Tantalum capacitor. They are pretty notorious for short circuiting and smoking/popping.

i should be the same value of the other "C11"

If you're going to replace one, you might as well replace both.

That would be a "tantrum" capacitor. Pretty notorious for literally blowing up like the one in the photo. Might as well replace both, as alexanrs suggested.

Sutekh94 wrote:

That would be a "tantrum" capacitor. Pretty notorious for literally blowing up like the one in the photo. Might as well replace both, as alexanrs suggested.

I bet there are a bunch of them. In fact I already see a third.

smeezekitty wrote:

Tantalum capacitor. They are pretty notorious for short circuiting and smoking/popping.

+1

I've had to replace three now on two separate motherboards. Its funny watching them smoking, it looks a matching being lit. 😎

From what I've read from others experiences, tantalum caps either suddenly fail catastrophically like that, or they last forever. I've never heard of anyone replacing a tantalum cap because it was out of spec.

Guys,

Thanks for all the responses.

There doesn't seem to be any markings that would indicate ratings, and my DMM doesn't do capacitance. The only way to measure them properly would be to isolate one and put it up against a cap-meter?

The one in the photo was connected to +5v, so will look for one similar online with a rating of around 2-3x this?

Does anyone know a good source online where I can just order a bunch of them?

mockingbird wrote:

From what I've read from others experiences, tantalum caps either suddenly fail catastrophically like that, or they last forever. I've never heard of anyone replacing a tantalum cap because it was out of spec.

Yea, this is the first time i've required to change these little things, the big caps are no probs and are easier to identify, also with having the markings on their side.

You should be able to remove it and try powering the board again. It will likely work okay without it. Perhaps stability might be slightly negatively impacted.

This tends to happen when tantalums are left unpowered for a very long time (years). I'm not sure if environmental conditions also contribute.
I think if such a board is powered up periodically the tantalums will last basically forever. Realistically, stuff is going to sit around though.

When powering up a board that one considers high risk for a tantalum tantrum, I wonder if using an adjustable power supply would be a good strategy. It might be possible to "warm them up" slowly that way. Hook up to each rail in turn, starting at a very low supply voltage and slowly increasing it. Once they've been broken back in, they should be safe to use normally, I think.
Just a theory - I don't have the equipment to do it, and I guess not many people do. It might also be complicated by the possibility that some circuits won't switch on until some voltage is met, and then the downstream tantalums would still get a rude awakening.

I understand what you're meaning in the general sense, though not sure if it applies here... I attributed it to the open circuit as the track has now completey corroded away. The system may not work well either on a lower voltages that are gradually incremented... lower voltages generally mean higher currents and as a byproduct produce more heat.

/\ Lower voltages only mean more current if you keep the power draw constant. This would be the case, for example, in a VRM that is able to compensate for lower voltages. In a normal circuit, if you feed it lower voltages, the impedance will still be the same, therefore the current will be lower as well.