MSI MS-6337, bad caps...

[RoadKill]

Gah, I found about all this by chance, I was reading an article an Anandtech and saw a side column, a forum post about somebody's USB ports failing, dunno what made me click it, but I did, and after reading through, found links to badcaps and ventured further into the bad capacitor fiasco, I've become somewhat paranoid

I tried to look at the caps on my own main PC (an MSI Mega PC) but could see no branding and no bloating (but I saw very few, since it's cramped to hell)... this relieved me a bit..

Then I thought of my second PC, a Celeron 1Ghz @ 1.45Ghz (fucking beautiful overclock) on an MSI MS-6337 socket 370 board.

Had a quick peek, thought I saw bloating. Aww, crap, took the PSU off to see the board underneath, and my worst fears were confirmed. Shitty, bloated caps and some electrolyte leakage. >_<

The only symptom I've really had was the fact the other day, it randomnly reverted back to 1Ghz stock clock speed for no apparent reason. It's not been the most stable system recently but I've had no real major problems with it, and it was always a quick machine when it was my main one. *sigh*

Couldn't see any branding on the caps, but they look like generic cheap trash (and obviously are).

I live in the UK, and have absolutely no money right now, and I would not actually want to use the PC again with the caps in this condition.

I don't want to buy a new PC incase it has bad caps now, and I suspect everything of having them (I even pulled apart my new ADSL router to inspect it's caps, XD)...

[Topcat]

Welcome to the boards.... I've had large boxes full of MS-6337's sent to me for recapping. They're a common fixture around here. If yours are showing the typical bloating, I'd stop using the system until they can be replaced. If one shorts, it can cause severe damage and even destroy the motherboard and perifs... Time to break out the soldering iron!

On a side note, I always thought Abit was hit hardest by the crap cap plague, but I believe now that MSI was the worst.... I still see a LOT of Abit boards, however, I see far more MSI's... They even got their own dedicated section here in the forums...

[RoadKill]

Just thought I'd bump this thread again, old school style..

I still haven't recapped this board, I'm terminally lazy. It's still on top of my parents fridge freezer at home, in a bag, with a whole bunch of brand new Rubycons waiting to go on it.

I just never got round to it, I guess. My soldering skills were never great.

Shame. It'd make a nice server now...

[bushytails]

You're welcome to send the board and the caps to me, if you don't want it anymore.

--Randy

[willawake]

I still haven't recapped this board, I'm terminally lazy.

that was the first board i recapped. It is a perfect candidate for recapping because :

A) the solder pads around the holes are big, makes it easy.
B) the holes themselves are huge, they clean up great
C) you can place 10mm caps everywhere without probs except for the two together below the northbridge
D) it is a very well manufactured board (except for the caps). When it was new I thought damn that is a good looking board.
E) there are not too many caps and you replace all except the mini ones so the board is gonna be ultra stable when you are done.

my board
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=96

see if you can get it done faster than i did. took just over 1 year to get around to doing it. what is it with these boards

[RoadKill]

Haha, well, lets see, it was June 15th 2004 when I posted that, so I've got a while before it hits a year

It is a nice board though, kudos to MSI, it overclocked so well, and you could control all the fans using standard speedfan software on the machine, it's a nice board.

I can't understand why they used such poor caps, well, I can, but it's a shame.

Before I knew about the badcaps phenomenon, I had a friend with the same board, and his PSU blew, I was like, oh, okay. Tried his board with a diff PSU, wouldn't power up. PSU now dead.

Did it AGAIN, with another PSU, PSU dead.

I didn't know about badcaps at the time, so I didn't notice, but I'm near as damn 100% sure that his caps had shorted out and were screwing every PSU that touched that damn board.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: MSI MS-6337, bad caps...

Haha, well, lets see, it was June 15th 2004 when I posted that, so I've got a while before it hits a year

It is a nice board though, kudos to MSI, it overclocked so well, and you could control all the fans using standard speedfan software on the machine, it's a nice board.

I can't understand why they used such poor caps, well, I can, but it's a shame.

Before I knew about the badcaps phenomenon, I had a friend with the same board, and his PSU blew, I was like, oh, okay. Tried his board with a diff PSU, wouldn't power up. PSU now dead.

Did it AGAIN, with another PSU, PSU dead.

I didn't know about badcaps at the time, so I didn't notice, but I'm near as damn 100% sure that his caps had shorted out and were screwing every PSU that touched that damn board.

If the power supply fails to power up afterwards, then look for a fuse inside the power supply. That fuse likely blew. PC power supplies, believe it or not, have a capsule-shaped glass fuse. It possibly is replaceable.

[Rainbow]

Re: MSI MS-6337, bad caps...

I've recapped many of these MS-6337s too (most of them v5 for Tualatins). They are really easy to do. You maybe won't believe but I have one and it has still good original caps

When a PSU is shorted, sometimes a diode (one of the dual-diodes in 3-pin packages on heatsink) inside gets shorted too - so it's shorted internally and can't be powered up. Or one of the two main switching transistors can go bad (on the other heatsink). The fuse blows only when there's a short on the primary side - shorted switching transistor, rectifier or failure in the aux. power circuit (ATX PSUs only).