Project: COMMANDO

[xnRS]

Little backstory:

It all started 2 years ago, when I bought this motherboard in very... very sad condition.

Seller said that it was installed in a PC, which was stored in a Balcony, which was very humid, and motherboard became... well rusty.

So, even in this condition it was, in fact, working. But it didn't had ethernet, either PCI-E or PCI wasn't working(I forgot what isn't working, as I tested it 2 years ago) and I think it was all the problems it had. I've tried to do something with it back then, but it was pointless, as I didn't had any soldering equipment and didn't had any skills yet.

So... Today I decided to finally restore it, I've already bought some parts for it some time ago(sadly not for restoration, but some missing parts from factory packaging).

Here are some pictures of it:



Rusty and crusty, in it's rawest form, after lying for 2 years



ewwww... gross...



Radiator is all corroded after years of humid balcony



Now to the sad part: First of all - chips under I/O ports got heavily coroded, and I think this is will be very hard to repair, but i don't think it's unrepairable. Also one cap got ripped of the board while I was testing it, even through i wasn't doing anything stupid, just a slight tap and it fell off... It still was working afterwards btw.



Look at that poly cap ! Jeez, what even happend to it?!





This is the worst of the whole board - are behind 2 USB and Ethernet ports, it's heavily corroded, all parts are looking very gross here, also look at polycaps near them, they are just dead... Idk what the heck happend to them, but this looks terrible, even worse then leaked out electrolytes...




This project is ongoing, and it's only a preview, I've already done some things to it, but it's still at the start... I think I need to find someone with Ultrasonic cleaner and Solins US(Russian copy of VIGON® US) cleaner, to clean this board out of main corrosion, as it will make huge progress.

[Topcat]

Re: Project: COMMANDO

Looks like more dust than anything else....but good luck with the fix. Those are good boards.

[stj]

Re: Project: COMMANDO

no pictures on my chrome-based browser.

[Topcat]

Re: Project: COMMANDO

no pictures on my chrome-based browser.

Fixed.

OP, please resize and attach photos to your posts.

[stj]

Re: Project: COMMANDO

needs a wash

[xnRS]

Re: Project: COMMANDO

Fixed.

OP, please resize and attach photos to your posts.

Ok!

[xnRS]

Re: Project: COMMANDO

So, first clean up after 2 years


Removed radiator for easier access, plastic on pins was so hard, that they flew out from radiator

I've brushed the board, but didn't make the picture of clean board.

Then, I've started to remove bad caps from the most damaged part of the board, 3 of them left their leads, as they are for some reason stuck in solder




As you can see - board is heavily corroded, and there is even some rust on parts

And now to the most disgusting part - the caps... Just what the heck in the world happened to them?!



Afterwards I've cleaned the board with alchohol as much as I can, next step, I think will be cleaning the board with some cleaning product, maybe Solins US as I mention higher.

[stj]

Re: Project: COMMANDO

throw it in the sink and brush it with hot water and dish washing soap

[xnRS]

Re: Project: COMMANDO

throw it in the sink and brush it with hot water and dish washing soap

Water from the sink won't make board even more corroded cuz' of salt in it ?

I'll give it a try then, thx

I hope SMD components will survive this one

[Topcat]

Re: Project: COMMANDO

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1463

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Project: COMMANDO

Looks like more dust than anything else....but good luck with the fix. Those are good boards.

qft

[Uranium-235]

Re: Project: COMMANDO

Why did you think those caps were bad? Polys can take a lot of punishment. I would have taken them out, cleaned them and the board where they were, and put them back in

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Project: COMMANDO

like some of the other members here have said, this is nothing. i've seen worse corrosion (and dust) on boards here in humid singapore. this sort of thing, i just give it a spray over with electrical contact cleaner especially if u have questionable tapwater quality in your country!

in my country, i've seen poly caps look like that and worse but they still work fine. nothing wrong with them. just cosmetic oxidation of the aluminium can on the outside or the protective veneer coating of the cap coming off. the inside is still fine. test the caps with an esr/lcr meter to confirm if they are truly bad or not. no need to be desoldering things unless it already came off the board!

if the pci and/or pci-e slots dont work, just give it a spray over or wash. typically, dust gets into the slots and this interferes with the electrical contact causing problems. as for the dead lan, this is a common problem with the lan chip (marvell 88e8001) used on the motherboard. just use a pci lan card. plenty of pci slots on the board.

if the cap leads break off the cap while desoldering and stay stuck in the board, it means the wattage of your soldering iron wasnt high enough to melt the solder. computer motherboards require a high power soldering iron of at least 60w to have enough power to melt the solder to desolder the caps. they have a lot of copper in them for the ground plane so that acts as a heatsink that sucks the heat away from your soldering iron.

if its a lead-free rohs board, at least 80w of power on the soldering iron is needed due to the higher melting point of lead-free solder. sometimes adding a bit of leaded solder to the solder joints can decrease the melting point enough to melt the solder at a lower temperature and wattage.

i hope u have a good source of getting genuine japanese polymer caps in your country because those caps u desoldered (and broke the leads off) are sanyo (now panasonic) oscon sepc solid caps (purple ones) and fujitsu fpcap (now nichicon) solid caps (red ones). sanyo oscons are the best solid polymer caps around so anything else is going to be a downgrade. those caps u desoldered are for the northbridge buck regulator. using incorrect caps may make the fsb and/or memory unstable.

since u yanked the motherboard heatsinks off, u might as well just replace the nb and sb thermal paste also while u're at it with a good one like arctic mx-4 after u are done soldering on new caps. good paste can lengthen the longevity of the board. motherboard manufacturers often use crap thermal paste on their boards.

yes, this is a very nice and unusual motherboard because asus used tantalum caps for the cpu vrm because of the bad cap plague. try to keep it running for as long as possible!!

be warned that tantalum caps go short when they fail so this will cause some spectacular fireworks to go off. try not to use a junk power supply on the motherboard as the voltage spikes of a junk psu may overshoot the max voltage rating of the tantalum caps, causing them to fail and go short, frying the board and maybe the cpu.

