Gateway FX510X - build date 8/10/06

[Telkwa]

Friend called me - his Gateway acting weird. I brought over a box full of HDD's, cables, some PC's, Linux CD's etc.
We screwed around for hours. Swapping HDD's around, etc. In his BIOS, the IDE Configuration was set to RAID. We replaced the CMOS battery (the only reason I could think of for BIOS to go changing itself) and he was able to run Windows Repair. The PC sat for hours at the end of the Repair process saying "Please wait". He rebooted and it ran.

I asked him to bring it over to my well-lit shop so I could clean it out and replace thermal paste on all heatsinks. I had a feeling we hadn't solved the problem. Once we got it on the bench and got some light on it, we could see three bad caps on the Intel board.

I contacted Gateway's tech chat. It looks like he's out of luck. They blew me off.

[kc8adu]

Re: Gateway FX510X - build date 8/10/06

choices are toss or recap.
guess which one i suggest....

[Telkwa]

Re: Gateway FX510X - build date 8/10/06

Hi, kc8 -
This is my second run-in with blown caps. A coupla years ago a friend had an off-brand board with several bad caps. I suggested mb replacement. He's a farmer who likes to fix stuff and insisted on trying to fix the board. We bought a small sack of caps from badcaps.net, then realized that neither one of us had the right tools. I had a gun that wouldn't get hot enuf, we didn't have a good solder sucker, etc.

An electrician at work volunteered to do the job. Yay! He did pretty good actually, but the board still died a year or so later.

Not sure why, but I have a good feeling that the folks at badcaps would do an expert job of recapping, and it's kind of ridiculous to give up on a 3.5 year old PC. I'm guessing the owner will want to take a crack at Gateway but they'll probably blow him off too.

The FX510X is a BTX design, which as you know died a quick death after Intel finally ditched the Netburst architecture. Trying to fit a standard ATX board inside the Gateway case would, I'm afraid, be an ugly hack.

So it looks to me like your assessment is correct - the owner either bites the bullet and gets the board fixed, or scraps the PC for parts.

I know there aren't any guarantees, but I'm wondering if you've had experience with theses boards and would be willing to take a guess as to cost to repair? Any reason to think that the ballpark $70 charge wouldn't apply?

[Telkwa]

Re: Gateway FX510X - build date 8/10/06

Sorry, I didn't see an edit button -
I've been reading some of the other threads. Didn't realize that caps can fail without any visual clues.
Does badcaps.net repair service include some method for checking the rest of the board? I read the webpages that describe repair but hoping for a little more detail...

[370forlife]

Re: Gateway FX510X - build date 8/10/06

If you send your board to topcat, he replaces all suspect caps.

Known good series with very little failures like almost all Rubycons and Panasonics he usually does not replace, but bad series from good manufacturers like nichicon HM/HN he will replace. At least that is my understanding. (Except in the little oven box 'puters, he just replaces them all)

[Telkwa]

Re: Gateway FX510X - build date 8/10/06

Hey guys -
Thanks for the helpful answers. I'm (attempting to anyway) attaching a couple of shots just cause it's fun to look at this stuff.

Is "KZG" an actual brand?

Anyways, the pic with the one blown cap... this is, as mentioned previously, a BTX board. Guess where this cap is positioned? Right in the jet blast coming off the CPU. Not exactly inspired engineering.

The other pic shows a blown cap and a bulging one in the background. These two are positioned right along the top of the board, where the temps would probably be higher. These are both KZG's too. There are several 6.3V 1200 uf Ruby's on the board that aren't showing any damage that I can see.

[370forlife]

Re: Gateway FX510X - build date 8/10/06

KZG is the series, United Chemi-con is the brand, you can tell by the little shield logo. They are generally a very good brand, just, like nichicon's HN/HM series, have some series (such as KZG) that are not very tolerant of heat.

[Telkwa]

Re: Gateway FX510X - build date 8/10/06

Note to topcat:

Looks like the owner might send this board to you. Do you have a line of flame-resistant capacitors available? This board needs at least one.

[Telkwa]

Re: Gateway FX510X - build date 8/10/06

I don't know if topcat was out in the shop soldering away all during the holidays or what, but the owner got his board back already. The work looks very nice, and the PC runs like a champ.

Another satisfied customer.