How Different Mainboard Mfrs Handle Bad Caps?

[genosmm]

Is there a listing of how the various mainboard and PC mfrs have handled the bad cap problem.

I had read that Apple replaced all the Macs but HP and Compaq would not do anything if the PC was out of warranty. Am uncertain about Dell. Read somewhere that the large accounts were taken care of but individuals did not fare as well.

Did some searches but have not found anything that gives an overview of all the mfrs. Has anyone done better?

Am thinking about a new system but do not want to buy a mainboard or PC from a company that will not stand behind their products.

Thanks

Gene

[acstech]

Re: How Different Mainboard Mfrs Handle Bad Caps?

Probably the best thing you could do is not to worry as much about what to do when it happens, but prevent it from happening in the first place!

Look for a motherboard that contains all solid polymer or Japanese electrolytics. Although I use Biostar and haven't had a problem with them, most of their boards use at least some Taiwanese OST brand electrolytics. I also think their support is lacking in the USA.

As for the power supply, find one with Japanese electrolytics. The Seasonic S12 or S12-II series is good. Don't get the OEM Seasonic PSU's, as they contain cheap electrolytics.

Another place to look is the video card. Not all are created equal WRT capacitors.

When you buy a complete system, you never know what you're getting. I find it funny that Apple has problems with bad caps, since they go on about how their hardware works so well. You can do better than any computer from a major manufacturer if you build your own. You do have to know what you're doing though. Ask if you have questions, want recommendations, etc.

Others might have more specifics on how various companies handled the problem.

[370forlife]

Re: How Different Mainboard Mfrs Handle Bad Caps?

My Biostar Tpower N750 has all solid caps. A lot of motherboard manufacturer's are going that way now. Don't know about major manufacturer's boards though. Never really pryed open a new dell or anything yet.

[acstech]

Re: How Different Mainboard Mfrs Handle Bad Caps?

Their Tpower line does, the rest do not.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: How Different Mainboard Mfrs Handle Bad Caps?

Something to remember is there is/are a LOT more than ONE cap problem and the various problems span over about 8 years now.

.

[370forlife]

Re: How Different Mainboard Mfrs Handle Bad Caps?

Right, some of the new Nvidia GTX200 series gpu's have a defective gpu that overheats easily.

Rule of thumb, never buy something when its brand new until the bugs are worked out.

[gdement]

Re: How Different Mainboard Mfrs Handle Bad Caps?

As far as how they handle bad caps (or any other problem), I wouldn't expect the manufacturer to cover it after the warranty expires. Sometimes they extend warranties for PR, but the only guarantee you're getting up front is whatever the warranty says, so I'd just look at that and decide if you think it's long enough.

[genosmm]

Re: How Different Mainboard Mfrs Handle Bad Caps?

acstech,

Totally agree with you about "prevent it from happening in the first place! Look for a motherboard that contains all solid polymer or Japanese electrolytics."

Are there any mainboard mfrs that Only use all solid polymer or Japanese electrolytics?

As previously mentioned have been looking for a site that mentions this but to date nothing.

After being burned with Bad Caps from a Matsonic MS8308EP mainboard am looking for something more reliable.

Had always heard that Asus had a "Good Reputation" but after reading some postings on the forum am at least wondering about some of their products. https://www.badcaps.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=17

Thanks for the suggestions!

Gene

[acstech]

Re: How Different Mainboard Mfrs Handle Bad Caps?

After my experiences with Asus I cannot recommend them to anyone. They release half baked unstable products. Avoid them like the plague. They certainly don't have a good reputation with me!

Despite the OST capacitors, all the Biostar boards I've used have worked flawlessly and never given me a single bit of trouble. They do use quality caps around the CPU VRM, where it's more critical. Those OST's are there though, so take that how you will...

I think Gigabyte boards are a good compromise. I have had issues with one micro-ATX Gigabyte board, which, when I loaded BIOS defaults, refused to POST again. Ever. It had to go back. Then there was one where the Intel INF driver broke the audio driver under Windows XP x64. I had to reload the OS, and everything worked fine without the Intel INF driver. That one was a P35-DS3L.

