mobos with japanese caps only

[beawer]

anyone know which brands use japanese[or good] capacitor exclusively on their mobos? i once heard that abit only uses rubycon on their boards. but when i checked it on my local stores i found there were some RTL and RXL any some unknown strange brands [maybe only unknown to me?] on abit mobos. later i check rtl on the google and it says it makes low quality cap. does intel use only good caps on their board? i want to buy a cheap, but not cheapest, board which is reliable. i don't want to buy asus, since i have one and one cap [10v 630uf] burst. i checked my asus board and find it uses rubycon on large caps but "GSC'' [i checked it on this site and it is one of the bad brands] on small caps. this board cost $160 at that time! so anyone knows which use ''good'' cap exclusively? any suggestion will be appreciated. thanks!

[gdement]

Re: mobos with japanese caps only

I don't know for certain about the current caps, everybody goes through phases of using a certain inventory for a couple years or so, then they start using something else.

But on a more general level, if you want top quality then most ideally you could stick to the US-based designers (but they still manufacture in cheaper places nowadays). Intel, Supermicro, and Tyan are usually great boards designed by highly paid engineers, but they cost $$$. Those companies make their living on the stability-oriented high end market so they're pretty conservative and don't cater to overclockers (possibly a dealbreaker for many people).

The Taiwan and China brands do a better job catering to consumers at a good price, but I don't know which of those can be trusted to cut the fewest corners (if not on caps, then maybe somewhere else). Personally, I'd probably settle for less expensive Taiwan boards, but if you want top reliability then go to the brands whose livelihood depends on a high-end reputation.

[willawake]

Re: mobos with japanese caps only

its more likely to get crappy caps on the cheaper models.
only way is to check personally though. there is not guarantee
some boards now have full polymer

[gonzo0815]

Re: mobos with japanese caps only

You have to check it out, vendors are changing cap manufacturers frequently from batch to batch ATM.
This is especially true for the more expensive solid polymer capacitors.

[Brian C]

Re: mobos with japanese caps only

I have an old ABIT NF7-s mobo. It uses all Rubycon caps. VRM input: ZL, VRM output: MBZ, AGP supply in and out: MBZ, others (smaller size) are YXF.

[gdement]

Re: mobos with japanese caps only

I have an old ABIT NF7-s mobo. It uses all Rubycon caps. VRM input: ZL, VRM output: MBZ, AGP supply in and out: MBZ, others (smaller size) are YXF.

Agreed, ABit started using full Rubycons in the late days of 32-bit Athlon, but by now that's surely all changed again. They aren't really the same company anymore, and "Universal ABit" doesn't own the factory where those old boards were manufactured. I don't think they even inherited the existing inventory of parts - they just bought ABit's intellectual property and contracted the manufacturing to ECS.

The current UABit boards might be fine for all I know, but since they have no ties to the old ABit inventory there's no particular reason they'd have kept using any of the same components.

[gdement]

Re: mobos with japanese caps only

Looks like the last few posts disappeared due to the server problem. As I recall, beawer said that Tyan and Supermicro were too expensive, and Intel was less desirable because he wanted to be able to run AMD processors.
======

If you're willing to buy used, you might find a good deal on an "obsolete" Opteron board. Since the Opteron is the high-end line, boards for that processor are more likely to be well built, but I don't know what those mobos and parts are actually selling for. I suggest this because you mentioned that state of the art performance wasn't your biggest priority.

If you want to buy new, then you might try to find a shop where you can inspect the board before buying it. A small store would make that easy, but those places are also more expensive. Fry's has samples of all their motherboards on display, but the one you get in a box could end up having different caps on it.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: mobos with japanese caps only

The only one I know is Intel. - I understand it's actually a company directive.

Tyan I think does too but it may not be 'required' by policy, they just do it.

Abit has been very good about caps after getting burned so bad a few years ago.

Never had a Supermicro board.

Asus and MSI are a craps shoot. (Random)

ECS almost guarantees non-jap caps.

.

I asked before the site dump where you are.
Many eBay dealers ship overseas now.

.

The best bet is to just go look at the boards.
Manufactures change brands of caps during production runs if there is a shortage of something so two same make/model/revision boards may have completely different caps installed.

.

[hkivan]

Re: mobos with japanese caps only

Sometimes, when the prices are down
with the same series of mobo, the jp caps gone & repalced with OST ..etc.
I did see this happening on some Asrock mobo.
e.g. KZG caps are repleced with OST in VRM.

IMO, no need to focus on those use exclusively jp/good caps.
Instead, looking for high end models usually will found 100% solid or jp caps.
U pay what u get .

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: mobos with japanese caps only

With Asus, often, the best caps you're going to find are Chemicon KZGs.

But, even with KZGs, some people seem to have no problem.

My Asus A7N8X-X, which has KZGs next to the processor and Ost for the rest of them, has never even given me so much as a single cold boot or warm boot problem!

