The Great Capacitor Showdown - Rubycon vs Panasonic vs Samxon

[yanz]

Re: The Great Capacitor Showdown - Rubycon vs Panasonic vs Samxon

Chris, what do those systems do now? Are they still folding?

[Topcat]

Re: The Great Capacitor Showdown - Rubycon vs Panasonic vs Samxon

Chris, what do those systems do now? Are they still folding?

still running burn in utils (memtest86 mostly), I alternate their abuse occasionally. there's no internet access in the closet they're stuffed in, so they can't fold yet... That will be changing soon though.

[yanz]

Re: The Great Capacitor Showdown - Rubycon vs Panasonic vs Samxon

ah, i see
just want to report that the samxon caps on my kt7 are still good. on other hardwares too.. (mostly on my net cafe 24/7).

[Topcat]

Re: The Great Capacitor Showdown - Rubycon vs Panasonic vs Samxon

We lost a system today. The Sanyo system is out of the mix.

I went to the shop to work, and noticed one of them was off, I hit the power button, nothing..... I took it apart, and smelled that crispy silicon smell.... We had some thunderstorms blow through here, and I'd have to say that it was popped by a surge. The board is dead. If it's any consolation, the caps did not fail, they were all still holding ESR readings, as were the other 3 systems, which are ok. They weren't affected by the strike. The parameters of the experiment won't change, there's just one less contender.... Yes, they were on surge protectors. Being in this field a long time, I've seen lightning come through them many times....

[Maxxarcade]

Re: The Great Capacitor Showdown - Rubycon vs Panasonic vs Samxon

Could this have been prevented if the system was on a UPS? But then some cheaper UPS units don't do much to clean up the power either.

[Topcat]

Re: The Great Capacitor Showdown - Rubycon vs Panasonic vs Samxon

^
It was on an APC (forgot the model) surge protector/UPS. The batteries were dead, so if the power went out, they wouldn't stay running. The UPS now has a ground warning light illuminated on the back (it didn't before), so it's safe to say that it's toast too.

[whiz]

Re: The Great Capacitor Showdown - Rubycon vs Panasonic vs Samxon

Hi topcat...

i want to ask how many times you think you can unsolder
the boards without risking the pads get damaged from the repeated
stressing. Are you about to measure these boards soon?

thanks...

[Topcat]

Re: The Great Capacitor Showdown - Rubycon vs Panasonic vs Samxon

^ You could probably get away with it a few times before the pads and through holes sustained damage. A big factor in that would be your soldering skills.

Yes, I do need to take readings again soon, it has been a while.

[severach]

Re: The Great Capacitor Showdown - Rubycon vs Panasonic vs Samxon

The only reason to lose equipment from a storm is because you haven't implemented proper protection. Neither a UPS nor a plug in surge strip offers any lightning protection at all. A full time UPS placed near the equipment is at risk itself and cannot be depended on for lightning protection. None have the ratings needed to be anything more than a fire hazard and their location near the equipment actually facilitate damage from lightning so I have cut the MOVs all out of my surge strips and now only buy non surge protected strips. The surges they are designed and rated for, such as surges from motor switching and fluorescent lighting, are ones that won't damage well made equipment.

I get my lightning arrestors from http://www.deltala.com/ though there are many others that will work almost as well. They are easy to install and carry the highest rating at lowest cost I can find. Placed in the breaker box, which is the first point where lightning protection attempts stop being harmful, they have been almost 100% effective at stopping my lightning damage. Until I installed these I lost modems and whatever was connected to them quite regularly even though I ran home during storms and unplugged equipment. Now that I have proper protection I run everything continuously through storms and my thrown together system can take the direct strikes with little to no damage almost as well as the big boys in radio, TV, telephone, and the electric power industry can with their excessively large and well planned lightning suppression systems.

A couple of months ago we had a nearby hit that actually did something noticeable. The phone company lost our digi-peater at the end of the driveway and the digi-peater next door and I lost a dollar store phone, and that phone is the first and only loss from lightning in about 7 years. I suspect I could have prevented that if I installed my own telephone surge suppressor rather than relying on the phone company's aging and chincy suppressor that may have a failing ground. I probably won't because losing a single super-cheap phone from a direct strike shows me that my protection more than adequate and does not need immediate improvement.

A surge suppressor with poor ratings in the breaker box with a poor ground will provide some positive lightning protection unlike the best surge suppressor near the equipment that provides zero lightning protection with a breaker box suppressor or negative lightning protection without one so buy any breaker box surge suppressor you can find. The Delta suppressor which sports wicked sick ratings and costs about the same as any other and it's capacitor sidekick which I can only find at Delta and substantially improves protection over any surge suppressor acting alone are the big boot for small budgets when lightning comes around. If you can't afford an electrician, it's worth calling in a favor from friends and family, or just look the other way while a unlicensed electrician look-a-like puts it in.

You can keep giving your computer equipment to the great computer junkyard in the sky or you can do it right and have one less thing to worry about for less than the cost of a service call. Susceptibility to lightning damage seems to be mostly determined by location: city or country. Reports indicate that city locations rarely lose anything to lightning and country locations like mine lose things with alarming regularity. It's so cheap and easy I'd do it even if I lived in the city or I had nothing to protect but letting my wide area lightning collection system, which includes the power grid, the phone network, the cable network, antennas, and satellite dishes, transport surges within the collection area to my computers unchecked was a cost and time problem that needed to be stopped.

[Sparky]

Re: The Great Capacitor Showdown - Rubycon vs Panasonic vs Samxon

Did you talk to APC? They guarantee their units to stop lightning or you get some crazy amount of cash. At least they'll replace the unit if nothing else.

