Abit ST6-R full of Teapos caps

**Rainbow** · 06-13-2006, 04:50 AM

Re: Abit ST6-R full of Teapos caps

Be happy that you had Teapos there. Many of these boards came with Jackcons and failed after a couple of months.

**kc8adu** · 06-13-2006, 08:57 AM

Re: Abit ST6-R full of Teapos caps

had a teapo loaded abit here a while back that would randomly lockup.pulled the teapo's and found most had esr of>10 ohms.no leaking/bulging either.

**trodas** · 06-13-2006, 09:27 AM

Re: Abit ST6-R full of Teapos caps

Rainbow - so, I was lucky? Damn, one find Tepos on his board and should call themselves lucky, damn

Me head is not getting that

kc8adu - random lockups come after about 4 years of service. Fixed them by changing the card to PCI one, as I mention. Probably it was fixed the problem because:
a) better airflow - active cooling even bad caps helping, I noticed!
b) the AGP voltage regulation cap's are't stressed anymore and for PCI, well, there is no caps

Tough exactly as in your case - you looking at almost 5 years old Teapos in service. No any visible sign of problem. Tough under the two ones near the ram socket I noticed some electrolyte after I desoldered them and again - the board smell was, well, awfull

**Per Hansson** · 06-13-2006, 10:33 AM

Re: Abit ST6-R full of Teapos caps

trodas; could you take em apart and see if there is any electolyte left?

Would be interesting to understand why the Teapos fail without bulging...

As I have said many times before my old trusty Epox 8RDA3+ mobo still runs great, highly overclocked and with GSC and Teapo caps!?

Anyway, I'm sure it would work much better or atleast cooler (the VRM section) with better caps but I'm still impressed by it still being alive...

**Galvanized** · 06-13-2006, 10:58 AM

Re: Abit ST6-R full of Teapos caps

I second Per's request trodas.

If & when you can find the time, plz do open them up for inspection. To go bad w/o any visible sign must be a major factor why this brand really angers some so much.

(OT but relevant, I've read two postings very recently about two PCP&C 510 PSUs going bad. One poster did open it up & took very poor pics but did state he saw no signs of venting/bulging. PCP&C uses TEAPO. Note: I just bought an Enhance ENS-0560G and it's filled with TEAPO)

**Shroomie** · 06-13-2006, 12:58 PM

Re: Abit ST6-R full of Teapos caps

Man, good to know they lasted that long! My neighbor's Abit socket 370 (Forget the model) has all Teapos too.

And I too hate those damned vertical-PSU cases. They're still popular as mini-towers and aren't good for much except old slot-A's and 1's, especially given their subpar cooling elsewhere (40mm rear fan my duff...)

I'm sure your cooling work helped those Teapos along, too. The recap ought to keep it going beyond its useful life!

**trodas** · 06-14-2006, 04:29 AM

Re: Abit ST6-R full of Teapos caps

Per Hansson - no, I can't. Immediatelly ater desoldering I put these stinking Teapos into trash and after work was done and machine up and testing new Vcore stability I move them to ashcan to get them outside of my house. Why so fast? Because they are stink, witch somewhat answer your question too...

And probably your oldie Epox got good cooling of the caps? It helps a lot... Futhermore you might got any good serie of Teapos. Sort of - unique, like mine...?

Galvanized - can't do, not going to go trough ashcan just for few caps and then - how to hell open them to check electrolyte? It will just spray out when I cut them in half...?
Anyway, you guys forgot the smell factor. If something smell so badly, it must come from somewhere, right? And where else that from the electrolyte leaking trough the rubber bottom? In once case, there was even sign on mainboard, all rest are leaking too slow or too few, so no plainly visible sign was there...
But still - thanks to the smell (yep, that is what I rushed to get rid off...) we can tell that they MUST be leaking. And if they leaking, it is logical that the electrolyte has to be partly gone, after all these years, so...

Anyway, as I type it, right now dustman car just arrived to take the ashcan...

Shroomie - good to know? I dunno. It might give one false feeling that Teapos aren't that bad... But OTOH in all modern boards, they failing miserably, so...

