Your opinion on Rubycon MBZs needed

[berniedd]

I've been called to look over a 5-yr old Foxconn 661M05 mobo that hangs just after POST completes. There are 10 Rubycon MBZs (3300 uf) at the area of the VRM and all look good. There are a sprinkling of OSTs at the other side of the board, mostly along the video card slot (mostly 1000 uf/6.3 volts) and around the main power supply socket (mostly 1000 and 1500 uf). The OSTs will be replaced but the symptoms are just too suggestive of bad caps at the VRM side. Should I get new cap replacements for the Rubycons too? I tried a search for this series in these forums, but didn't get much anything relevant.

[mockingbird]

Re: Your opinion on Rubycon MBZs needed

Don't waste your time with this board.

The cause of failure is the nVidia MCP.

If you want, you can try holding a blowtorch to the northbridge at a reasonable distance for a few seconds and see if that reflows the solder underneath it. That's your best bet. But I tried this once on a Gigabyte Model and held the blowtorch for too long and a nearby capacitor exploded. Besides that I think I burnt the board.

As a general rule, stay away from any nVidia chipset after nForce 4. They all have the same problem and will eventually fail. The question is how many on/off power cycles will it take to crack the solder.

[c_hegge]

Re: Your opinion on Rubycon MBZs needed

I have a mobo with a newish nVidia chipset in one of my systems

[Scenic]

Re: Your opinion on Rubycon MBZs needed

As a general rule, stay away from any nVidia chipset after nForce 4. They all have the same problem and will eventually fail. The question is how many on/off power cycles will it take to crack the solder.

same problem as the gfx cards (G84/G86/G92/..) have i guess..

The Gigabyte 73PVM-S2H (GeForce 7100 / nForce 610i) i built my mom's comp with also went the same way. still runs, but gets more and more unstable. random freezes and/or blackouts, gfx "card" driver stop errors, sometimes no POST.. and the caps are definitely not the problem here
(CPU VRM is poly only (fujitsu and sanyo oscon SEPC), rest of the board is Sanyo WG)

replaced it with a cheap i945 MSI board.. runs perfect again..

the northbridge heatsink on the gigabyte is interesting too..
a cheap aluminium heatsink dipped in some orange-ish color to make it look like copper. after running the system for 5 - 10mins., the heatsink is SO damn hot that i burnt my fingers when i touched it

"funny" thing is.. there's a spot for a northbridge fan header above the battery which isn't soldered in.. if they went for active cooling this thing may be still working but... oh well..

at least it has good caps and polys. *gets soldering iron out*

[mockingbird]

Re: Your opinion on Rubycon MBZs needed

I have a mobo with a newish nVidia chipset in one of my systems

People are dumping these by the boatloads on ebay. I pity the fool who pays $200 for a DV2xxx laptop on eBay thinking he will fix the dead thing. One of my cutomers - I was at his house months ago and I told him that his DV2xxx laptop will fail. Last week he called and told me the darn thing wouldnt turn on.

Oh well. We have a saying "You caught everything - you caught nothing". nVidia goes and buys 3dfx with funny business, and in the end, they have the biggest catastrophe I can think of a company has ever had. Near 100% failure rates on flagship products. What a nightmare. Take a lesson other companies on arrogance.

[seanc]

Re: Your opinion on Rubycon MBZs needed

Ugh, that's not a good thing to hear, I just put an ASUS P5NE-SLI into my main system with a 680i chipset.

Also have a few important PCs with the Gigabyte 73PVM-S2H in it.

[c_hegge]

Re: Your opinion on Rubycon MBZs needed

Mine is a GA-M61PME-S2L (I think). I got it for AU$30, so I can't complain too much.

[seanc]

Re: Your opinion on Rubycon MBZs needed

My ASUS was free, had a blown CPU mosfet, so I guess I can't either

[stj]

Re: Your opinion on Rubycon MBZs needed

so if you have a working mobo fit a big passive copper sink like the zalman one.

the same goes for any other chipset if it has a small sink & fan.
i'v lost a few boards in the past from small fan's failing - they dont have a tacho output to warn you!

[berniedd]

Re: Your opinion on Rubycon MBZs needed

Er, mockingbird, what exactly does MCP stand for?

[370forlife]

Re: Your opinion on Rubycon MBZs needed

I've never heard of that problem or had that problem with any G92/G86/G84 card or nvidia chipset boards. Ever. It's not like theres complaints streaming in left and right about these cards and motherboards not working (other than cap problems)

Wouldn't nvidia just change their name to get out of honoring warranties though? They are such a shady company.

[Rulycat]

Re: Your opinion on Rubycon MBZs needed

I've never heard of that problem or had that problem with any G92/G86/G84 card or nvidia chipset boards. Ever. It's not like theres complaints streaming in left and right about these cards and motherboards not working (other than cap problems)

Wouldn't nvidia just change their name to get out of honoring warranties though? They are such a shady company.

There are complaints left right and centre from Laptop owners. The chips get hotter. Also, the G92/86/84 problem isn't just the solder balls holding it to the board. It's actually missing a component inside the GPU itself. This is a material which helps the GPU withstand heat. Put too much in and the GPU snaps under heat, put too little and the heat breaks the GPU. Nvidia used none. Desktop chips are much less effected because these run cooler than their laptop counterparts (70c as opposed to 95c) There's an article on SemiAccurate about this. I'll see if I can dig up a link.

If anyone has a Geforce6/7 based motherboard I'd advise them to upgrade the chipset's cooler. I've seen a lot of these that are totally useless. Also, they seem to use really horrible thermal paste which looks like bubblegum. replace this with some quality material and it should run somewhat cooler despite still being the same crappy chunk of Aluminum posing as copper. AMD and Intel chipsets seem pretty solid. Unlike Nvidia though they use two smaller chips in a northbridge and southbridge format while Nvidia seem to liek to cram everything onto one hot chip.

As for changing their name, not possible, they are too "high-profile" a company for this to happen.

I am not aware of any of the G200 based chips having this problem, although the GTX280 had a 10% failure rate. I have not heard such things from the GTX285.

Right now ATi have some pretty decent cards. Shame they have traditionally had shorter warranties - although somewhat ironic that a product with a shorter warranty is more reliable.

I hope this information is helpful.

[370forlife]

Re: Your opinion on Rubycon MBZs needed

There are complaints left right and centre from Laptop owners. The chips get hotter. Also, the G92/86/84 problem isn't just the solder balls holding it to the board. It's actually missing a component inside the GPU itself. This is a material which helps the GPU withstand heat. Put too much in and the GPU snaps under heat, put too little and the heat breaks the GPU. Nvidia used none. Desktop chips are much less effected because these run cooler than their laptop counterparts (70c as opposed to 95c) There's an article on SemiAccurate about this. I'll see if I can dig up a link.

Ok, laptops make a lot more sense.

As for changing their name, not possible, they are too "high-profile" a company for this to happen.

That was a joke from another forum where mockingbird seems to think BFG/XFX/EVGA are all companies that make a super crappy video cards then change their name every so often to not need to honor warranties.

[mockingbird]

Re: Your opinion on Rubycon MBZs needed

He he, sounds like I will be the whipping boy for a while for that comment I posted there.

I was also gonna add Visiontek to that list there, but I decided to remain silent

But you gotta admit, nVidia is a shady company. Without Microsoft subsidizing them with the Xbox, they'd have gone under eons ago. Mind you, I was no fan of 3dfx either, I considered them arrogant too.

It's a shame that Videologic's tile based rendering has been confined to smartphones where it is not even used, their technology had such a future.