I'd probably look for something in Biostar's T-Power line for all solid caps. Like I said before though, their support is lacking in the USA. But fortunately, I've never had to use it. I guess the closest thing to Biostar support would be:

http://www.rebelshavenforum.com/sis-bin/ultimatebb.cgi

If I couldn't get Biostar I'd probably go Gigabyte. All the issues I've had with them have been small issues or DOA. Of course, that's out of exactly 2 of their boards I've used.

[genosmm]

Re: How Different Mainboard Mfrs Handle Bad Caps?

Everyone,

Thanks for the comments and suggestions!

To date I have inherited old PCs. Would like to build a PC in a few months so would like to do my homework.

The websites I normally check for new PC hardware are pcmag, tomshardware, extremetech .... all cover features, speed and nothing about capacitors.

While PC Magazine has an annual issue that covers Computer Reliability and Customer Support, it is essentially very general and of major use when buying a prebuilt machine. As previously mentioned am trying to find a website that covers PC components reliability. Does something like this even exist? I realize that accelerated testing may not reflect "real world" experience.

Have also been looking for websites that include capacitor quality in their reviews. Do not have enough experience reading TestFreaks http://www.testfreaks.com/motherboards/ so do not know if they normally even consider this in their reviews and ratings. Would be interested in any comments.

Thanks

Gene

[acstech]

Re: How Different Mainboard Mfrs Handle Bad Caps?

I don't think you'll find what you're looking for.

The problem is that by the time the part is old enough to be affected by long term reliability problems, such as capacitors, it's already outdated and nobody is doing reviews on it. Only new stuff is being reviewed.

The other problem is that nobody can discredit a board for something that might happen. To maintain the appearance of professionalism, they only cover the functionality of the board. They might tell you what capacitors are used on a board though.

The other thing you might run into, although they'll all deny it, is that some sites might be taking advertising money from one manufacturer or another and letting that affect their reviews. You'll probably even find some shills on the forums; people who say they're just average users but are in fact working for one company or another. Once you know what you're looking for it's pretty obvious.

[willawake]

Re: How Different Mainboard Mfrs Handle Bad Caps?



if you look at this p5q-vm it has fujitsu and chemicon polymers but the circled ones are taiwan polymers.

basically i dont see a problem with that
i would also be looking to buy a board late so i get a late revision

[Wizard]

Re: How Different Mainboard Mfrs Handle Bad Caps?

I'm surprised you have problem with Asus, what specific models and how did you obtain them?

Ever since I went with asus. Only ones that have GOOD chipsets like Intel and very certain chipsets like nForce 2 only and later chipsets that is for C2D and AM2/AM3 sockets tend to be good. But anything else like SiS and VIA are garabage.

Cheers, Wizard

[acstech]

Re: How Different Mainboard Mfrs Handle Bad Caps?

Oh where do I begin.

Let me see here:
1. M2N. Alright except ram voltage only goes up to 1.9v. Kind of a problem with some higher voltage modules.
2. M2N-E. Uses a creative heatpipe solution for the chipset, but it overheated the chipset due to a poor design. Unstable at stock speeds. It took a creative solution involving Arctic silver thermal adhesive to fix that one.
3. A8N-E. Unstable SATA controller, causing me 2 years of troubleshooting with one particular customer, until I just broke down and replaced the board. Eventually I figured out if I made a ~3GB file, copied it, and compared the MD5 sums that they would be different.
4. C90P notebook. I'm still trying to figure this one out. I liked the "desktop CPU" enough to get me over the "Asus" name. The Asus site lists the first BIOS release as 0604. Problem was, mine came with 0602, apparently a prerelease version. It is advertised as being compatible with Wolfdale core processors. Mine is not. It only works with 65nm processors, despite the P35 chipset. I tried upgrading the BIOS, but nope. "Rom ID does not match" or something similar. I've contacted GenTech, where I bought it, and have yet to receive a response.

I've been building computers for over 10 years, with 6 of those as my own business. I know what I'm doing. Some Asus products I've used have been OK, however, it's like playing with snakes. Sooner or later, you're going to get bit.

Edit: Lets not forget that stupid little chipset fan on A8N boards. Those suckers died all the time!

[Scenic]

Re: How Different Mainboard Mfrs Handle Bad Caps?

