seems legit to me. Those caps are definitely in need of replacement.

Yep, bad caps. Don't be too hard on the seller though, I have a NIB board with bulging caps and unless you know what you're looking for, they're not particularly obvious. Definitely refund time all the same.

Get a partial refund and replace those 4 or get a full refund (but you will lose out shipping it back).

Quite a few of my Socket 754 motherboards (mostly Gigabytes) had bad caps around the CPU (probably from the heatsink cooking marginal capacitors for years) and I just replace them (pretty cheap).

badmojo wrote:

Yep, bad caps. Don't be too hard on the seller though, I have a NIB board with bulging caps and unless you know what you're looking for, they're not particularly obvious. Definitely refund time all the same.

Yes, that series of capacitor (Chemi-Con KZG) will bulge even when they sit idly. So the seller was not being dishonest. It could very well be that the board was never even used before.

Those Nichicon HM on the other hand, behind those KZG capacitors might also need replacing. That board came out in late 2004. 2004 was the year when Nichicon fixed that series. Problem is, it's not so clear-cut when exactly Nichicon fixed them in 2004, so they might be OK.

Sounds like another victim of the capacitor plague. Given the era in which the hardware originated, I'm not all too surprised.

badmojo wrote:

Yep, bad caps. Don't be too hard on the seller though, I have a NIB board with bulging caps and unless you know what you're looking for, they're not particularly obvious. Definitely refund time all the same.

I don't really believe in being nasty to people, and I'm going to give the seller the benefit of the doubt. I basically won the bid at $10.51, and paid basically $10.00 for S&H. I've requested a refund for the $10.51 + $5.00 toward new capacitors, while keeping the board. So, basically a $4.00 difference. Thanks for the response!

Unknown_K wrote:

Quite a few of my Socket 754 motherboards (mostly Gigabytes) had bad caps around the CPU (probably from the heatsink cooking marginal capacitors for years) and I just replace them (pretty cheap).

Where do you find the capacitors to replace them? How much do they typically cost?

mockingbird wrote:

Yes, that series of capacitor (Chemi-Con KZG) will bulge even when they sit idly. So the seller was not being dishonest. It could very well be that the board was never even used before.

Those Nichicon HM on the other hand, behind those KZG capacitors might also need replacing. That board came out in late 2004. 2004 was the year when Nichicon fixed that series. Problem is, it's not so clear-cut when exactly Nichicon fixed them in 2004, so they might be OK.

This might be a good motherboard to use as a learning experience, so I'm still excited about the purchase. Do you have a recommendation on where to get suitable replacement capacitors for both the KZG and the Nichicon HM capacitors? Would you be able to suggest a reasonable cost for replacing them? (So, that if I see them for $20.00 -- I'll know I should be able to find them for much cheaper.) Thank you for your response!

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

Sounds like another victim of the capacitor plague. Given the era in which the hardware originated, I'm not all too surprised.

Do you suppose that the motherboard should otherwise be find, if the capacitors are replaced properly? I don't mind spending a few more dollars on the motherboard in order to replace the capacitors -- I'll use it as a learning experience. But are motherboards of this era otherwise worth fixing?

siberiankiss wrote:

This might be a good motherboard to use as a learning experience, so I'm still excited about the purchase. Do you have a recommendation on where to get suitable replacement capacitors for both the KZG and the Nichicon HM capacitors? Would you be able to suggest a reasonable cost for replacing them? (So, that if I see them for $20.00 -- I'll know I should be able to find them for much cheaper.) Thank you for your response!

Sure, I'd be glad to help. Start a post over at BadCaps.net forum, including photos of the board as well as a list of capacitors (Brand, Series, Voltage, Capacity, Width, Height), and I can post links to appropriate replacements.

But are motherboards of this era otherwise worth fixing?

No. I don't understand the appeal of a 754 motherboard.

Get you'r money back.... Those cap's are pretty bad and the board is no were near min condition.

In my oppinion all old boards are going to fail someday by bad caps from P2 era and on.
Everyone that loves older hardware like we do SHOULD be able to at least fix some broken capacitors and regain the old hardware their life back again before it is too late.

The board looks nice, i would have bought it even if i knew the caps were bad.
The guy selling it probably didnt know it was bad.

And as for going a refund it is a shamefull thing to do, if everyone would do those things noone would ever sell old hardware again that has some bulging caps. and would be a shame those got thrashed just because of a few bad ones on there.
The hardware deserves to get fixed, throwing out a good motherboard because of several bad capacitors is the dumbest thing you can do as the fix is so easy and with some practise everyone can do.

So easy to replace them, where are you from i can arrange you some for low money.
I have loads of 3300uF 6.3v 10mm Sanyo low esr and samsung 1500uF 16v 10mm caps.
You do not have to replace all of them, there are some in the 12v circuit before the voltage regulator and after the voltage regulator (mostly 6.3v for this hardware, and 2.5v for newer hardware for example)
I would replace all caps in the same power line of equal value if only one starts leaking or bulging.
Also check if there are 1000uF caps bad around the south bridge's and between the pci slots etc, shitty brands like teyeh etc fail and should be replaced all.
The very tiny ones you can leave on there.

It pays off to clean the system inside once a while and check if you see signs of bad bulging caps, if they start failing completely after some blue screens etc the power regulator can get destroyed or the cpu itself due to bad filtering and voltage and current spikes.

A good possible cause also for good brand caps to go bad on the mother board is to buy some shitty QTEC etc noname brand PSU's they suck at filtering the power lines and cause ripples that destroy the rest of the hardware in time.
I would not like to know how many people use A brand computer internal parts but together with a low cost psu, which can get on fire when there is too much current draw and kill all your hardware.

siberiankiss wrote:

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

Sounds like another victim of the capacitor plague. Given the era in which the hardware originated, I'm not all too surprised.

Do you suppose that the motherboard should otherwise be find, if the capacitors are replaced properly? I don't mind spending a few more dollars on the motherboard in order to replace the capacitors -- I'll use it as a learning experience. But are motherboards of this era otherwise worth fixing?

It might work, but you also might also experience issues. I haven't seen too many boards with bulging capacitors that flat out died, but it is possible.

I buy replacements from ebay, they seem to function fine and I have recapped quite a few boards over the years.