Dell GX620

[s2ndsight]

Re: Dell GX620

Yes, 85C. Writing from memory. It didn't look like this motherboard had been touched by anybody. What I'm calling a "no-name" capacitor looked just like the Rubycon, essentially with the same coloring, but without the name printed on it. I thought that I had seen in another post somewhere some reference to these being a knock-off of some type, or perhaps it was just a brand that doesn't print the name on the capacitors.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Dell GX620

Oh and.... CONGRATS!

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Dell GX620

Those boards are built for Dell on contract with Intel and they don't use no-name caps as original.
If they are truly no-name caps then board was previously re-capped by some twit.

The 85C [it's not 80C, it's 85C] do fail often enough due to heat dry-out. It usually takes them longer 'to go' because they don't handle so much ripple as the larger caps and so are working further from their absolute limits.
.

[s2ndsight]

Re: Dell GX620

I want to post this information here, since this forum helped me figure out what was wrong with my GX620 Mini-tower. I also purchased all of my replacement caps from this site as well. This info, I just finished posting on the Dell community forum. I hope it is helpful.

The other posts in this thread are concerning the GX620 ultra small form factor machine, which I believe has a history of worse capacitor problems due to the heat buildup in the little case. My problem was somewhat different, but it appears that replacing the caps was still what fixed it!!

This Dell Optiplex GX620 Mini-tower appeared to work perfectly in all respects, except that if it lost power or was unplugged, I would have to continually reset the bios date/time when it booted back up. These CMOS batteries have a very long life, and it is not uncommon for them to last 10+ years, especially if the machine stays plugged in for most of that time. Replacing the battery was the easy try, but that did not fix it for me.

I replaced the following capacitors around the 12v connector on the motherboard which is labeled HH807: C575, C555, C566, C545. Each of these caps appeared to be a no-name brand and were 1800mf, 6.3v. There were also absolutely no visible signs that these capacitors were bad. Also, C559, which was a Rubycon and 1000mf, 16v, also, no visible sign that it was bad. The 1000mf capacitor had blue ink on the top, like it had been deliberately marked, and I have a sneaking suspicion that THIS was the only capacitor that needed to be replaced. But i've read (on badcaps.net) that the no-names are sometimes very prone to failure. I also replaced C413, which is closer to the center of the board. It was also an 1800mf cap. No visible sign of failure.

So, I can't specifically narrow it down to which one of those 6 capacitors was causing the problem, but I am fairly sure it was one or more of those. A few days earlier, I had replaced all of 27 smaller caps, and these were all of the 220mf, 16v caps. They looked slightly bulged to me and were only rated for 80 degrees C, as opposed to the other caps which had a 105 degree C rating. In retrospect, it appears that none of these smaller caps were bad or needed to be replaced and I probably wasted my time doing so. They were also a bit harder to cope with than the larger caps, so if I had found a posting like this one before I started work, it would have saved me a significant amount of time.

I also noticed something else when I was finished. Before I replaced the 6 caps I mentioned, when I would plug the machine back up after sitting idle for a bit, I would see nothing of the power diagnostics on the front of the machine... I think... or possibly I might have not noticed before. I doubt it. I believe that plugging the machine in before the repair resulted in nothing visible except for the amber "aux power" light on the motherboard. AFTER replacing the 6 caps, whenever I plugged the machine in, it would appear to run a quick power diagnostic, which was visible from the indicators on the front of the machine. I push the power button, and it boots up now without begging to know what time of day it is and my bios settings are preserved.

Thanks to badcaps.net for the assist. I hope this info makes very easy work for the next person to have this problem!

[Player2]

Re: Dell GX620

Hello all,

I've got a few GX620 boards that are really giving me a headache, hopefully someone has a suggestion. I recently received eight of these boards for repair; four worked fine after recapping, the other four refuse to do anything. When plugged in, I've got an amber LED lit (not the power button LED, but near that on the board) which leads me to believe that the boards are all receiving power. When the power button is pressed I get nothing; no momentary spinning of the fans, no diagnostic LEDs on the back, nothing.

I have replaced ALL the caps, all the way down to the 220 uF's and 22 uF's. I have also reset the CMOS and replaced the batteries. All of the components I am testing with (PSU, CPU, RAM, HDD) are good, they worked in the four good boards as well as an SX280 board I had laying around. I found a few results via Google indicating that shorted USB ports can cause this, checked them all and they're fine. I have even checked the power buttons just to be sure. Also tried running one of the boards without the tray, just in case something was shorting out, but no luck.