Edit: Lets not forget that stupid little chipset fan on A8N boards. Those suckers died all the time!

lol! i've got 4 of those boards. all with dead fans. i dont bother buying new HSFs for them because of 5 reasons...:

1. Asus board..
2. ..for AMD CPUs
3. its not really reliable anyways
4. Asus board
5. Asus board

[PCBONEZ]

Re: How Different Mainboard Mfrs Handle Bad Caps?

Contrary to popular opinion Asus has not been a 'always high quality' or 'premium brand' since the 90's.

Asus NEVER EVEN ADMITTED there WAS a problem with capacitors during the bad formula electrolyte 'plague' even though MANY Asus boards had the faulty caps and Asus knew so. (To this day they STILL have not admitted that problem existed.)

Even when they KNEW there was a cap problem with a board they made customers run the entire support/hassle gauntlet to get anything RMAed.
You could be LOOKING at bloated caps on the board and Asus would be like: "It's your power supply", "It's your hard drive", "It's your RAM".
You'd have to replace everything except the board to get an RMA even on boards they KNEW had the cap problem.
They were just trying to reduce warranty claims hoping people would just give up in frustration and go buy a new board instead of making Asus honor the warranty.

- Bear in mind:
That problem was huge enough to put companies completely out of business over the cost of supporting their warranties. Companies who's leadership chose to 'do the right thing' were doing so full knowing that it may send their company into oblivion.
That's "integrity" - Do not lie. Do what's 'honest' and 'right' even if it hurts.
I dunno how you feel but Integrity is a big fat hairy deal to me.
- Asus doesn't have any.

~~

Asus high-end (read WAY WAY expensive) boards get good parts.
But the bulk of their products are comparable to Gigabyte and MSI.
Some times you get good caps and sometimes you don't.

Asus should have been sued just as MSI and some others were over the matter.

Unlike Asus [and MSI], Gigabtye (all of who had many boards with bad caps and knew it) at least tried to support their customers and make it right. You could either RMA or if you wanted it back in service faster, and were willing to do the repair, they'd send you replacement caps.
[Yes, a lot of their (Gigabyte) boards had problems but their actions showed they give'a damn about end users. Asus didn't give'a damn.]

~~

If you want to be assured of good caps you need to either:
- Go look at the board in person. (The caps used on boards occasionally get changed during production runs so if all you do is look at some model and then go buy the same model on-line then you may not end up with the same caps as the one you looked at.)
- Choose boards with all solid polymer and hope none are the Sacon FZ or others that 'look' like solid poly but aren't.
- Use Intel or Tyan BRAND boards. [Only brands I know with internal QA/QC policies to only use Japanese made caps.]
- Abit and Supermicro are close behind Intel and Tyan but QA/QC occasionally allows lesser caps in less critical areas of the board.

The next after that level are Abit, Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI who are all hit and miss.
- Depends on the specific board. Their standards vary too much to make an over-all statement about the quality of their products.
That's because they build and QA/QC boards based on their target market for the board. Their high end boards get good parts but their standard/consumer grade boards could go either way.

That's my 2 cents.
Okay, 5 cents I was long winded (again).
.
.

[Wizard]

Re: How Different Mainboard Mfrs Handle Bad Caps?

I see now how bad choices was made.

I had did lot of research and I went on AM2 board late with a good 6150 chipset and that was for part-time rig so I can pump out 1080 resolution via component and DVI port to test HDMI ports and 1080 to finish set up in 2 step convergence (starting with 480 first then 1080 last) on rear projection 3 CRT sets.

When I do research on boards I ask or search around for BEST reliable chipset and listen to the talk and choose accordingly.

It boils down to few items to consider:

-Fanless chipset coolers. If any boards have fans, it's VOTED OFF the list. And BIG heatsinks with very wide spacing fins.

-Quality chipset is a given. Intel, and occasionally Nvidia if paired well. I do consider the AMD 780 series and up very seriously now that I'm seeing good results.

-Long-time support of bios and documentation is important. Not very many do, Asus does bit longer than usual.

-Caps is one of many considerations but it's not a "major" reasons. They will LAST LONG TIME with good cooling setup that was intiated in the build up of a PC process.

