You are not going to tell me you also replaced all those smaller caps also, the pana fr and the zlh caps are already excellent caps and cannot believe they were bad.
The cpu power supply caps may have been the only bad ones out there.

The Panny FR and Ruby ZLH are replacements for the whatever smaller originals.

This mobo worked OK and visually al caps looked good, but there was the occasional cold boot restart, so I decided to replace the whole shebang.

Very nice job!

The sheer amount of caps on these boards is amazing. Makes recapping quite a bit of work and not cheap.

Very nice! Those are lovely looking caps. This brings back memories as I recapped my entire P4PE, but I used polymer caps. Recaps definitely give these boards life they didn't have, new most notably due to improved capacitors for the CPU and RAM stages.

Thanks. I considered polys but ultimately went for lytics, cheaper and more retroish.

While I'm at it I've beefed up my homebrew VRM heatsinks:

Unlike fancier versions like the SE or Deluxe with three mosfets per phase ...

... the base model P4P800 has to do with only two per phase, and they get fiercely hot while feeding an OCed Preshott.

Logistics wrote:

but I used polymer caps.

Could you please expand in this? Are there benefits to using polymer?

I just bought a new and sealed Asus P4P800 SE on eBay for $70. There's also a seller selling new open box ones. Good job though. Looks great! I've got a Gigabyte GA-6VTXE that needs to be recapped. I've already bought the capacitors but I'm a little scared about doing it myself because I'm not that good at soldering and everyone on YouTube makes it look easy 🤣

Anyone here in Melbourne, Australia want to help me out? 😀

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Logistics wrote:

but I used polymer caps.

Could you please expand in this? Are there benefits to using polymer?

Polymer are extremely low-impedance and have very good ripple handling. A socket 478 doesn't necessarily need polymers, but I had a mess of them so I used them. If you plan on overclocking then I would suggest using them in the VRM and RAM stages to keep things stable.

Excerpt from Capacitor Lab - Polymer Caps:

Benefits of Polymer Capacitors Polymer capacitors are characterised by lower ESR and ability to handle higher ripple […]
Show full quote

Benefits of Polymer Capacitors

Polymer capacitors are characterised by lower ESR and ability to handle higher ripple current than their wet electrolytic counterparts. They are also characterised by not changing their ESR when their operating temperature changes and also having a much longer life. Sanyo quotes a 10 times increase in lifetime for a 20degC reduction in operating temperature for their OS-CON polymer capacitors whist a wet electrolytic capacitor in comparison would increase lifetime by 4 times.

Low ESR

Low ESR is so important in electronics because the lower the ESR the faster the capacitor can discharge. This is a great benefit because it means the capacitors can respond faster to large current transitions. However there are several wet electrolytic capacitors which offer similar ESR as their polymer counterparts.

High Ripple

The high speed power delivery to the latest CPUs subjects the capacitors in the VRM to high ripple. This is why you will see polymer capacitors more often on vcore output on the latest motherboards as they can handle much more ripple than wet electrolytics ever will. Failure of electrolytic capacitors on vcore output can be partly attributed to exposure to ripple current that was beyond their specification.

Notice that a decent PSU providing stable voltages within ATX specs and low ripple is also a critical part in the equation. A piece of junk/old and tired PSU with cheap/bad caps flogging our mobo with out of spec voltages and high ripple will murder the best caps on the best mobo.

This is how it looks around the CPU socket on my Asus P4P800.

The larger caps seem to be United Chemi-con KZE like on TELVMs board . Are these good caps quality wise?
The smaller caps I cant identify. Perhaps someone can help me?

The smaller caps next to the CPU socket are Panasonic. The boxed "M" is their logo. Good stuff.

NJRoadfan wrote:

The smaller caps next to the CPU socket are Panasonic. The boxed "M" is their logo. Good stuff.

Good to know
Thanks!

Nice job you did there! I also have a recap planned, for my MS-6119 board. Need to find a cheap source for these Panasonic caps... Mouser looks like the place to be.

NJRoadfan wrote:

The smaller caps next to the CPU socket are Panasonic. The boxed "M" is their logo. Good stuff.

It's the Matsushita logo, actually 😉

Skyscraper wrote:

... The larger caps seem to be United Chemi-con KZE like on TELVMs board . Are these good caps quality wise?

Yes and no. Post 2006 or so ones are good. But back in the time when these boards were made the KZE and KZG series were plagued (some production problem they later identified, apologized and solved).

They look OK but I'd keep a suspicious eye on them ...

The smaller caps I cant identify. Perhaps someone can help me?

Panasonic FJ, top-notch caps as good or better than the Ruby MBZ. The 'M' logo comes from Matsushita, the founder of Panasonic. The 'T' vent pattern is a giveaway.

I envy the nine mosfets in your Deluxe 🤣 .

Notice that a decent PSU providing stable voltages within ATX specs and low ripple is also a critical part in the equation. A piece of junk/old and tired PSU with cheap/bad caps flogging our mobo with out of spec voltages and high ripple will murder the best caps on the best mobo.

This man speaks the truth! In fact I did a complete recap of the PSU with Panasonic caps to complement the P4PE. I still look back on that system with fond memories.

This is an amazing motherboard. I have a P4P800 SE that is apparently dying, it powers up only when it feels like it and I don't see any cap damage. Tried different RAM/CPU/GPU and PSU, but it is merely random when it powers up.

Any suggestions?

F2bnp wrote:

This is an amazing motherboard. I have a P4P800 SE that is apparently dying, it powers up only when it feels like it and I don't see any cap damage. Tried different RAM/CPU/GPU and PSU, but it is merely random when it powers up.

Any suggestions?

The Asus socket 478 boards are very picky when it comes to memory
If you only have tried some modules. Try a few more.
Try memory that can handle cas 3.
I have had issues with boards defaulting to cas 3 even when Winbond BH-5 memory has been used resulting in a system that wont post.
(In that case it wont be random though. It just wont post)

Exept beeing picky about memory the P4P800 is a nice and rock stable board.
Diffrent earlier Asus P4B533 boards have been a bit like you described but once you get them going they usually work until they loose the bios settings.

Your issue sounds a bit like problems with caps 😒

May I ask what is the big deal with this motherboard?

At my work I'm throwing away loads of Socket 478 systems/boards. Don't see the purpose of keeping more than one or two. Thought they had no sale value.

If you have a high end AGP card that you want to use for some reason, the high end last gen. i865 boards are the ones to go for. I personally have a Gigabyte GA-8IPE1000-G Socket 478 board to run a AGP capture card, but only because it was never made in a PCIe version.