Gotta love OST c(r)aps
Had a machine with an ECS board in today, bloated 6.3v 3300uF OST cap on the 5vsb. The mobo is full of OSTs but luckily this was the only bad one, and it's a Sempron board so it doesn't see much abuse. PSU was a Premier full of crap caps too, but everything looked okay and 5vsb was in spec, so i just slapped a Rubycon on the mobo and she fired right up. Likely what happened was that the owner left a phone or mp3 to charge off USB, and the lackluster filtering of the PSU itself left the OST crap eat all the ripple, so the cap proceeded to cook itself.
In fact the complaint was of something else - the system wouldn't power up, front panel unresponsive. However, when the top of the case was pressed it would work. The issue was quickly found - the DVD drive was very long and pressing on the motherboard, shorting it out to the case. So i just moved it to the uppermost slot.
The "unresponsive front panel" was actually a bad power switch, i wired the reset switch for power. Now he can pretend he has a brand name PC.
Coming back to our bloated OST, i tried to blow it up by reversing it at 5v. No go, it didn't even heat up. Same thing at 12v. POS went so bad it won't even blow up. Now ain't that sad.
In fact the complaint was of something else - the system wouldn't power up, front panel unresponsive. However, when the top of the case was pressed it would work. The issue was quickly found - the DVD drive was very long and pressing on the motherboard, shorting it out to the case. So i just moved it to the uppermost slot.
The "unresponsive front panel" was actually a bad power switch, i wired the reset switch for power. Now he can pretend he has a brand name PC.
Coming back to our bloated OST, i tried to blow it up by reversing it at 5v. No go, it didn't even heat up. Same thing at 12v. POS went so bad it won't even blow up. Now ain't that sad.
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