I would not bother. If you get top end caps you'll be set for 10-20 years or so.

Yea, if I saw someone "Socket" caps on their board, I wouldn't buy from them. Get yourself some good Nichicons or NCCs and your set.

Nichicon, Nippon/United Chemi Con, Rubycon, Suncon, Panasonic. All top brands.

gdjacobs wrote:

Nichicon, Nippon/United Chemi Con, Rubycon, Suncon, Panasonic. All top brands.

I've also heard good things about Sanyo and Goldstar, Not sure. If you want help with caps, pop over to the EEVBlog's forum, they've got tons of people who would be glad to help you.

Sanyo is Suncon. Is Goldstar still a thing? I mean, Goldstar electronics are now LG.

I'm not that old am I?

I wouldn't bother with sockets on a motherboard, especially from the 80'-90's. The traces are reasonable in size and thickness, so they can handle multiple reflows without worry. As it was already said, good quality caps will last anywhere from 10 years to more than 30.

I do plan to use cap sockets on my ARGUS sound cards as I want to play with sound signatures, but I normally wouldn't bother with them. Chip sockets are worth it if you are going to rework the board.

Thanks folks. I'm going to give it a shot on this 1000SL motherboard anyway, picking up some pin headers from Amazon, we'll see what happens. I doubt I'll have much luck resurrecting the box anyway, a few long traces have peeled off board completely 🙁

Depends a bit what is the purpose of the capacitors. Are they smaller (~100nF) bypass capacitors or larger (several uF) bulk storage caps?

Because sockets will cause some extra resistance (socket contact resistance, oxidation..) and inductance so it kind of makes the capacitor less effective at higher frequencies (for example, if the CPU runs at 8 MHz, it will gulp current pulses at 8 MHz, which the caps must be able to provide to keep voltage ripple within reason). That's why sometimes you see recommendations to solder chips directly without putting them into sockets.