Hiya to you all,
Since I greatly benefited from the information found on the site, here is my story about recapping my KT7 :
Four capacitors had died (blowed up and leaked, JPCON branded IIRC). The board was nevertheless functioning well with my Duron 700. However, since I wanted to change my CPU and because the board is a bit old, I knew I would need overclocking and to go out of specs. There was no way I would tempt this with defective capacitors.
I then decided to recap my board and changed all capacitors (yes, even the small ones that normally do not need to) because I wanted to be foolproof for all later operations.
I ordered the parts at Farnell (www.farnell.com).
Here are the references you need (all these are Rubycon branded, 105°C series) :
+ 4 x 2200UF 10V ref. 769-083
+ 9 x 2200UF 6.3V ref. 768-005
+ 7 x 1500UF 6.3V ref. 767-360
+ 4 x 1000UF 16V ref. 769-150
+ 6 x 1000UF 10V ref. 768-406
+ 4 x 100UF 16V ref. 772-458 (unavailable in 16V, ref. is for 25V ones)
That gives us a total nb of 34 parts to replace. Since I did not want to screw everything up if I made a mistake with one capacitor, I ordered one more of each type, leading to 40 pieces. As I ordered as a single person (and not through a company account), shipping fees are charged (around 6€). That lead me to a total of 40€, shipping included.
I drew a schematic of the board and indicated beside each capacitor its type. This was easier for me once everything was removed. After everything has been removed, I proceeded by replacing a full set of indentical capacitors at a time (easier to track, less problems).
As stated on the site/forums, depending on your replacement material, you may end up with different sizes than the original parts (this will be the case if you use the references I give). For instance, I had to solder the two caps near the AGP port horizontally because there were too big. Another time, space between the new caps pins was wider than on the original caps. I had to force a little to make them fit. As well, caps next to socket A were also too big (12mm instead of 10 IIRC) and I ended up doing the same as on the KA7 (caps leant from each other).
Concerning soldering, I used a soldering station at maximum temperature (450°C), properly grounded along with an antistactic bracelet. Properly heat the board before attempting to remove the capacitors was very important.
For the vias, the risk of damaging them does not lie with the sucker but with the iron : heating too much a pad will damage it. This is why I do not recommend to try emptying the vias/holes of solder before putting the new capacitors in place. Simply properly heat the pad while pushing with the new one at the other side is, to my mind, better and easier. Of course, YMMV.
Since it was the first time I attempted to do that it took me 3 days at around 2-3 hours a day. First day : removing old caps; 2nd day : cleaning holes; 3rd day : putting the new ones in place.
Overall, the procedure costed me far less than buying a new motherboard along with memory modules (newer MB do not support SDRAM and I have 512MB of SDRAM). Along with that, it was quite fun and I learned a lot of interesting things.
I hope this information will be useful to some people, just as what all of you guys wrote on the site and the forums was useful to me.
Thanks again for the information and cheers from France
Vincent
PS : recapped board works flawlessly with my new Duron 1600, recognized as "Unknown CPU type" @ 1440Mhz; FSB@120Mhz, mult @ 12above, no fan on chipset. Linux 2.4.26. Underwent stress test of 8 continuous hours of compilation. Running since 2 weeks with no pb.
[EDIT] : Corrected wrong card ref in post title : KT7 and not KT7A
Since I greatly benefited from the information found on the site, here is my story about recapping my KT7 :
Four capacitors had died (blowed up and leaked, JPCON branded IIRC). The board was nevertheless functioning well with my Duron 700. However, since I wanted to change my CPU and because the board is a bit old, I knew I would need overclocking and to go out of specs. There was no way I would tempt this with defective capacitors.
I then decided to recap my board and changed all capacitors (yes, even the small ones that normally do not need to) because I wanted to be foolproof for all later operations.
I ordered the parts at Farnell (www.farnell.com).
Here are the references you need (all these are Rubycon branded, 105°C series) :
+ 4 x 2200UF 10V ref. 769-083
+ 9 x 2200UF 6.3V ref. 768-005
+ 7 x 1500UF 6.3V ref. 767-360
+ 4 x 1000UF 16V ref. 769-150
+ 6 x 1000UF 10V ref. 768-406
+ 4 x 100UF 16V ref. 772-458 (unavailable in 16V, ref. is for 25V ones)
That gives us a total nb of 34 parts to replace. Since I did not want to screw everything up if I made a mistake with one capacitor, I ordered one more of each type, leading to 40 pieces. As I ordered as a single person (and not through a company account), shipping fees are charged (around 6€). That lead me to a total of 40€, shipping included.
I drew a schematic of the board and indicated beside each capacitor its type. This was easier for me once everything was removed. After everything has been removed, I proceeded by replacing a full set of indentical capacitors at a time (easier to track, less problems).
As stated on the site/forums, depending on your replacement material, you may end up with different sizes than the original parts (this will be the case if you use the references I give). For instance, I had to solder the two caps near the AGP port horizontally because there were too big. Another time, space between the new caps pins was wider than on the original caps. I had to force a little to make them fit. As well, caps next to socket A were also too big (12mm instead of 10 IIRC) and I ended up doing the same as on the KA7 (caps leant from each other).
Concerning soldering, I used a soldering station at maximum temperature (450°C), properly grounded along with an antistactic bracelet. Properly heat the board before attempting to remove the capacitors was very important.
For the vias, the risk of damaging them does not lie with the sucker but with the iron : heating too much a pad will damage it. This is why I do not recommend to try emptying the vias/holes of solder before putting the new capacitors in place. Simply properly heat the pad while pushing with the new one at the other side is, to my mind, better and easier. Of course, YMMV.
Since it was the first time I attempted to do that it took me 3 days at around 2-3 hours a day. First day : removing old caps; 2nd day : cleaning holes; 3rd day : putting the new ones in place.
Overall, the procedure costed me far less than buying a new motherboard along with memory modules (newer MB do not support SDRAM and I have 512MB of SDRAM). Along with that, it was quite fun and I learned a lot of interesting things.
I hope this information will be useful to some people, just as what all of you guys wrote on the site and the forums was useful to me.
Thanks again for the information and cheers from France
Vincent
PS : recapped board works flawlessly with my new Duron 1600, recognized as "Unknown CPU type" @ 1440Mhz; FSB@120Mhz, mult @ 12above, no fan on chipset. Linux 2.4.26. Underwent stress test of 8 continuous hours of compilation. Running since 2 weeks with no pb.
[EDIT] : Corrected wrong card ref in post title : KT7 and not KT7A
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