I think that the longetivity is because there are TEN caps for Vcore...! Show me mainboard that employ today TEN Vcore caps. Most have five and some even LOWER capacity/worser specs then that this one. JetWay N2PAP Ultra use for fine example, 5x Evercon craps, 1500uF 6.3V. There years before that, Abit ST6R use 10x 2200uF 6.3V caps for Vcore, when fastest CPU was running at 1Ghz at the time + have only about 256k L2, while at JetWay N2PAP Ultra time a 512k L2 (Barton) was normal and clocs beyond 2Ghz standard...

And yep, me hate these cases too, but what the hell - I not going to buy a new case for such old machine and especially after I figured the cooling is so effective this way, hehe

And I bet you right - the board longetivity after my recap will far exceed the time I was willing to use this oldie board...

**Per Hansson** · 06-14-2006, 09:52 AM

Re: Abit ST6-R full of Teapos caps

trodas; you bring up many valid points, especially that your board has 10x caps compared with how many there usually are on mainboards of this spec...

The almost never bulging cenario still has me stumped though, my theory is that perhaps the sleeve is so hard that the cap can not bulge it when it goes into over-pressure

But in that case there should atleast be some reports showing the whole can shot out (when the bunge is unable to hold it...) but I have not seen that either...

Damn strange these Teapos as Yoda would say :P

And to answer your Q about cooling of my mobo; it was very poor, a Alpha 8045 with a quiet Panaflo for it's later life when I ran the poor XP-M at 2.3ghz, a Papst spinning even slower was used when I did not OC so much...

VRM Mosfets would reach 80-90°C during regular use, and if I pushed the CPU above 2.3ghz just for fun I would get them over 100°C... As you can see in the post I linked in my previous reply the caps are also tightly packed around the Mosfets, so to say the least it still bugs me how those Teapo and GSC caps could survive my torture of them...

**trodas** · 06-20-2006, 05:00 AM

Re: Abit ST6-R full of Teapos caps

Per Hansson - ah, that bad design, when mosfets are packed so thingtly with caps... Well, it is recommended design, but unwise to the life of the caps expectancy... Anyway, I lack answer to your miracle run. Just continue runing the board, fold on it and wait

(get replacement caps handy anyway)

I think my Abit ST6-R could run with Teapos ring now also, but I did not like the smell (well, I'm almost used to it, by family members refuse to accept that computers smell - and who can blame them?) so I recapped and all good now

It's still damn miracle how your caps can survive this and I have no answer to that

Basicaly - cap under stress go iself to about 35 - 45°C. When there is moset right next to him, it get to much higher. I would bet you run them at about 65 - 85°C. Any chance to measure that?

After all, you must hit some kind of sweet spot (or well-made Teapos!) there, but I would still vote for recap

BTW, older boards seems hold longer, because their design is manytimes better for the caps life that in the new ones...

**Per Hansson** · 06-20-2006, 11:26 AM

Re: Abit ST6-R full of Teapos caps

Well, the board is now retired... I estimate over 70°C on the caps, I could not hold my finger against it for more than a second before it felt very hot

Yea, I'm thinking too that perhaps they do make a good cap or two once in a moon, just like there is once in a moon a dead Rubycon found

**trodas** · 06-20-2006, 11:39 AM

Re: Abit ST6-R full of Teapos caps

That sounds about right...

...but wait, retired?! Damn, move it to do some work on folding then

We want to know, when it fail

...but take care to do not end like me - 6 computers in room, all folding = 31°C right now and I sweating a lot and don't have much to take off

**Per Hansson** · 06-20-2006, 01:15 PM

Re: Abit ST6-R full of Teapos caps

Originally posted by trodas

That sounds about right...

...but wait, retired?! Damn, move it to do some work on folding then

We want to know, when it fail

...but take care to do not end like me - 6 computers in room, all folding = 31°C right now and I sweating a lot and don't have much to take off

Power consumption becomes too high, I have my servers in the basement so cooling is enough (underground) unless I go a bit too much over the edge, did that once, was like 35°C down there instead of 15°C, wonder why the electricity bill went up so much, mind you this was in the middle of the winter

**tazwegion** · 06-21-2006, 03:39 AM

Re: Abit ST6-R full of Teapos caps

Originally posted by trodas

That sounds about right...

