Nichicon Loses Some Brownie Points

[Topcat]

I've seen a few boards recently with cooked Nichicons, here's one.

[willawake]

what series is that? it is different to the intel board. what is that board anyway? are all the boards p4 class.

bye bye to nichicon. cheaping out on us with the electrolyte additives. i gonna recap that yellow nichicon on the cusl2-m looking dodgy.

[Topcat]

It's a Medion MD5000 P4 board, (the board appears to be an OEM for MSI, but I can't confirm that).

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=438

They're HM(M) Series, 105* 2200uF 6.3v Nichicons. They're not knockoffs, I can spot those easily. They're genuine Nichicons.

<edit>
Fixed busted linky.
</edit>

[willawake]

the intel board is HN(M) it is close. the doors are opening to a goddam scandal. Wait a month or two and then we can send email to nichicon with photos.......and the internet press.

wtf is Medion anyway....who chooses this crap. take it away before it breaks lol

[Topcat]

Its an OEM board for someone. I recapped it with Rubies, and it's solid as a rock...... I thought the first time or two I saw this with nichicon, it was isolated... Maybe they let the system overheat, or they got a defective batch.... It seems a little more widespread now, this is the 4th one I got this week, all from different parts of the country and different environments. :roll: So much for Nichicon these days.

On a sad sidenote, I got a VP6 in last week that someone had recapped with Nichicons, and one of those had vented. Those were VZ(M) series 2200uF 6.3v. :evil:

[willawake]

lets see the sordid pics. Let the historical moment of nichicons demise break here first.

Medion is actually a big german consumer products company :o
http://www.medion.com/english/

[MD Willington]

The HM are not rated for long life though..the PW's are....

Not sure what the price difference between thm is though...could be a large factor in it...

The PW's must be a better component than the HM's. One would hope so. I also found a lot of links to Nichicon HONG KONG with a websearch for HM series...

MD

LOL they make those Disney computers...

[kc8adu]

i need to post the pics of the blown nichicons i removed from a p4b or c asus.
1200@16v.
3 of them and all 3 vented.
glad i saved these.
btw i got a aopen p4 board from a friend with a failed flash.
i noticed the lelons look identical in construction to the nichicons around the socket.counterfiets?nichicon relabeled some crap?

[wigyori]

Would be hard to believe Nichicon manufactured or relabeled some shittycons.. (couldn't it be some kind of faking?)
Yesterday it got out that Asus put shits onto its boards, today Nichicons bulging.. What's next?
(sorry, I'm a bit(?) unhappy and angry.)

-w-

[rugger]

Hmmm, Maybe in some of these cases, the caps were overstressed by a prescott processor. I can easily imagine such a hot and power hungry processor really stressing those capacitors out. Firstly, they are exposed to a constant stream of hot hair and radiated heat from the processor. Second, the very high power requirements of the processor is sure to heat the capacitors up.

And hot capacitors don't last long.

However, I would find it strange to be able to attribute all the nichicon failures to this.

[willawake]

Prolly unrelated but interesting anyway :

Nichicon notice on disinfection due to SARS

As you are well aware, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) has been affecting more and more people all over the world.
If your company has cleaned or is going to disinfect your production facilities with disinfectants to prevent SARS from spreading, you are kindly requested to pay attention as described below so that disinfectants may not contain any hazardous ingredients and substances resulting in capacitor defects.

1.Influence caused by harmful ingredients/substances of disinfectants:
Some disinfectants contain halogenide such as fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine etc., and acid or alkali solutions. Please do not use the disinfectants which contain any substances as above-mentioned in a location where capacitors may be subjected to them.
Halogens contained in the disinfectants can particularly cause corrosive reactions to aluminum electrolytic capacitors, such as reduction of capacitance, open circuit and so on as time goes by. Therefore, if the disinfectants containing the above-mentioned substances are used at the place where capacitors are exposed and may become with them, please be sure to dry the solution completely from capacitors.

2. In case you have already used some disinfectants containing halogenide, acid or alkali solutions in the work place:
If you have already used some disinfectants containing halogenide, acid or alkali solutions, please inform us what kind of disinfectants and under what conditions you used. Upon request, we will advise you of the possible effect the solution will have on the capacitors.
Please note that even when disinfectants do not touch capacitors directly, vaporized ingredients and substances contained in them can potentially adhere to and exert a harmful influence upon capacitors.
An influence may vary from differing conditions as to how much disinfectant is adhering or spreading over capacitors.
As long as the capacitors cannot be completely sealed or isolated but has a chance to come in contact with trace amounts of these disinfectants, please evaluate and check the capacitors for confirmation.

[MD Willington]

It could definately be related.

MD

[willawake]

It would be an excellent way for nichicon to explain the problem to their customers. Companies have already blamed SARS on their shitty balance sheets.

But i am not sold on the idea because contamination would give mixed failures not the total failure of the same nichicon series we have seen on the boards presented here. It seems to indicate poor electrolyte and nothing else. You know that many of the jap manufacturers now have factories in China, not only for capacitors but also the big consumer giants. This was something which was unaccpetable to the Japanese previously, Made in Japan meant something to them in the sense of quality and national pride. But that has all gone out of the window for the sake of competitiveness on price. Think of all the crap which sony has been releasing in the past years, looks good but fails early. I get disgusted with the cdrs and dvdrs released under the major jap brands, TDK, Sony, Maxell all crap. Maxell was until recently getting their dvdrs made by Taiyo Yuden but now they are made by Ritek. Now i just buy Taiyo Yuden own brand.