What I had good success:

Keep PCs clean, and feed with maintained, decent PSUs, well cooled, can do that on the quiet.
P2B series (long since retired to age and limitations.)
A7Pro (no promise chipset) and it was most stable with 98. Was main pc, Now retired.)
A7N8X (excellent with 2000 and XP. Was main pc, kept as spares. Need to get memory for it, DDR is expensive, unless one have pair of matched quality branded DDR 400 set of 2GB total.)
P4P800 series. Excellent all around, just basically long in the tooth, in use for dad's pc.
P5K (plain one as I can't afford more with higher cost versions of P5K series for my main pc with quality in mind and 4 slots.)
M2NPV-VM (is a bench pc for testing and assisting set up of rear proj tvs).

What I have bad results were:
Any newer VIA based boards including Asus. (Was forced to use A7V400-VM pair due to 98 need, now phased out in short time when I was able to get enough XP and 2000 within my budget. I give finger to MS for 300+ per COA, I went with OEM licenses with one piece of hardware every time and buy up old machines to get legal COA stickers.)
SiS (reputation reason so I was relucent to put it to important uses.)
any nForce 3/4 (big bug in SATA).
Any boards that uses fans to cool stuff on the mainboard. Rapid dust build up and failure etc.

Also I maintain big lot of PCs at my TV shop. 5 PCs of mix breeds. One IBM PIII, Compaq PIII. This going to be retired eventually to make room for Atom D945GCLF pc. Atom is acceptable since load is not very much for what we do with one very old character driven software and to get away from 98 to XP. MSI P4 2.4GHz, works well but not my choice, Dell 8300 2.8C (rebuilt board) and my D600 notebook.

This boils down to do your research!

Cheers, Wizard

[acstech]

Re: How Different Mainboard Mfrs Handle Bad Caps?

Yep, it's my fault for buying Asus's crap. You can rest assured knowing that will not happen again.

Let me see...

"When I do research on boards I ask or search around for BEST reliable chipset and listen to the talk and choose accordingly."

Been there done that. That's what led me to the path I took. I now think it best to make my own decisions, due to there being so much -cough- advertising -cough- going on on supposedly anonymous internet forums.

"-Fanless chipset coolers. If any boards have fans, it's VOTED OFF the list. And BIG heatsinks with very wide spacing fins."

Yes, that is now one of my criteria. Learned that after the A8N-E. Still, if the fan / heatsink was well designed it would not have broken.

"-Quality chipset is a given. Intel, and occasionally Nvidia if paired well. I do consider the AMD 780 series and up very seriously now that I'm seeing good results."

I've seen issues with every chipset brand out there, including Intel. Some brands are safer than others, but there will be duds once in a while from all of 'em. I seem to remember an Intel 820 chipset having problems years ago. I've had success with Nvidia 7025 / 7050 chipsets, as well as newer Intel ones.

"-Long-time support of bios and documentation is important. Not very many do, Asus does bit longer than usual."

Ok, but so do many manufacturers.

"-Caps is one of many considerations but it's not a "major" reasons. They will LAST LONG TIME with good cooling setup that was intiated in the build up of a PC process."

Some will last a long time. Others, like CHHSI and Lelon, are complete crap.

"This boils down to do your research!"

Right, but don't listen to the Asus shills. They're everywhere.

[Wizard]

Re: How Different Mainboard Mfrs Handle Bad Caps?

I know there are shills out there that why I cross-check them. That cut down the "noise". Till I get strongest averages out of their replies.

Also choice of forums do matter too, some are poor, some excellent.

Cheers, Wizard

[Scenic]

Re: How Different Mainboard Mfrs Handle Bad Caps?

another few (IMHO) very reliable boards:

Asus CUBX (Skt 370, intel BX)
Asus P3B-F (Slot 1, intel BX)
older Fujitsu-Siemens / Siemens-Nixdorf Mainboards (always named D###)
and i mean the real FSC/SNI Mainboards with that (manufactured by FSC/SNI) not the OEM/relabeled crap.

some of those boards:

Fujitsu-Siemens D1171 (µATX, Skt 370, intel 810E)
Siemens-Nixdorf D1031 (Fullsize-ATX/eATX, Dual Slot1, intel GX Chipset, onboard graphics, AGP, ECC/Reg SD-RAM, SCSI onboard)