Has anyone seen this before? Any ideas on what else I should be checking? I don't see GX620 boards too often, but I work on SX280's all the time (very similar board) and haven't seen anything like this. Hopefully it is something simple I am just overlooking.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Dell GX620

PET is the material used in the sleeve.
Forgot exactly what it stands for. [Some kind of plastic.]
It's there for some ecology reason.

[PCTechNY23]

Re: Dell GX620

I have seen them start to blow the 16v 220uFs and PSU fans. So far all under warranty but they are about to run out.

[bluto]

Re: Dell GX620

It seems that this thread has been dormant for a while... Time to bring it back.

I note that most of the GX620s shown here are the ultra small (external power supply) version. Has anyone had issues with failing caps on the slightly larger SFF chassis version of the 620?

I have some GX 620 SFF units in an enclosed kiosk application and on a whim I decided to crack a few open and check the caps. Oh and these babies were quite warm as others have stated! 2 of the 3 machines that I looked at each had a single bulged and leaking cap. The first one had a bulged Rubycon MCZ 1800uf 6.3v 105c (PET date code?). This specimen also had some Panasonic 2200uf 6.3v 105c caps a bunch of little Chemi-con 220uf 16v SMG 85c caps.

The second machine had Chemi-con caps in place of the Panasonic and one of them was bulged.

These machines were manufactured mid 2006.

I apologize for the poor camera phone pictures.

So far these machines still run fine and there are no symptoms of capacitor failure evident. Also there have been no problem reports from the field either.

What is the prognosis for these machines? Will they go for a while or is death imminent? I note that topcat now has a pre-made kit available for the 620 SFF, so that can't be a good sign right there.

Unfortunately, there is no good way for these machines to be recapped. They would likely end up getting replaced. I am just trying to get an idea on how soon that would have to be.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Dell GX620

Read the whole thread. The small ones dry out and don't usually bulge.

[HCT]

Re: Dell GX620 USFF

Hello,

I have a GX620 USFF, was working 100% OK then next attempt it wouldn't power on at all, light goes green on the power brick but the box is dead. All the caps as far as I can see look OK not weeping, not bulging. Any suggestions as to most likely cause of failure? Are any particular caps worth trying first? The board has a mixture of K topped and Y topped caps.

Cheers

H

[techcaps45]

Re: Dell GX620

80% of the "inside" 11X 16v 220uFs on mine test bad as well. The "outside" 8X and the 2X 25v 22uFs all test perfect with my trusty capanalyzer 88.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Dell GX620

Thank you Sir!
.

[midibob]

Re: Dell GX620

Here we go.

The 2200uF I've only seen this one fail (venting) although there's no doubt all may be affected in that area at some time.

Bob

Forgot to add, the hard disk sits over the bottom left 3/4 of the board as you look at it.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Dell GX620

Hi Midibob.
Thanks. That's what I was trying to get across.

Would you perhaps have a cap-map of the 'usual suspect' 220's?
I don't usually see boards in the chassis so I dunno for sure where the HDD is relation to the mobo's layout.

Thanks.
.

[midibob]

Re: Dell GX620

Hi all,

Further to the discussion on the 220uF 16v caps. My original point was that most people (including myself) were ignoring these caps, as visually they looked fine and you could possibly make the wrong assumption that as they didn't really need to filter out much, because of their size, they wouldn't cause too much of a problem.
It was only when I had a board in with no blown caps that wouldn't boot that I decided to test every cap on the board. It soon became obvious that the ones nearest the heat source (lack of ventilation) were all dried out to various degrees. The bottom line is, whatever they do it's pretty important!

I've seen a number of re-worked boards (Dell replacements) and they have all been changed to 105c. I've also seen one that had polys fitted for some of the larger caps.

Out of interest I always replace all the 220's around the area under the hard disk including the two by the i/o ports (11 in all). Not had any returns for about a year now so fingers crossed.

Happy recapping
Midibob

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Dell GX620

Still trying to wrap my head around this one

"So I understand the GX620 [I don't have one to play with yet but I'm looking] puts a bunch of 220uF right under the hard drive which limits airflow and is source of heat on the 220uF that SX270/SX280 don't have."

Are you saying the SX270/SX280 do not have hard drives?

SX270 uses a laptop hard drive that mounts under the motherboard tray.
I was in error about the SX280.
Confused myself because the GX270 and GX280 SFF use the same layout as each other and that's what I was thinking about.
Changing the USFF to GX____ from SX____ doesn't help me keep things straight either.
.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Dell GX620

Interesting, looks like SX280 and GX620 are built on the same reference board but GX620 uses the newer chipset.

I get Dell boards now and then but not the whole chassis and until recently I've been trying to avoid them simply because I don't like dealing with proprietary layouts.
Curiosity finally killed the cat and I've thought up a little experiment I wanna do on some of the models that I need a complete chassis for so I've been shoppin' for some complete units [cheap - LOL].

