovering components from a board, or just leaving them on the board.

I usually leave them on the board and keep the board - makes it easier to find the part and to see what it is, especially if it's SMD. SOIC-8 MOSFETs are a prime example of this.

At work, we have a big crate full of dead Xbox 360 boards. Most of them have had their GPUs and CPUs removed and many of them have dead caps so they are not very useful for that. However, each board has about 20 or so D^2PAK MOSFETs, most being in the 60-80 Amp range. Also many coils and toroid inductors on those.

My main source of parts at home is a dead Radeon 9500 Pro/9700 video card. It seems to never run out of parts, and I've pulled stuff from it for my other 7 Radeon 9500Pro/9700 video cards. Also fixed many LCD monitor t-cons with it by pulling random ceramic caps like Th3_uN1Qu3.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Things you can find on that dead motherboard in the closet

I have a bunch of hospital vials complete with holder. The type normally used to store blood samples and such. They are made of plastic and have an airtight cap. I use them to keep screws, washers, and other small parts. Like SMD devices for example.

[momaka]

Re: Things you can find on that dead motherboard in the closet

You should use them to keep good caps separate from bad ones so that the good ones don't catch the "badcaps" disease .

[villiam]

Re: Things you can find on that dead motherboard in the closet

Hi, I just recently came across these large value ceramics. I believe they are a pretty recent development intended as alternatives to some polarised electros. They are called MLCCs. Multi Layered Ceramic Capacitors. I think they top out at around 50uF 50V. They vary pretty wildly in price from small quantity price per cap of say 50p up to > 30GBP! Lots of the ones I was looking at were X7R.