Unidentified caps in a media player

[el cappo]

Hi. I recently bought a bricked Kaiboer brand Realtek based media player.
I planned to revive it but discovered what looked like two kaput caps.
The player keeps rebooting.

I have trouble identifying suitable replacements as I can't find the datasheets for them.
They are KHCON brand caps rated at 100uF 16V.
However there are also several KCH brand caps also rated at 100uF 16V.

See fourth picture for positions of the two brands.
Yellows are KHCON. Orange are KCH

First and second show the burn marks on the sides of the KHCON caps.
Then again they may be burn marks from a carelessly placed soldering iron at the factory. ???

Third shows bird's eye view of the caps in question.

Fifth shows KCH brand cap

1. Do faulty caps ever burn like this?
2. Why are there two brands of the same rating?
3. What suitable replacements should I get?

TQ

[mariushm]

Re: Unidentified caps in a media player

Please do the world of favor and stop using imageshack, it's horrible. Add the images as attachments or use another host

Large images:

http://*************/a/img145/2887/img5997bv.jpg
http://*************/a/img337/5136/img5998w.jpg
http://*************/a/img38/4215/birdqip.jpg
http://*************/a/img717/4779/boardbc.jpg
http://*************/a/img337/8232/kchz.jpg


Unless the aluminum in the can was really bad, it's unlikely to be bad capacitor. They probably touched the can with soldering iron tip.

There's a chip there, that has written there 3.3V DC. Grab a multimeter and put it on DC, put the black probe to GND (one of the screws on the sides of the board) and then measure the voltage on the pins on that chip.

One should say 3.3v or very close to 3.3v, one should say something very close to 0 (being the ground pin) and one should say something higher than 3.3v, probably 5v or more. Do this while the board it powers but be careful.

If that chip isn't showing 3.25-3.35v then it's either bad, or the capacitors near it are screwing its output.

As for 100uF 16v capacitors, look for Panasonic FM or FR capacitors for 100uF 16v or 25v, both would work
Nichicon HC, HD, HE, PW would also work , United Chemi Con KY, LXZ , Rubycon ZLH, YXG ....

These are all high quality brands and capacitors, your capacitors are no-name, general purpose.. cheaper and more plain capacitors would probably still work just fine but it's just a few cents difference for such capacitors.

[el cappo]

Re: Unidentified caps in a media player

Please do the world of favor and stop using imageshack, it's horrible. Add the images as attachments or use another host

As for 100uF 16v capacitors, look for Panasonic FM or FR capacitors for 100uF 16v or 25v, both would work
Nichicon HC, HD, HE, PW would also work , United Chemi Con KY, LXZ , Rubycon ZLH, YXG ....

These are all high quality brands and capacitors, your capacitors are no-name, general purpose.. cheaper and more plain capacitors would probably still work just fine but it's just a few cents difference for such capacitors.

Sorry about the imageshacks. I spent an hour mucking around before I found the correct Manage Attachment button.

So I can replace all ten 100uF 16V capacitors (both brands) with one brand and series then?
Why would they use two brands of the same rating?
There were seven and three of the cheap caps.

If that chip isn't showing 3.25-3.35v then it's either bad, or the capacitors near it are screwing its output.

I measured fluctuating 3.26 - 3.27 on a 3.3V pin on the serial port (one of the six pin connector) so I guess that's OK?

[mariushm]

Re: Unidentified caps in a media player

Yes, you can replace all ten with 100uF 16v, IF they are all 100uF. I see in one of the pictures a capacitor saying 220uF.

I don't know why they'd use two different brands - maybe they just had some old stock from another job and dumped the old capacitors with the new batch... it's Chinese stuff, no name manufacturer.

[el cappo]

Re: Unidentified caps in a media player

Yes, you can replace all ten with 100uF 16v, IF they are all 100uF. I see in one of the pictures a capacitor saying 220uF.

I don't know why they'd use two different brands - maybe they just had some old stock from another job and dumped the old capacitors with the new batch... it's Chinese stuff, no name manufacturer.

Thanks.
I'm probably wrong but my guess is the two different capacitor brands have different esr and ripple values.
I had a Acer motherboard that used single cap of a different brand but with the same capacitance and voltage as the rest.

[MerlinCan]

Re: Unidentified caps in a media player

Does anyone other than Me have problems with these Mediasonic HW-150PVR?

Well I had one, and it failed after about 1/2 yr of service. The fix was based on what I found to be the Cap(s) seem to be of low quality.
Turns out there is one that won the prize of the most vulnerable. It is the 1000uf 16V one.

I could see the top of the can bulging ever so slightly and then when I looked at the bottom of the cap, it had blown the hard rubber plug down and out between the main-board and he cap. In fact it 1st appeared to be some sort of spacer.

When I replaced the blown cap with a 1000uf 35V one all worked fine.
Cheers....