The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

[Simba7]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

Picture 4: Bad HEC cap from a FARES 400W PSU

Why would you design a PSU to have cap next to a high-heat producing source?

I'd like to do this to the engineer.

[mariushm]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

Why would you design a PSU to have cap next to a high-heat producing source?

I'd like to do this to the engineer.

Sometimes it's important for the capacitor to be very close to the IC generating heat - so the length of the traces on the pcb plus the length of the capacitor leads has to be as short as possible.

Of course, it would be possible to arrange the layout a bit, or mount the capacitors in some other way, but that involves extra time during manufacturing and those power supplies are already made trying to save every penny.

In those pictures it looks to me that it's more about lack of air moving across that area .. the capacitors are hidden under the cables going outside the case, and at least on the secondary side, the capacitors are right there by load resistors and the inductors from the pi filter (which should also be kinda hot after some running time)

[white rhino]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

heres mine

[Heihachi_73]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

A bullseye type logo that is neither Hitachi nor Fuhjyyu (CDxxx series indicated a Chinese cap). Were the Chinese low enough to knock off a Fuhjyyu?

[c_hegge]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

Is that a burn mark on the bottom of the bulged cap? Looks like a transistor went up in smoke.

[Pentium4]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

I'd want to see a better shot of the vent stamp, looks like they tried to copy Hitachi because of the font they used

[Pentium4]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

Dead Ruby's they were killed by a Fuhjyyu'd Antec. Every cap on every rail was bulging or leaking, and some of the wires coming out of the PSU melted...

These are MFZ series, from 2006

[Wester547]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

IIRC, 4v is a non-standard (value) voltage for electrolytic capacitors, but MFZ don't have a published datasheet and are a special OEM order of capacitors Rubycon provide. Given that they are often used in the VRM low/output I think they are around MCZ and Nichicon HN in specifications which probably means they are rather on the aqueous side, but I wouldn't deem them bad..... can't say those StupidPower Antecs help with their Fuhjyyus and overall poor design. I would imagine that those MFZs still did get warm or hot seeing as how they are in the proximity of a coil. But, if the PSU was bad enough to melt the wires...

[Pentium4]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

^ Yeah, they must have been stressed pretty hard. And to top it all off, they were COVERED in dust, and the CPU was a 3GHz Prescott Pentium 4....Ouch. They fought hard! The board still boots intermittently

[ben7]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

^ Yeah, they must have been stressed pretty hard. And to top it all off, they were COVERED in dust, and the CPU was a 3GHz Prescott Pentium 4....Ouch. They fought hard! The board still boots intermittently

I think they are fake, because the "MFZ" text seems wrong (too large?). And the text should be vertical, not horizontal. AND, the print is gold on real mfz' s.

I say you take a look at their bungs!

[Pentium4]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

I noticed they do look different than normal Ruby's...Yeah I can check them out. Think Intel got jipped? It's a D101GGC

[c_hegge]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

I think that board might be OEM'd by ASUS. Note the backwards polarity markings. Believe it or not, I got my hands on one of those SmartPower PSUs last week, but somehow, it was still alive. The caps all looked fine. I still replaced it, though.

[Pentium4]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

Didn't even notice that...Nice spot. Wow really? That is strange. What else is strange is that the KZG's on this board all look fine except for one but by how much ripple this thing was getting I'm guessing the KZG's are going bad without bulging

[Wester547]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

Wow.... the KZGs outlasted the MFZs? I would wager that the MFZs are fake, then. There is a myriad of Rubycon counterfeits out there...

[Pentium4]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

They probably are fake...Although, the KZG's were directly next to the exhaust fan and those MFZ's had the disadvantage of being directly under the heatsink of a Prescott

[trodas]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

Zotac 7300GT gfx card, Sacon caps, user vlask, SHW forum






PS. Zotac "fixed" gfx card the way it cought on fire: http://www.svethardware.cz/forum/showthrea...ll=1#post283635
...and the quess what! Zotac refused to acknowledge that it is their fault and because it label it as "physical damage", it the refused RMA! Of course when card caught fire, it is physical damage, you... But the user just played a game, not burned the card inside of running PC, because he want to kill it...!

