DELL SX270 off EBAY

[Rock_Lobster]

Hi all, great forum.

I just bought a cheap DELL SX270 off EBAY, for my kids

Did a bit of a search around and found this site after winning the SX. Hmmmm, bulging cap problem.

Anyway the DELL works just fine, but look what I found when I opened it up to check

(ideally a link to a picture would be here, but the picture I took is too large and I don't have a program to resize it at the moment).

YEP, bulged caps alright, and one with it's guts spewed out the top.

Lucky for the kids that their dad is an electrical tech.

The bulged caps are 1 of 1000uF 16v NICHI, and 5 of 820uF NICHI.

The rest of the caps are RUBICON's thank god ( or your preference of diety ). Have to order some through work.

We have a bunch of 17" IBM LCD's at work that are on 24/7 that started dropping like flies. You guessed it, bulged caps. We didn't bother sending them back for warranty, more fun and quicker just to replace the dodgy caps ourselves.

Rock Lob

[shadow]

Re: DELL SX270 off EBAY

In terms of simple and free imaging editors, I recommend IrfanView and XnView. They are both very similar applications and are free to use.

Their websites are:
IrfanView
XnView

[Spacedye69]

Re: DELL SX270 off EBAY

I use GIMP on Windows and Linux for image editing. Free, but not easy!

I'm on a Dell 15" LCD right now I just finished fixing. It showed ccfl inverter problems. Turned out to be just bad Hermei caps in the inverter circuit!

[Rock_Lobster]

Re: DELL SX270 off EBAY

Hi, it's me again.
Here's the image, resized with Irfanview ( Nifty program ).
Basically, every capacitor with an "x" at the top is bulged (Nichi). The ones with a "K" are Rubycon's.
I am replacing the 820uF 6.6v caps with Rubycon 1000uF 10v caps. The Rubycon's are 8mm, where the only 820uF caps I can get are phillips, which are 10mm. This would be too tight in some areas. 1000uF is close enough in a filtering application.

[bgavin]

Re: DELL SX270 off EBAY

Call Dell and see if your serial number qualifies for the free-but-out-warranty replacement program. All they can do is say "no".

[Jor3llBR]

Re: DELL SX270 off EBAY

Hi, it's me again.
Here's the image, resized with Irfanview ( Nifty program ).
Basically, every capacitor with an "x" at the top is bulged (Nichi). The ones with a "K" are Rubycon's.
I am replacing the 820uF 6.6v caps with Rubycon 1000uF 10v caps. The Rubycon's are 8mm, where the only 820uF caps I can get are phillips, which are 10mm. This would be too tight in some areas. 1000uF is close enough in a filtering application.

It's not recommended to change the voltage of replacement caps (nor either the uf but in that case it wont mater 820-1000uf) you can end up making more bad then good.

[Harvey]

Re: DELL SX270 off EBAY

Changing from 6v to 10v ain't going to hurt anything. I'd be more concerned about changing from 820uF to 1000uF than the voltage, but seeing as they don't appear to be in a critical circuit I'd be surprised if it causes any problems.

[Spacedye69]

Re: DELL SX270 off EBAY

Cap spec changes are well within reason. Everything should be fine.

[starfury1]

Re: DELL SX270 off EBAY

Generally speaking

If you don't know what effect larger capacitance or voltage might have on the circuit, then the safest is to stick to what the original values were.

Having said that mostly (like 98 % of the time) you will get away with using the next size up in capacitance or voltage.

Capacitors have a +- 20% ,so an 820 uf might be closer to 1000uf anyway

one trick it seems the manufactures use, is to use lower quality higher voltage caps (like 10V) to lower the ESR.

If you find these used on the 5 volt or lower rails, it safe to use 6V3 caps (good quality low ESR caps)
But make sure this is the case
A higher voltage across a lower rated cap voltage wise will kill it in short order.

What tends to be more of a trap is size.

Even thought the others might be OK to save your self some future work I'd recap them too

Again generally speaking

Use low ESR caps,(see FAQ's) GP caps my work but will fail a lot quicker.

On photo image editing proggies

This one isn't bad once you wrap your head around the interface...
Its freeware donationware

http://www.faststone.org/

(Thanks Bob for letting me know about this one)

I am sort of amazed how how well they do plod along with caps that are so close to totally stuffed it isn't funny.

When you think of the timing issues etc and 1 wrong "bit" can potentially crash a system SW wise.

Well good luck with it, hope it serves you and the Kids well

Cheers

[brainweed]

Re: DELL SX270 off EBAY

If you have Microsoft as your operating system, you have a image resizer - microsoft paint will resize your pictures easy.