Hi,

The difficulty of unsoldering the capacitors might come from that the Radeon 9000 Pro was released just in the time frame where lead-free solder started to become required in consumer products (For example the RoHS in the EU), so you might need to set your soldering station to a bit higher temperature than usual if previously used on older electronics.

While I haven't recapped this particular model of the card, if it is the regular "barrel" style electrolytic caps that failed they should have the correct values printed on them to be able to select a replacement. Before removing any of the capacitors take a note which direction the polarity is, sometimes the card PCB doesn't have the polarity indicated or in rare cases it is printed in the wrong direction.

If the caps leaked I would also check the traces and components the caps leaked on for damage.

MagefromAntares wrote on Yesterday, 06:59:

Hi, […]
Show full quote

Hi,

The difficulty of unsoldering the capacitors might come from that the Radeon 9000 Pro was released just in the time frame where lead-free solder started to become required in consumer products (For example the RoHS in the EU), so you might need to set your soldering station to a bit higher temperature than usual if previously used on older electronics.

While I haven't recapped this particular model of the card, if it is the regular "barrel" style electrolytic caps that failed they should have the correct values printed on them to be able to select a replacement. Before removing any of the capacitors take a note which direction the polarity is, sometimes the card PCB doesn't have the polarity indicated or in rare cases it is printed in the wrong direction.

If the caps leaked I would also check the traces and components the caps leaked on for damage.

Luckily there are no other components around, I will try to increase the temperature of the soldering iron, thanks

Pre-heat is king. The cards PCB is absorbing the heat emitted by the soldering iron. You need to pre-heat the PCB, which will make the job easy.

If your card has the same PCB as mine, here is a completed re-cap:
Re: VGA Repair report collection

5a796d wrote on Yesterday, 06:16:

I'd like to know if anyone has already done a recap on this card.

And which card is that... as in, who made it? (e.g. is it an ATI-made card, or was it some 3rd party OE like Sapphire, PowerColor, etc.?)

If it's an ATI-made card, chances are almost zero you have bad caps.

Black screen after drivers load is/was somewhat common with a few ATI driver versions and card combos, IIRC. Unfortunately, I can't give you exact info on which cards with which drivers I've encountered this issue since it was a long time ago... but I have ran into this issue a number of times. My solution usually ended up being either newer or older drivers resolved it, or the motherboard chipset/GART driver needed to be changed.

That being said, also inspect the card for chipped or missing SMDs on the back - very common with 2nd hand cards when people don't store them properly. It's possible that a termination resistor or similar is missing and causing enough RAM errors to make the card driver crash. On that note, posting pictures here might be helpful too.

tehsiggi wrote on Yesterday, 07:58:

Pre-heat is king. The cards PCB is absorbing the heat emitted by the soldering iron. You need to pre-heat the PCB, which will make the job easy.

If your card has the same PCB as mine, here is a completed re-cap:
Re: VGA Repair report collection

no it's not like yours but the positioning of the components is almost identical, it's a sapphire, thanks for the link

5a796d wrote on Yesterday, 09:10:

tehsiggi wrote on Yesterday, 07:58:

Pre-heat is king. The cards PCB is absorbing the heat emitted by the soldering iron. You need to pre-heat the PCB, which will make the job easy.

If your card has the same PCB as mine, here is a completed re-cap:
Re: VGA Repair report collection

no it's not like yours but the positioning of the components is almost identical, it's a sapphire, thanks for the link

It's not a hardware issue, I've tested it on 5 different motherboards,
including the motherboard I used it on back in the day with different chipsets and CPUs, and it always has the problem. The card itself is intact and has been thoroughly checked.

as I said before, the only visible thing that could cause the problem are the capacitors

I managed to desolder them by heating well and raising the temperature of the soldering iron, thanks!
out of 13 capacitors, 10 need to be replaced 😜

5a796d wrote on Yesterday, 15:33:

I managed to desolder them by heating well and raising the temperature of the soldering iron, thanks!
out of 13 capacitors, 10 need to be replaced 😜

I think it could really help others in the future if you told us what/which brand of card you have. It's possible that all cards from this brand may be affected then.

In that regard, I'm also curious what brand were the capacitors, and why did they need replacing? Bad ESR? Low capacitance? Or really actually leaking and/or bulging?