dell Optiplex gx280

[whitewiz]

not sure who's motherboards dell uses but we replaced approx 50 of them arround June/July due to bad caps. Needless to say, we are now buying HP desktops.

[Chris1992]

Re: dell Optiplex gx280

Dell uses their own MB design but it's made by Asus or Foxconn IIRC.

[willawake]

Re: dell Optiplex gx280

yeh and HP uses MSI or worse. their servers are nice though, got foxconn and sanyo oscon all over them. pity about the maxtor hdds though. i am not really into maxtor, prefer seagate.

this is the bad thing though. dell's intention was to use good caps. Nichicon a previously good brand screwed up their production. Now Dell loses customers and incurs huge costs. The only reason to quit dell now would be general dissatisfaction with their products/customer service or more likely their handing of this nichicon issue.

[RoadKill]

Re: dell Optiplex gx280

The Maxtor drives are the only big mistake Dell initially made, they went with Nichicon in good faith, I can't really blame them for that.

They're rubycons now, and seagates or western digital drives as far as I know, so everything's chill.

[Chris1992]

Re: dell Optiplex gx280

Yeah, i have a december 2003 Dimension 8300 with Rubycons and a Seagate HD.

[ryback]

Re: dell Optiplex gx280

We have approx 1200 GX280 in our organization and are experiencing major problems with bad caps. The machines was aquired about 18 months ago.

[willawake]

Re: dell Optiplex gx280

how is dell dealing with your problem? do you have any pics of the failed caps?

[MD Willington]

Re: dell Optiplex gx280

We have approx 1200 GX280 in our organization and are experiencing major problems with bad caps. The machines was aquired about 18 months ago.

...Oh Great...


I walk by these things everyday...

MD

[ryback]

Re: dell Optiplex gx280

how is dell dealing with your problem? do you have any pics of the failed caps?

Up until now we have just called Dell and got a repair-guy over the next day, but now the number of machines with this problem is steadily rising making that impossible. We have a pool of computers we send out to users all over the country, but the pool is now dried out because of the problems.

The situation as of now is that we have several user without the proper equipment to do their job.

We are going to have a sit down with Dell to find a solution.

I don't have any pictures at the time but I can post some when I get the chance. The caps affected is mostly the one between the cpu socket and the back of the computer - mostly bulging, but some leaking too. In some cases the row of caps by the memory sockets are bulging too.

[willawake]

Re: dell Optiplex gx280

give em hell. you are going to need proactive replacement off all suspected boards. if they have the bad nichicon HN or HM batch on them those caps will all fail.

it is bad the problem stretched to the GX280 series also. The date range we had for the GX270s was board manufactured 04/01/2003 to 03/20/2004. I think the problem therefore extends past that.

If you get better info about the date range or range of service tags of your affected units that might help others with the same problem.

hope you have success. the info we got for the GX270s was that they used rubycon capacitors in place of the nichicons on the replacement boards. should be fine for years. Check if your replacement boards have those.

[dood]

Re: dell Optiplex gx280

Hmm... that's not good. I notified a collegue of mine who has about 200 gx280's at the school he works for. He wasn't happy to hear that. They also have 200 gx270's, and 200 gx260's. (purchased in succsessive years). He didn't remember seeing any bad caps in his machines, but he did say he's had to RMA 6 of the slim Maxtor drives this week. They're replacing them with Western Digitals :o

[MD Willington]

Re: dell Optiplex gx280

My GX260 is fine, it runs pretty much all of the time...I just swung the clamshell open and checked nice flat topped, no poop, caps!

MD

[ryback]

Re: dell Optiplex gx280

I have just come from a meeting with Dell. They will do a preemtive repair on approx 200 critical, meaning they will replace the motherboard on 200 computers before any problems can occur.
The rest will be handled like we handle them now. The user reports to us of a problem with the computer. We, in collaboration with the user, troubleshoot over the phone, and if it turns out to be a problem with the caps we send out a new computer to the user and the user sends us the broken one. Then we report it to Dell and they come and fix the computer.

[willawake]

Re: dell Optiplex gx280

that doesnt sound very good unless many of the other 1000 are unlikely to have problems but it is a start. Were all the machines acquired at the same time?

what issues do the users report?

[dood]

Re: dell Optiplex gx280

A preemptive strike by Dell is impressive... I'm sure it's just because of the volume of the machines, though.

[MD Willington]

Re: dell Optiplex gx280

Just my opinion but it seems like Dell is not being pro-active here, more like "Damage Control" before they end up like Abit... ! In Court !

[Newbie2]

Re: dell Optiplex gx280

pity about the maxtor hdds though. i am not really into maxtor, prefer seagate.

I heard Seagate is going to buy Maxtor. Then Maxtor will be a part of Seagate, I think.

[ryback]

Re: dell Optiplex gx280

Users report of loud CPU-fans. The the computer gets really slow and unstable. Then it won't boot anymore. They get through POST and starts booting Windows XP and then the screen goes blank and you have to pull to power cord to shut it down.

Dell said they had a check list that they can go through over the phone to identify the problem. That was 2 days ago. I still haven't gotten any list.

We need the list to be able to get Dell to repair the computers. Without it users have to send in the machines to a central location to be opened diagnose the problem/look at the caps. The users are not qualified to do this themselves and it is not part of the SLA they have with my company.

[MD Willington]

Re: dell Optiplex gx280

That is the same (old) heatsink issue the GX270 had, the guy next to me had one that was like a freaking jet engine, just heard one again last week.

Demand a replacement "performance heatsink", it has 4 heat pipes instead of 6 and is generally regarded as way better. If they give you grief about it, tell them that is what the moderators on the DELL forums have been suggesting for some time now.

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportfor...=258168#M21672

[ryback]

Re: dell Optiplex gx280

Here is a picture of some caps on the motherboard.



you can find some more pics with better resolution here