Re: Dell SX270

Picture of 3 of the bad units....

Re: Dell SX270

As far as I know, Dell is more than just a low end assembler. I think they design all their own cases, motherboards, and all that. This particular problem doesn't seem to be something I would blame them for because Nichicon has historically been a very reputable supplier.

Perhaps there should have been some sort of "mea culpa" press release by now, along with a recall rather than these "no questions asked" in field replacements, but at least corporate customers who see a pattern are being serviced.

The symptoms we...

Re: Dell SX270

Dell sent a tech over today with a load of new SX270 motherboards.
He pulled our RAM, and CPUs, transplanted them to the new motherboards and we are back up and running.

The new motherboards have Rubycons with a "K" shaped groove on the top of the caps, unlike the old oozing Nichicon's which had a "+" shaped groove.

Re: Dell SX270

Why is this the right forum? (Off-brand or unknown?)

Dell is not an off-brand. Seems there should be a Dell forum by now.

Anyways, more research shows that all our SX270s (smaller form factor version of GX270) with date code 020304 (feb3, 2004) have failed with leaky Nichicon 1800uf 16v capactiors.

All our newer SX270s with date code 051504 (may15,2004) which use Rubycon capacitors are fine.

So it seems some sort of quality defect with Nichicon capacitors supplied to Dell in early 2004. I hear that Apple...

We have a large number of Dell SX270s with defective Nichicon capacitors.

URLs of interest:

[url]http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=oplex_other&message.id=18420[/url]
[url]http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=pes_other&message.id=13069&query.id=8312#M13069[/url]
[url]http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/hardware/desktops/0,39001727,39015761p,00.htm[/url]

[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_Plague[/url]
[url]http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/feb03/ncap...