Too bad the sanyo one is dead Makes you wonder why it died and the others weren't affected. Who knows.

[severach]

Re: The Great Capacitor Showdown - Rubycon vs Panasonic vs Samxon

Bold lightning protection claims are usually found in sloppily written sales documentation including APC's SurgeArrest Performance documentation. APC's Equipment Protection Policy is what backs that up and there it is clear that they want you to believe that lightning damage is covered without actually saying it. It is also quite clear that the rules are set up so they can reject just about any claim. If you didn't know that the APC can't protect against lightning just because of where it was located you might be inclined to beg for money. I know so I wouldn't bother.

The policy specifically mentions that CATV must be grounded. This must mean that it is to be grounded by a CableCo surge suppressor for if it was just grounded, you'd have no TV. We'll call this primary protection for the CATV line. Also mentioned is that the telephone line must have primary protection which is a surge suppressor found in the TelCo box. No mention is made of any primary surge suppressor like the Delta on the power line and yet it just as easily gathers and transports lightning to your equipment so it must be just as important than the others. Whether it was forgotten or left out as a trick doesn't matter to me. Whether or not they pay claims not caused by defective APC equipment to maintain the ruse doesn't matter either. I don't want their money or a free power strip. I want the damage to stop.

My APC and other surge strips weren't stopping my lightning damage and I wouldn't expect his to either and the reason which no claim or guarantee can get around is because it can't be done anywhere but the breaker box and APC products are not intentionally placed there. The MOVs in my strips would have been completely safe and effective so long as the arrestors in the breaker box were present but I chopped them out to see if the breaker box arrestors were as effective as was claimed. I wasn't expecting much since I also believed foolish and contradictory statements like "surge strips protect me against lightning" and "lighting is so powerful that nothing can stop it." I now know that surge strips do not protect against lightning and while lighting may be too powerful to "stop," the damage stops if handled with the right equipment and technique.

Virtually no product advertises that it stops lightning because stop is something you can't do with lightning, comets, floods, schoolyard bullies, or anything else that has easily overcome much larger obstacles than anything you got. If lightning reaches you at all then then the path through you must have been substantially as good as the other paths available to invite a chunk of the current your way. To keep the lightning away from your stuff you need to provide another path that is so much better than your computer and modem that almost all of it goes that other way and so little goes through your equipment that the built in protection is sufficient. This means primary protection on all incoming lines each having the shortest possible distance to the ground wire and because of the nature of lightning distance must be as few inches, yes inches, as possible. CATV and phone already have mediocre suppression with a few feet of separation but the power line doesn't have any. The shortest possible distance between the service entrance and the ground wire is the breaker box which is where an arrestor for lightning must be placed to be effective.

[Topcat]

Re: The Great Capacitor Showdown - Rubycon vs Panasonic vs Samxon

No product out there can stop lightning, it doesn't exist. There's a lot that can hinder it, but not stop. Thanks for the tips though, those may be worth a try.

[Brewster]

Re: The Great Capacitor Showdown - Rubycon vs Panasonic vs Samxon

Update?

[whiz]

Re: The Great Capacitor Showdown - Rubycon vs Panasonic vs Samxon

Update?

it's not so practical every once in a while...
because we are going to end up without pads to solder them back!
after all degradation would be much of surpize if it happend all these months!

I'm wondering Topcat do you really unsolder the capacitors each time you want to take readings? or i misunderstood it? if you do unsolder them.. i think you should try once to take some readings even without unsoldering capacitors this time... after all it's been a while! don't you think?

[Topcat]

Re: The Great Capacitor Showdown - Rubycon vs Panasonic vs Samxon

I do not desolder them. I check them in-circuit with an ESR tester. The boards would have been destroyed by now if I desoldered them every time. When I read them, I have to remove the motherboards from the cases, which takes some time, even though we're down to 3 systems now..... It's probably a good time to do it again, just to see if there's any degradation. I doubt there will be, as its still too early in the experiment.... I have them out at my shop, which has no internet access, so they can't fold.....yet.... That will change in the future.

[gonzo0815]

Re: The Great Capacitor Showdown - Rubycon vs Panasonic vs Samxon

I think it is fine to let them sit a year or more, before there would be anything interesting happen.

Event most bad capacitors would hold up a few years, so i think it is a safe bet to give the system at least that time too.

[Topcat]

Re: The Great Capacitor Showdown - Rubycon vs Panasonic vs Samxon

I think it is fine to let them sit a year or more, before there would be anything interesting happen.

Event most bad capacitors would hold up a few years, so i think it is a safe bet to give the system at least that time too.

Yes, I think we've covered that earlier in the thread, and you are indeed correct. It will be at least a year or two before we begin to see any degradation with any of the brands....

[whiz]

Re: The Great Capacitor Showdown - Rubycon vs Panasonic vs Samxon

two years without the slightest degradation looks too much for me...
can you keep running these systems for two years continuesly?!

sorry for my guesses...it was too stupid from my side to believe that you unsholeder the capacitors each time you take reading...i don't know where that came from...i think i read it somewhere on this thread...

[moddolicous]

Re: The Great Capacitor Showdown - Rubycon vs Panasonic vs Samxon

Sorry to bump this thread, but are there any updates?

[Cubes]

Re: The Great Capacitor Showdown - Rubycon vs Panasonic vs Samxon

Would it have been possibly quicker to obtain results by recapping a few PSU's with the above caps?

Only once have I had caps let go on a mainboard which was around 3years old.
When it comes to PSU's alot more appears to go wrong a lot quicker.