[kc8adu]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

short between layers brought on by leaking caps?
thats bullshit on the warrenty though.i have seen several burnups like that and they were not the fault of the user.

[trodas]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

kc8adu - yes, that it look like to me also. Also agree on the fact, that the user cannot be held responsible for that, because he did NOT purposedly "set the card on fire", but they arguing with people, that have the power to say that as long, as this IS a physical damage, they will NOT RMA the card again.
Note the "again", so that make some people suggest, that the "fix" was made by any means necessary, no matter how fast the card dies, and when it do, then it show "physical damage" and then you are on your own...

I would say bastards. But that could be just me...


Anyway, got a picture of failed Rubycon caps on Intel mobo Presumably they are either fakes (Intel could fick up just like Apple and their "geniune" black/gold Nichicon HN caps, witch are black/white in reality) or they are used on PSU with some crap caps like Fuhjyyu ones... I don't know.
I just asking, I did not want stir some contraversy there. I also got a picture of Samxon GL caps bulging from a Samsung LCD... dunno if these are genuine either, GT are black/white... never had a GL piece from Big Pope, ever...

So just better asking, before we run into some argument that I did not bring up in the first place, because I know very well, that even a GOOD cap can be easily killed by bad caps in PSU or bad design of mobo/card or bad cooling (mostly all these things come up AT ONCE and the poor cap is hopeless).




Biostar NF4 4X-A7, Chemicon KZG caps, user Benbow, SHW forum



(I did not trust Chemicon too much, maybe because of the "con" in the name?)

[Wester547]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

Anyway, got a picture of failed Rubycon caps on Intel mobo Presumably they are either fakes (Intel could fick up just like Apple and their "geniune" black/gold Nichicon HN caps, witch are black/white in reality) or they are used on PSU with some crap caps like Fuhjyyu ones... I don't know.

If they are the MBZ, MCZ, or MFZ series, those series of Rubycon capacitors are sensitive to heat relative to their water content. Same goes for HM/HN (even post-2005, though post-2005 datecodes are many times less likely to fail).

I just asking, I did not want stir some contraversy there. I also got a picture of Samxon GL caps bulging from a Samsung LCD... dunno if these are genuine either, GT are black/white... never had a GL piece from Big Pope, ever...

Samxon GL and GF are defective series. Their other series are alright.

So just better asking, before we run into some argument that I did not bring up in the first place, because I know very well, that even a GOOD cap can be easily killed by bad caps in PSU or bad design of mobo/card or bad cooling (mostly all these things come up AT ONCE and the poor cap is hopeless).

Yes, any electrolytic can fail under dire enough conditions, but good capacitors will almost always outlast bad capacitors.

Biostar NF4 4X-A7, Chemicon KZG caps, user Benbow, SHW forum



(I did not trust Chemicon too much, maybe because of the "con" in the name?)

Something is seriously wrong with KZG/KZJ/TMZ/KZV, I believe. I think they all use the same "resistivity" electrolyte (too much iron?) which is prone to failure over time, especially with added heat. Added to the fact that relative to their water content (which very low ESR lytics tend to have) they are sensitive to heat as well, it isn't hard to make them pop. I don't know why Nippon Chemi-con never tried to amend that problem but since those series of capacitors (I believe) are no longer being produced...

Other than that, though, I think Chemi-con is up there right with all the other good Japanese brands. I believe Chemi-con have produced more capacitors than any of them so that's saying something. To this date, I don't really think there are any tougher series of lytics than LXZ (Chemi-con), PW (Nichicon), or FC (Panasonic/Matsushita), with exception to especially low ESR applications (like the CPU Vcore, which those failed KZGs seemed to have been used for).

[trodas]

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

Soltek SL-75DRV5C mobo, GSC caps, user scratchy27, SWH forum