I did some research and did not find much, I updated the intel board fail of pauloncall with another 2 reported D865PERL fails, probably due to nichicon. I did not expect to find much really, the whole badcaps thing never got a lot of publicity anyway apart from the token few articles at major computer sites and then most was on the enthusiast sites and forums. so i dont expect to find nice coverage about recent nichicons.

what i am saying is that due to price competitiveness we may not be able to trust the Japs anymore for ultimate quality. We have the Koreans/Chinese/Taiwanese to thank for that.



i did see someone on slashdot noting failures in nichicon caps in car audio systems. nothing else. anyway it indicates they have been through this before.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0...thread&tid=137

nichicon is off my list.

[steve]

Re: Nichicon Loses Some Brownie Points

I searched high and low for the Rubycon MBZ parts when they first came out to replace the caps in all my Abit BX (BH6 and BX133) motherboards and you know how successful that turned out to be. At the time the Nichicon HN(M) looked to be a good second choice. That wasn't the case. I've now replaced the input and output caps on these machines several times due the the caps venting.
The HN(M) can't take the stress from of the old Celeron Coppermine CPU's.

Time to get some good caps.

Steve

[PeteS in CA]

Re: Nichicon Loses Some Brownie Points

Nichicon had process problems last year with the line that produced HN parts. You may have gotten parts from that time frame. Another possibility is that the core of your VRM O/P inductor overheated, lost some of its magnetic properties, increasing the ripple current the caps have to handle, causing even good caps to fail.

I know this is ancient history, but Topcat mentioned a MB with failed Nichicon VX series caps (the "(M)" means the part has a 20% tolerance, which is industry standard). This is an incredible misapplication of that series! From the Nichicon catalog:

* VX - impedance isn't rated; Max. I(Ripple) = 710 mA

* PW - Z = .038 Ohm; Max. I(Ripple) = 1655 mA

* HN - Z = .007 Ohm; Max. I(Ripple) = 3770 mA

The MB mfr. cheaped out.

[Neo2_000]

Re: Nichicon Loses Some Brownie Points

From information presented in this forum, I was under the impression that all Nichicon HM and HN series should be treated as suspect. It has been stated that this was due to a bad batch resulting from deviant manufacturing standards.

I have seen these fail myself on PERLs, so I do not understand any newfound concern since this is a known issue with the HM and HN series.

I looked hard at this before I purchased my last batch of Nichis and was assured by other forum members that the PW series has a solid track record and are very reliable.

Don't want to be the odd one out but aren't we jumping the gun just a little here? I would like to see more evidence of widespread failure across other series before I wrote Nichicon off completely.

I suggest a new thread logging genuine suspected failures of other Nichicon series (apart from HM & HNs) to see where this leads.

[willawake]

Re: Nichicon Loses Some Brownie Points

I suggest a new thread logging genuine suspected failures of other Nichicon series (apart from HM & HNs) to see where this leads.

i dont recall any posts regarding other series fail. nichicon should not be written off. since we dont have enough info about the range of date codes for the HM/HN fails, it would be prudent to treat those series as suspicious. nichicon should delete those series from their production to restore confidence.

[Neo2_000]

Re: Nichicon Loses Some Brownie Points

[QUOTE]On a sad sidenote, I got a VP6 in last week that someone had recapped with Nichicons, and one of those had vented. Those were VZ(M) series QUOTE]

Topcat mentioned a MB with failed Nichicon VX series caps

Are the failures in these series a result of misapplication?

Assuming the HM /HN failures were confined to an limited production run I would conjecture that the current failures we are seeing may be old stockpiles of the defective run flowing down the wholesale chain which hopefully will eventually exhaust themselves.

I will have to check out the latest boards at work and see what series Intel are now using.

[axlmastr]

Re: Nichicon Loses Some Brownie Points

I owe you guys some pics of boards I've found with bad caps just for reference, especially the IBM A40 NetVista. In the mean time I'm looking at locating my caps needed to to do some boards. Can't find the Rubys let alone the MBZ/MCZ Series through Allied, Digikey, or Mouser. I've been looking at Nichis in the UPW series, but after this thread who the hell knows. Think I'll be safe? Otherwise I was going to get som Panasonics in the FC Series. Which should I go with? Also some values have two choices. The difference appears to be impedance vs. ripple. Which is better more or less ripple? Impedance of course is affects ripple. Thanks

[AK0R]

Re: Nichicon Loses Some Brownie Points

I owe you guys some pics of boards I've found with bad caps just for reference, especially the IBM A40 NetVista. In the mean time I'm looking at locating my caps needed to to do some boards. Can't find the Rubys let alone the MBZ/MCZ Series through Allied, Digikey, or Mouser. I've been looking at Nichis in the UPW series, but after this thread who the hell knows. Think I'll be safe? Otherwise I was going to get som Panasonics in the FC Series. Which should I go with? Also some values have two choices. The difference appears to be impedance vs. ripple. Which is better more or less ripple? Impedance of course is affects ripple. Thanks

Here's the link to the list that has been put together thus far:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=613
All the caps I've gotten from Computek have been Rubycon MBZ. Also, the FM series from Digikey have lower impedance than the FC series, and are also cheaper. Two choices in a value usually cover two different diameters or lengths. Pick the one that will fit your application.