kt7a-raid recap

[fcornillie]

Hi all,

A few weeks ago, I bought a second-hand kt7a-raid, with bloated caps. I did this knowingly, as I knew this board is absolutely great, and because I still have some hardware which ran on my now dead and dumped MSI board and which I didn't want to sell. So I thought I'd give it a try. The board didn't run smoothly, so I started searching for replacement caps. Before turning to electronics shops, I sent an email to Abit in the Netherlands (the service centre for my region; I live in Belgium), explaining the situation. To my surprise, they reacted really quickly and without any hassle, asking for an address to ship free caps to. Hurrah with bells on!

The package arrived just this morning, and contains the caps I asked for, except for a bunch of 8mm 1000uF bastards, which are probably hard to find anyway. Leaving the 8mm issue aside for now, the brand of the caps that I received from Abit is TEAPO, which could be fishy (I remember the really ugly TEAPO caps on my former failed MSI board). However, these TEAPO caps are new, and are probably even good, considering the information on the capacitor plague Wiki:

"Teapo — Teapo has denied these claims, but evidence suggests their new capacitors are sound. However their older ones appear to suffer from the same problems other brands do."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_Plague

Furthermore, TEAPO still have a website, in contrast with §é(è"ç Chhsi.

Would it be safe to use the TEAPO caps?

My other question relates to the 8mm caps. My Abit board is parasitized by 1000uF Jackcon caps (in a black and gold shell). However, they look perfectly fine, in comparison with the bunch of bloated 2200 and 1500 uF Jackcons (in a green and gold jacket). Also the 10mm 1500 and 1000 uF Jackcons (gold or white and black) sit nicely and unboated on the board. Should I replace the good caps too? They don't show any signs of leakage or bulging, and Jackcon is also still in business, as I can tell from their website. Either way, I don't have any 8mm caps to replace the good-looking 8mm Jackcons, so I would have to leave these on the board anyway. Has anyone had to replace these black Jackcon caps on their Kt7a(-raid)?

Many thanks in advance!

[Rainbow]

Re: kt7a-raid recap

If you don't have replacement caps, leave the old ones there if they look OK. But be prepared that they will go bad too - so check them from time to time.
I've seen this on Abit BX133-RAID which I recapped for a friend. Most 1000uF were OK so we left them there - but after some time, all of them (both green and black ones) bulged and had to be replaced.

[linuxguru]

Re: kt7a-raid recap

Teapo is OK, but if you're going to take the effort to recap the board, I'd suggest using better caps - Panasonic FC, Rubycon YXG, Nichicon PW(M), etc. are widely available, fairly inexpensive and have long lives.

Jackcon green/gold were bad, but the later black/gold are supposed to be OK. Definitely replace every green/gold Jackcon - they will go bad, sometimes without bulging.

[fcornillie]

Re: kt7a-raid recap

Teapo is OK, but if you're going to take the effort to recap the board, I'd suggest using better caps - Panasonic FC, Rubycon YXG, Nichicon PW(M), etc. are widely available, fairly inexpensive and have long lives.

I don't want to buy any new ones so I'll see how long the TEAPOs survive. This board is meant to serve in a freevo box, which won't be used that much anyway and which is properly cooled, so I expect them to serve for quite a while.

Thanks for your reactions!