It ALWAYS POSTS when I turn it on!

Also, it's almost impossible for Prime95 to fail, even with the Vcore pushed to at least 1.80V!

And that's even with an Antec True 430 1.0 PSU, which does have Fuhjyyu caps. But, just inspected them a couple of days ago and I can't even see an imperfection on the bottom!

In fact, my Antec True 430 1.0 was almost immaculate!

Hardly even saw any dust around the fans.

And before you go telling me about it not being used enough, I did a fair amount of at least around 18 hour Prime95 runs.

[toastygoodness]

Re: mobos with japanese caps only

the gigabyte high-end ones (DS3 and M690 and SLI series on both AMD and ATI) in my experience come with solid caps (DS3) or nichicon/chemicons. The only exception is once I got a weird "Tk" cap between my pci slots.

Asus is a crapshoot, but Supermicro is the opposite. All rubycons. Too bad they're kind of expensive. I guess the only bad time with Intel was NIchicon's fault.

[bgavin]

Re: mobos with japanese caps only

I have an ECS MCP61PM-GM rev2.1 board installed in a new machine that is in for setup. The machine is a Gateway GT5662 with AMD Phenom X4 9500 Quad-Core Processor.

All the critical caps are Sanyo WG, with a few OST RLS in the field.

[beawer]

Re: mobos with japanese caps only

thanks for you guys' advice. now i have a look on my local stores and find this available:
cpu+mobo combo $74 USD
Intel® Desktop Board D201GLY2A
http://www.intel.com/products/mother...GLY2/index.htm
it's cheap and from intel! does any one know if it is reliable or not? how about the cap?

[stevo1210]

Re: mobos with japanese caps only

thanks for you guys' advice. now i have a look on my local stores and find this available:
cpu+mobo combo $74 USD
Intel® Desktop Board D201GLY2A
http://www.intel.com/products/mother...GLY2/index.htm
it's cheap and from intel! does any one know if it is reliable or not? how about the cap?

Intel boards are usually very reliable and they usually use Japanese caps. I even have an Intel SE-440BX-2 motherboard from 1998 and that one is still working fine and it's loaded with quality caps from Nichicon.
I have an Intel DP965LT Classic series motherboard in one of my desktops and it's a very reliable board with excellent quality capacitors from Nichicon, Rubycon, Sanyo and Samxon.

[Bookworm]

Re: mobos with japanese caps only

Note - I have seven Abit NF7 boards, and at least _four_ of them had a bad cap. _One_. The cap right against the AGP slot apparently was NOT always rubycon, but a Nichicon HM series. (blooey!)

[beawer]

Re: mobos with japanese caps only

Intel boards are usually very reliable and they usually use Japanese caps. I even have an Intel SE-440BX-2 motherboard from 1998 and that one is still working fine and it's loaded with quality caps from Nichicon.
I have an Intel DP965LT Classic series motherboard in one of my desktops and it's a very reliable board with excellent quality capacitors from Nichicon, Rubycon, Sanyo and Samxon.

but this is the lowest model of intel. does it use good cap?
if it is reliable then i may go to buy it. thanks

[stevo1210]

Re: mobos with japanese caps only

but this is the lowest model of intel. does it use good cap?
if it is reliable then i may go to buy it. thanks

From the pictures in on the Intel website, from what I can see, there are Rubycon caps (K Vent) and also what seems to be Nichicon caps around some other parts of the board. Both of these brands of capacitors are good.

[beawer]

Re: mobos with japanese caps only

thanks!
EDIT: but can a mini-itx board being used in a mATX case?

[bgavin]

Re: mobos with japanese caps only

I have several dead Intel boards in the bin. None have premium caps, most are populated with middle of road Japanese, and enough Chinese to raise some consternation.

Look into the Gigabyte P35 boards. They are all Japanese caps, albeit they are the blue and red top polymers. This still has to be a big step up from electrolytics, even if they are not OSCON, etc. I'm buying my first of these boards new from an eBay seller, and will post results here.

Gigabyte is aggressively touting itself as using all Japanese caps. ASUS uses them two, but curses their boards with JMicron controller chips and their associated problems. If you research Gigabyte carefully, you can avoid the JMicron chip found on a few of their boards. The GA-P35-DS3, DS3R don't have JMicron. The stripped down DS3L does have JMicron.

[gdement]

Re: mobos with japanese caps only

Note - I have seven Abit NF7 boards, and at least _four_ of them had a bad cap. _One_. The cap right against the AGP slot apparently was NOT always rubycon, but a Nichicon HM series. (blooey!)

Are these early revision boards, with the brown PCB? I've noticed in photos that those had bad caps on them, and the Rubycons apparently showed up when they switched to an orange board.
But since Nichicon HM was *supposed* to be a good cap, maybe it was on the good boards too. Interesting.