I noticed today that my Gigabyte GA-8IK1100 has a couple of bulging capacitors. I haven't built a system around this board yet, but I've booted it and run some benchmarks and everything seems fine. Should I not use this board in its current state? Could it possibly damage attached components?
Not a good idea to use a board with bulging caps, even if it seems to run fine. It will fail completely - witch can be avoided by a simple recapping. As for damaging other components, it's possible (especially the CPU or RAM depending on what caps are bulging) but unlikely.
Replace the damaged capacitors. It's easy and cheap.
^
Failed or failing caps will at the very least mean more ripple getting through to your semiconductors which means more stress and more chance of the chips failing.
All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder
wrote:Failed or failing caps will at the very least mean more ripple getting through to your semiconductors which means more stress and more chance of the chips failing.
This, I would replace the caps as soon as possible.
With bad caps I would use the parts very sparingly and with a light load.
I agree - right now, if the board is still passing tests then you know that recapping it will definitely give you a good working board when you're done. After it starts failing tests, then you can't be sure if recapping will be enough anymore as other damage may have been done.
In addition to the ICs being exposed to high ripple, occasionally a dying cap will fail short, and if that happens it will blow out MOSFETs.
I've done benchmarking on boards with bulging caps, mostly because of time constraints, but also to see if it actually works. Surprisingly pretty much all of them worked and completed all the tests.
But if I would use such a board on a regular basis I would absolutel replace the caps before using it.
I have an Abit BE6 with bulging caps (and one with just a hint of brown up top), and it works. But like Phil said, I pretty much just tested to see it boots and can install Windows. I need to recap it... but I'm so behind schedule wise. I still haven't even tested all the random stuff I got in lots last week.
Its cheap and easy, a local shop near me will do it for 5 dollars a cap + 10 dollar service fee.
Update: I had the board out again today, testing power supplies and RAM. After running it for a while, I noticed quite a few more caps that were either bulging or actually leaking. I did a thorough inspection last time, and there were definitely only two. I guess all the caps decided to fail at once? Weird...
Welp, it wasn't that great of a motherboard anyway. I guess I'll just replace it.
wrote:Update: I had the board out again today, testing power supplies and RAM. After running it for a while, I noticed quite a few more caps that were either bulging or actually leaking. I did a thorough inspection last time, and there were definitely only two. I guess all the caps decided to fail at once? Weird...
Not that weird. They were probably already bad - throwing power to them pushed them off the deep end in the "visually failed" department.
Remember - You can't tell if a cap is good by looking at it.
wrote:Welp, it wasn't that great of a motherboard anyway. I guess I'll just replace it.
It wasn't? Seems like it was pretty popular at the time just from a brief glance at your newegg link. Were you looking for it to have certain features/functionality that isn't there?
wrote:They were probably already bad - throwing power to them pushed them off the deep end in the "visually failed" department.
Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking. I'd put the board through its paces before, though, so the clock must have just run out recently.
wrote:It wasn't? Seems like it was pretty popular at the time just from a brief glance at your newegg link. Were you looking for it to have certain features/functionality that isn't there?
I don't have any specific gripes with the board, I'm just not that attached to it. The AGP 8x slot is nice, but Socket 478 is a little limiting. Still sorry to see it go, though.
Ahh rats. Sorry you had to go through all that, btw.
Psyche yourself up for the next board!
wrote:Update: I had the board out again today, testing power supplies and RAM. After running it for a while, I noticed quite a few more caps that were either bulging or actually leaking. I did a thorough inspection last time, and there were definitely only two. I guess all the caps decided to fail at once? Weird...
Not weird. It happened in a ASUS A8N-SLI SE. Commenced in one capacitor nearest chipset and the next thing I saw was one next to the BIOS chip.
Brand of these guys: KZG (Two Rubycons saved me).
Sometimes this ancient 939 board would refuse to POST (specially leaving it turned off for a long period).
Now everything is fine, but it is clear I have to recap the whole thing.