I've been saying "220uF 16v" when what I mean is the small uF caps in general.
When I rebuild a board that I'll have to support for any length of time, if those caps are 85c [or from certain crap brands] they go bye bye.
Replacing ALL of those caps on a board costs a lot less in the long run than wasting several hours [or days] chasing screwy problems.
They don't go bad often but when they do the problems they create can cost you a ton of time going in circles before you get it tracked down to the caps.
- Hard drives that keep getting corrupted on a particular board but work fine on others is a good example. [Same-same with RAM that tests good in other boards but fails in a suspect board.]
- Here's one experience of that exact problem with HDD controllers:
Just before I heard of the whole bad caps 'thing', I built a system for my niece using a brand new Soyo SY-P4VGA. At about a year old it started corrupting the hard drive and if I put -any- drive [HDD or optical] on the secondary controller it wouldn't detect ANY drives present on either controller. I went around and with it wiping and changing out drives and so forth trying to 'get it right' but it kept losing data a week or two after each 'fix'. Since she was off to college soon and I was due to move out of State, her folks had me refurbish a laptop for her instead. [Which was the plan anyway, we just switched her to a laptop 6 months sooner than planned.]
The Soyo based system got shoved in a corner in their garage where it sat for a couple years. I eventually got it back [my wife wanted the 'girly' case for her new system] and [now knowing about caps issues] what I found wrong was two bad 100uF 16v between the chipset and the IDE ports.
They did say 105c on them but they were Sacon [formerly GSC] so they are probably more like 50c.
Recapped the whole board then everything worked fine again.

Slightly OT.
Soyo boards are usually great boards - IF you replace EVERY flippin' cap on them.
Short of that they tend to degrade fast after 6-18 months use.

~~

About Dell 'cheaping out' on their boards.
It's not Dell, it's Intel, the mobo manufacturer [often built by Foxconn for Intel on some 'Partnership' contract.]
I'm saying that because Intel does the same thing on boards that aren't specifically built for Dell.

- I got this from reading some Intel marketing crap.
It applies to PC's and Workstations, not outright Servers.
[I'm not saying I agree. - I'm just relating how Intel's 'Suits' think.]

- Intel has this idea that the 'maximum useful lifetime' [as in 'practical useful lifetime'] of a system is 7 years assuming a 40 hour work week and that the system is off when not in use. That works out to 14560 hours of 'on time' and 1820 power up/down cycles for the system.
- Based on that they analyze and test components [including mobo, CPU, RAM, drives, ICs in general, caps, thermal paste, everything] and build systems/mobos/CPU's/Chipsets to last -a minimum of- 14560 hours of 'on time' and 1820 power cycles. They don't determine the maximum time it will last, they design based on things lasting -at least- that long.
Any lifetime past that is shear luck.

Mentioned because: Those 85c caps probably WILL last for 14560 hours of 'on time' - but people [or offices] that never power down their systems eat those 14560 hours up in ~607 days. [~20 months.]
.

[Topcat]

Re: Dell GX620

I haven't seen a 745 in the shop yet......I sense another train wreck, knowing dell though. The SX/GX270 and 280 are low to mid-grade systems, so I can see them cutting a few corners here and there to keep the prices down. However, the precision line just bewilders me. These are systems are 'high-end workstations' according to them, that start out at 3000 bucks and rapidly went up when new (depending on what bells and whistles you buy with it). It boggles the imagination why they cheap out on those... Getting them to admit they screwed up? Good luck!! Even when they lost a class action lawsuit and were forced to extend warranties on GX270 and GX280 models, they still never admitted they did anything wrong...

[PCTechNY23]

Re: Dell GX620

Do you have any 745s in? I would love to see what those fans look like. I am sure Dell will charge $50 for them; maybe we can get them to admit their mistake and give them out to SX-280 and GX-620USFF owners' lol. Or we can figure out what fan and source a bracket maker. After the GX270, GX280, SX270, SX280, A couple precision duel Zeon machines and for the last straw GX-520 failures like most govt and non profits the company I work for has switched to HP. Dell has taken the greatest nosedive I have ever seen. I am one capacitor away from officially declaring Acer more reliable than Dell. The only worse piece of hardware I have seen lately is the Xbox. Those things look like they were designed and put together by a secret groups of Encino men in a secret plot assume the identity of a OEMs and manipulate their way to the bottom of the lot only to blame Dan Marino for the entire thing.

[PCTechNY23]

Re: Dell GX620

No, but I have purchased caps from him and bounced a lot of questions off him. I couldn't find any other pics online. I suppose I could take a couple pics myself but no need to take a picture that has been taken.