Epox 8RDA+ recapped!

[Geoff]

Just wanted to say I managed to successfully replace 8 caps on my motherboard that had swollen. The tips on recapping on this forum proved invaluable, especially willawake's thread here:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=366

My 8RDA+ had swollen/leaking VREG, DRAM and AGP caps, as circled in these pics (pics are of the new caps)





The DRAM/AGP caps were either 1000 or 1500uF and I replaced all of these with the samxon 2200uF caps. The 2200uF VREG caps were replaced with 4700uF versions. I did this because of uncertainty about the ESR of the original caps and suspicion of Samxon cap quality (a well known electronics retailed in australia has them, but I thought I'd try anyway). Also, the equivalent capacitance replacements were smaller than the originals and I had further doubts about their ability to store enough charge to make the system stable.

The system booted first time, so I shut down and plugged my HDD in. Then I started it up again and increased the bus speed to 166MHz (I normally run about 185MHz on an athlon t-bred 1700+). XP booted, everything is running perfectly so far. Have had prime95 running for 18 minutes on torture test and no glitches. Will test further but I am very impressed that I got this far. My last board (Abit KT7) failed with the same problem and I didn't manage to get that one running, seems age and experience have helped me with this one!

Good luck to the rest of you!!

[willawake]

well done, now you know the technique and it still boots. good job.

I did not find info on Samxon caps failing on the net, maybe you will be lucky. But it would be better to use some known good brands that you can definately rely on next time.

there is at least

http://www.rswww.com.au/ for the panasonic FC
http://au.farnell.com/jsp/home/homepage.jsp for the rubycon ZL

probably other better suppliers also

Anyway you did not finish the job, looks like there are some teapo caps left, all 1000uf and above to be replaced. the sanyo to stay.

[Geoff]

I did not find info on Samxon caps failing on the net, maybe you will be lucky. But it would be better to use some known good brands that you can definately rely on next time.

...

Anyway you did not finish the job, looks like there are some teapo caps left, all 1000uf and above to be replaced. the sanyo to stay.

The Samxons probably don't fail, I was just suspicious of their quality re voltage rating and actual ESR value compared with japanese caps. Call it cynicism born as a result of working at the retail chain where I bought the caps

Anyway, you're right there are some other caps that I didn't replace. I was already replacing 8 failed ones and, like my KT7, the VREG, DRAM and AGP ones seem to be more highly stressed than the rest and are more prone to failure. If I have another cap that dies I'll replace it too but I'm using the adage "if it ain't broke..." at the moment!!

Thanks for the advice, if I was doing it again I'd probably research better caps but I am impressed that these ones are working. In fact, by seat of the pants my PC is booting more stably than before (my TFT used to not come on immediately sometimes but since replacing the caps I have seen my video card BIOS screen every single boot!)