Re: Is ESR meter worth buying

OK, so I was misinformed or under-informed. Good to know. It's as much as I had already suspected. The meter will show low ESR if there are other good capacitors in the circuit.

The meter is not useless, but is much less valuable than I had first considered. This might help others when considering a meter purchase.

Re: Mass Rubycon failure on MSI K9N NEO-F

I'm now using polymers on all failed Rubycon caps. If a motherboard can kill a Rubycon cap, then it can kill any electrolytic cap. The price has come way down on the polys.

Re: Is ESR meter worth buying

I recently purchased and assembled the Blue ESR meter. When caps are off the board, I believe that I am getting readings that are correct. Most good low esr caps are reading .00 to .02 and bad caps are reading much, much higher - (most in the .1 to 50 range)

Here's my question. I thought that I read somewhere that you can test bad caps without removing them from a motherboard. I haven't had any luck with this. They always read as low as a good one unless I actually remove them from the board. Is my meter the problem, am I doing something...

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

I have a question. I've replaced about 1000 caps in the last year and I have a huge bin filled with the bad caps. I've seen plenty of Panasonic caps on boards, but I've never had to replace one. Most of these are the miniature ovens that will kill most any cap with time. I've replaced hundreds of Rubycon caps in GX270 and SX270 models, but the Panasonic caps are always fine. Does anyone ever come across bad Panasonic caps?