A friend and I ordered identical hardware back in 2003. I recently posted about our Soltek mobo bad caps. It turns out both of our video cards have bad caps as well. These are Leadtek Winfast A250's with a Ti4200 and 128 Megs of memory. My card is still working, but my friend's card has recently developed strange problems in the 3d modes.

On my card:
GSC 330uF 6.3V - isn't bulged but has leaked
GSC 1000 uF 6.3V - is beginning to bulge

On his card:
GSC 1000 uF 6.3V - has bulged and leaked.

He sent an e-mail to Leadtek, and they responded...

Just a quick update...

I re-inspected my motherboard last night and found that all 4 caps nearest to the CPU are bulging, but only 2 show any residue of leakage. The two that aren't leaking yet aren't nearly as bad, but they are obviously beginning to form the bulge. These caps are 2200 uF 6.3 V. At the angle in my case, I was unable to read the brand, but I think it might be GSC (known to be prone to failing, and known to be used on other soltek boards of this era). The other caps on my board appear to be different smaller sizes, and likely from the same company, but they all appear...

As I said, this information isn't first hand, though I have no reason to doubt it. One of the primary companies involved was Nichicon. For the US company, Nichicon has been a very dependable brand.

When the U.S. company started seeing fails, they sent several of the parts back, and that was when the vendor spotted the fakes. The vendor showed the US firm how to tell, on that part at least, if it was legit or not, but I don't have any details.

The US firm then examined the remaining parts they had kept, and sure enough, they were able to see the difference too. It...

I recently spoke to a number of buyers who work for various tech companies in the US. They know a lot about the "bad cap" problem, but they have a totally different take on why it is happening. From what they've seen, it's not due to some mysterious stolen formula, or substandard methods being used. Rather, it is mostly due to counterfeit parts.

In the last few years, across different shipments from different trusted suppliers from China and Taiwan, the parts they've received were counterfeit. The parts look identical and are nearly impossible to distinguish from real...

A friend an I bought identical hardware in 2003. For mobo we picked the Soltek SL-75DRV5. Recently, he was having some flaky behavior with his video card, and he noticed several bad caps on his board. At least 5 were bulged and leaking yellowish residue at the top. I took a look at my board and noticed 2 that are bulged and leaking residue.