I have two of these boards, an Abit KT7A and a KT7A-RAID. The KT7A is about a year older than the RAID.
It seems to me that the first caps to go on these boards are the three 1500uf 6.3V ones near the AGP slot. On my KT7A, these were bulged visibly (Jackcon brand). On my KT7A-R, these didn't show any visible signs of deterioration, but I kept getting blue screen errors that referred to an Nvidia driver, and the machine was generally unstable.
After recapping both boards completely with Rubycon MBZ series, they are running remarkably well.
Interestingly, I was using a Duron 1.1 with 200MHz FSB with the KT7A-R and I was unable to run the RAM asynchronously at 133MHz (Host CLK+33) when the board was brand new but it works beautifully now! So you could say after the recapping it is better than new. I've left these machines running a Quake 3 timedemo loop overnight and no crashes yet.
I used a Nicholson 30W iron with a medium sized tip. After removing the old caps, I didn't bother to clean the holes, instead pushing the new caps through the old solder. This seems to work fine. I know Topcat et al would not recommend this, but I've done 4 boards and a network switch power supply this way and no issues yet.
It seems to me that the first caps to go on these boards are the three 1500uf 6.3V ones near the AGP slot. On my KT7A, these were bulged visibly (Jackcon brand). On my KT7A-R, these didn't show any visible signs of deterioration, but I kept getting blue screen errors that referred to an Nvidia driver, and the machine was generally unstable.
After recapping both boards completely with Rubycon MBZ series, they are running remarkably well.
Interestingly, I was using a Duron 1.1 with 200MHz FSB with the KT7A-R and I was unable to run the RAM asynchronously at 133MHz (Host CLK+33) when the board was brand new but it works beautifully now! So you could say after the recapping it is better than new. I've left these machines running a Quake 3 timedemo loop overnight and no crashes yet.
I used a Nicholson 30W iron with a medium sized tip. After removing the old caps, I didn't bother to clean the holes, instead pushing the new caps through the old solder. This seems to work fine. I know Topcat et al would not recommend this, but I've done 4 boards and a network switch power supply this way and no issues yet.
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