Soltek SL-KT600-RL

[pcengineer]

This info is reference material for others to find. This 2002 (7 year old) Soltek SL-KT600-RL motherboard started becoming unstable with random and increasingly frequency MS-Windows bugchecks. Decoding the bugchecks seemed to imply L2 cache errors. Further searching lead to the bad capacitor issue which visual inspection confirmed.

The Soltek SL-KT600-RL motherboard has:
* Qty 6 KZG (Chemicon?) 3300uF 6.3V 10mm caps
* Qty 3 KGZ (Chemicon?) 1500uF 16V 10mm caps
* Qty 9 OST 1000uF 6.3V 8mm caps

The six 3300uF caps are located under the heatsink and all six have bulging tops. The higher temperatures in this area probably did not do them any favor. The three 1500uF caps are located in the same area and visually appear ok. The nine 1000uF caps are scattered throughout the board and visually appear ok. There does not appear to be any damage or leakage from any caps.

Given the age of this board I'm replacing all of the above caps. Hopefully I'll know in a week or so if that was the only problem.

Great site - thanks for all the info.

[etnietering]

Re: Soltek SL-KT600-RL

Good luck with your recap! What are you replacing them with? Keep us posted!

[pcengineer]

Re: Soltek SL-KT600-RL

With matching Rubycon low ESR capacitors from Badcaps.net. I sent the request in today:

3300uF, 6.3v, MBZ, 10mm x 25mm
1500uF, 16v, MBZ, 10mm x 20mm
1000uF, 6.3v, MBZ, 8mm x 11mm

I used to be a R&D hardware electronics engineer in a previous job so I feel reasonably comfortable with a soldering iron. Unless there is something else wrong this with the board this should be a successful and inexpensive fix compared to new motherboard, memory, OS, etc.

[pcengineer]

Re: Soltek SL-KT600-RL

Well four months later I finally got round to fixing this board (we used a spare laptop in between). The 3300uF capacitors were tough to remove, tough to clean out the holes, and tough to re-solder, all due to the large planes on one of the pins. I finally resorted to preheating that area of the board with a hair drier and using a Hakko 936 at its highest temperature setting. I also used a solder sucker which seemed to work without any board damage. Probably due to poor technique I could not get the desolder braid to work successfully at pulling the solder out of the holes.

Now the PC is back and running with no hardware issues. The great advice on this forum definitely helped. Thanks.

[c_hegge]

Re: Soltek SL-KT600-RL

Nice work. The KT600 was one of VIA's very few good chipsets. I have an asus motherboard based on that chipset and it's an excellent board (after re-capping).