Abit VL6 with Bad Capacitors

[Topcat]

An Abit board with BBQ'd caps is certainly no shock to anyone... This one is an Abit VL6, NOT VP6... It's a single CPU socket 370 board with a VIA chipset.

This one was unique because instead of having one particular brand of bad caps, it had multiple brands. There were an assortment of bad Jackcon and JPCON caps. I've seen these brands bad in many different boards, but this was the first board I've seen where the two brands were mixed together like this.






In the end, I replaced 25 caps...

(3) 2200uF 6.3v 10mm
(5) 1500uF 10v 10mm
(6) 1500uF 6.3v 8mm
(11) 1000uF 16v 10mm

The board now works perfect.

Here's the aftermath:





Just another for the books...

[kc8adu]

just did a va6 and it had a similar mix.
btw i am seeing many bad caps that show no sign of bulging.
now when i see an unstable box that had been ok before this i grab the scope probe first.
this va6 looked fine but the scope said change the caps.

[Topcat]

Hey KC,

Any different brands you're encountering that don't show the physical signs? Most all lytics with the crappy water-based electrolyte do physically fail, so I'm curious if you're encountering any other brands.

[kc8adu]

most that i find bad but not vented are choyo and iq.
found some jun-fu in a psu that were open.
unit was 2 weeks old!
the ones in the va6 were tayeh.

[Topcat]

Teyah I know about all too well.. I had a KA7 I recapped, and the board was still flaky after being recapped... There were 5 'Teyah' 470uF 16v caps around the RAM slots that looked perfect, but were garbage. I replaced them, and the board was perfect... 470uF isn't too common of a value to fail, but the obviously do... I've pulled quite a few 'Choyo' caps, some displayed venting, others didn't... I pulled some 330uF 25v Choyo's out of a Gigabyte board, these blew crap all over the PCB, while 1500uF choyo's didn't vent, but were dead all the same.

I guess ya can't always judge a bad cap by it's cover... heh...