[xnRS]

Re: Project: COMMANDO

like some of the other members here have said, this is nothing. i've seen worse corrosion (and dust) on boards here in humid singapore. this sort of thing, i just give it a spray over with electrical contact cleaner especially if u have questionable tapwater quality in your country!

in my country, i've seen poly caps look like that and worse but they still work fine. nothing wrong with them. just cosmetic oxidation of the aluminium can on the outside or the protective veneer coating of the cap coming off. the inside is still fine. test the caps with an esr/lcr meter to confirm if they are truly bad or not. no need to be desoldering things unless it already came off the board!

if the pci and/or pci-e slots dont work, just give it a spray over or wash. typically, dust gets into the slots and this interferes with the electrical contact causing problems. as for the dead lan, this is a common problem with the lan chip (marvell 88e8001) used on the motherboard. just use a pci lan card. plenty of pci slots on the board.

if the cap leads break off the cap while desoldering and stay stuck in the board, it means the wattage of your soldering iron wasnt high enough to melt the solder. computer motherboards require a high power soldering iron of at least 60w to have enough power to melt the solder to desolder the caps. they have a lot of copper in them for the ground plane so that acts as a heatsink that sucks the heat away from your soldering iron.

if its a lead-free rohs board, at least 80w of power on the soldering iron is needed due to the higher melting point of lead-free solder. sometimes adding a bit of leaded solder to the solder joints can decrease the melting point enough to melt the solder at a lower temperature and wattage.

i hope u have a good source of getting genuine japanese polymer caps in your country because those caps u desoldered (and broke the leads off) are sanyo (now panasonic) oscon sepc solid caps (purple ones) and fujitsu fpcap (now nichicon) solid caps (red ones). sanyo oscons are the best solid polymer caps around so anything else is going to be a downgrade. those caps u desoldered are for the northbridge buck regulator. using incorrect caps may make the fsb and/or memory unstable.

since u yanked the motherboard heatsinks off, u might as well just replace the nb and sb thermal paste also while u're at it with a good one like arctic mx-4 after u are done soldering on new caps. good paste can lengthen the longevity of the board. motherboard manufacturers often use crap thermal paste on their boards.

yes, this is a very nice and unusual motherboard because asus used tantalum caps for the cpu vrm because of the bad cap plague. try to keep it running for as long as possible!!

be warned that tantalum caps go short when they fail so this will cause some spectacular fireworks to go off. try not to use a junk power supply on the motherboard as the voltage spikes of a junk psu may overshoot the max voltage rating of the tantalum caps, causing them to fail and go short, frying the board and maybe the cpu.

Jeez, I've forgot that I have contact cleaner spray! Thanks!

About caps, some of them have the white stuff from inside on the outside, and i don't think how it supposed to be...

Sadly in my country I don't have a reliable source of any caps, exepct for JB and epcos, but no polys(Belarus btw lmao). I'll try to find some good ones.

Also, the caps which have their contact ripped, it happend only for 2 caps, and idk how, looks like these are stuck in solder for some reason... Other caps went out easily and nicely

Thermal paste of course will be new, I'm using Arctic MX-4 on each PC I build, even for sale

[xnRS]

Re: Project: COMMANDO

upd: tried contact cleaners, sadly, it only cleans, but isn't removing corrosion from solder(some solder became BLACK from corrosion), so, I think that only resoldering components will help

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Project: COMMANDO

Also, the caps which have their contact ripped, it happend only for 2 caps, and idk how, looks like these are stuck in solder for some reason... Other caps went out easily and nicely.

i see 3 spots where the leads came off from the photos u posted. the two by the "clip1" silkscreen on the board near the nb and the one by the two mosfets next to the coil. these caps are probably for filtering the nb buck regulator which is typically connected to a large ground plane. thats why those were hard to desolder. the rest are just for general filtering, so not connected to any large ground planes so thats why they were easy to desolder!

upd: tried contact cleaners, sadly, it only cleans, but isn't removing corrosion from solder(some solder became BLACK from corrosion), so, I think that only resoldering components will help

there's nothing that can be done about that because its most likely rohs lead-free solder. those always tarnish no matter what. even if u reflow the solder with rosin flux to clean it up, it will still become tarnished again because its lead-free solder.

u can try multiple sprays to clear it up or spray it onto a static-free cloth and wipe the corroded/tarnished areas. it worked for me when i had badly tarnished usb headers that didnt work. a few sprays and wiping the metal headers a few times cleaned up the tarnish enough for the headers to work again and recognise the usb device connected.

oh and btw, i recently bought an asus p5b deluxe wifi-ap edition off junkbay. its very similar to your board. same onboard lan and sound, same p965 broadwater nbmch and ich8r sb. except yours is rog and better quality which uses japanese polymer caps all over for filtering except for the cpu vrm. the p5b uses wet electrolytics all over for filtering except for the cpu vrm which uses polymers. i might make a separate thread for it as i dont wanna hijack your thread.

[lurch228]

I own a working one of these that I have updated the bios option roms on to support Trim in Raid 0 with SSD's with a intel q9550 E0 stepping cpu, 8 gb ram, and 2 x XFX Ati HD7850 in crossfire. Info on Bios here https://forums.mydigitallife.net/thr...on-roms.23023/