...but wait, retired?! Damn, move it to do some work on folding then

We want to know, when it fail

...but take care to do not end like me - 6 computers in room, all folding = 31°C right now and I sweating a lot and don't have much to take off

LMAO

glad to see I'm not the only one addicted to distributed computing, though to be honest... I've managed to 'ween' myself back from 7 (ss7 & s370) computers to 2~3 (s462)

The world of F@H is soooooo competitive eh?

**dood** · 06-21-2006, 05:26 AM

Re: Abit ST6-R full of Teapos caps

This was my distributed.net folding rack at my old house

funny part is, it was a lot more fun when I had that many machines to manage. The one computer I have now outperforms all those put together, but meh... it's just not as cool. Now, if I had a rack of nice machines... that would be different

**Shroomie** · 06-21-2006, 10:25 AM

Re: Abit ST6-R full of Teapos caps

Yeah, old machines are great. Given how skewered our power bill is anyway, I could probably get a 1 GHzA462@750 Tbird and a SlotA850 Pluto up, at least...At this rate, I'll have to watch the caps on both. The 462 should be OK, it has OSTs, but the Shuttle/Spacewalker here has...nope, these are OST too. Was thinking of the other board.

My neighbor's Abit (couldn't get the model) is still fine. Runs fairly cool though.

**trodas** · 06-21-2006, 02:31 PM

Re: Abit ST6-R full of Teapos caps

Per Hansson - OMG! 35°C - poor computers! I'm in my rom now at 32°C and I have serious problems with that - yet computers seems to fold fine

Except my main computer, I got this in just my room:

And your basement cooling is probably the reason why your Teapos are still kicking well - so, replace one of the folding machines board with this one and continue testing

tazwegion - looks like to me, taht it is time to upgrade as well. Too much computers, too expensive bills and too few folded results, damn them. Time for Opterons!

And yep, it is ADDICTIVE!

dood - neat! Congratulations

You made the up holes to the cases like what I did myself too, or some cases are just like that sold?
I get into even more agressive ways to cool the machines down, like big holes in bottom:
http://ax2.old-cans.com/s.php?p=wc&id=77&c=8&d=1&v=v2
back:
http://ax2.old-cans.com/s.php?p=wc&v=v2&d=1&id=78&c=8
And replacing the small bottom rubber bottom buttons with 40mm high screws to ensure the air-circulation from bellow to the top of the machines and such...

Pictures of demand

Shroomie - OST ain't good caps, mate. I replaced all OST that I can and with great results

**Shroomie** · 06-21-2006, 09:28 PM

Re: Abit ST6-R full of Teapos caps

Well, trodas, they're better than GSC, for example. Still bad caps, to be sure, but I've never seen one fail. They're supposed to be like, 4 or so on a 1 (Chhsi) to 10 (Nichicon, Rubycon, etc.) scale, aren't they? Good enough so they'll last until I get enough practice to not screw things over too badly.

**Per Hansson** · 06-22-2006, 09:01 AM

Re: Abit ST6-R full of Teapos caps

Originally posted by trodas

Per Hansson - OMG! 35°C - poor computers! I'm in my rom now at 32°C and I have serious problems with that - yet computers seems to fold fine

<snip>

And your basement cooling is probably the reason why your Teapos are still kicking well - so, replace one of the folding machines board with this one and continue testing

Actually that Epox mobo with those Teapo/GSC caps has always been up in my computer room, on the second floor... Always hot in there, my own little tropical forrest climate

The only two computers in my basesment now is a Dual PPro 200Mhz which is my Firewall and a Intel Pentium 133Mhz which monitors my UPS and does some other misc stuff, so no folding for them, but they use very little power

**trodas** · 06-28-2006, 07:40 AM

Re: Abit ST6-R full of Teapos caps

I envy you your basement with low temps... I could use that for my little folding farm... Anyway, to get back on topic - my Abit ST6-R become unstable recently (many BSOD), I checked and see the one of the Pannys FM for Vcore 2200uF 6.3V dead in week or so of folding (one out of 10 ones, yet still machine become unstable)

Bad apples happen even for the trusted brands. My first blow-off Panny

Rest of the caps including Samxons are fine. Repair in progress...

Abit ST6-R full of Teapos caps

Abit ST6-R full of Teapos caps

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