AOpen MX3S-T capacitor disaster! :-(

[peterpan783]

:cry:

Hi. this board has around 11 blown capacitors.
Any ideas of what brands should I get for the replacements.

What's the average price for each?

I know that capacitor failure is inevitable, but I'd like to postpone it as much as possible.

Heard from repairpeople that the original capacitors sucked!
Most MX3S-Ts die that way.

Any suggestions to revive the dead?

Thanks!

[Topcat]

I tend to use Nichicon, Sanyo, Panasonic, Mallory, and Rubycon low-esr replacement caps. I've never had a repeat failure using these brands. I have not seen many Aopen's with bad caps, maybe 10 or 15 or so... I would replace everything 680uF and up on your board. I have seen capacitor values less than 680uF fail, but not very often. (330uF 'Choyo' brand on Gigabyte's were common ones on several boards).

Cost of replacement caps depends on where you buy... Digikey is rather expensive if buying small quantities, as are most vendors... Some vendors won't even talk to you if you don't plan on ordering 1000 caps or more...

if you need some caps, shoot me an email with what values you need and how many...


TC

[peterpan783]

Hello Topcat,

He he, this is going to be funny. I hope you're still active in the forum.
I had that problem with an AOpen MX3S-T. Took it to a friend who knew what he was doing, replaced all the capacitors and the MB ended up even better than it was when new!

It's over a year now, I'm in a different country, and this time I was looking for information again on repairing motherboards (and eventually found my own posting in this forum, which I had forgotten). In 2004 I was desperate to have mine fixed. This time, I am a system builder with a few completely dead MBs which I'd like to put back to use. I would like to do the repairs myself. As they are dead anyway, I've got not much to lose in experimenting and learning how to do it.

Most are AMD Socket A, which are not so obsolete.

As I said before, they have problems that lead me to suspect of failing capacitors.

Most of them won't power up. Completely dead.

I have a couple who start up, I can get to the BIOS, etc, but refuse to boot from floppy (BIOS set to boot from floppy first). I've tried different cables, and different floppy drives (which are known to be Ok) but keep getting the same problem.

Got another one. When powered up, it does not give any video, and makes the keyboard LEDs blink constantly.

Another one, the two capacitors next to the ATX power connector got really hot and smoke was coming out. Turned it off immediately. the rest of the capacitors seemed to be Ok (were cold).

Am I right in my suspicions?
I am in England at the moment. How much would it cost me a few repair kits.

I could send you the exact model numbers (even photographs).

Cheers!

please reply to: peterpan783ebay@yahoo.es