What model is it? There were two different Awe64 Gold! cards.
CT4390
CT4540

CT4390, the longer one.

Nichicon, S.Y and G-LUXON

All of them trash tier, don't be fooled Nichicon is garbage otherwise it will never happen on Creative boards.

Audiophiles on their forums rave about the Nichicon FG

You mean those audiofools, and Nichicon knows how to steal their money by powdering their minds.

Need a good cap - Panasonic, Sanyo, Rubicon, United Chemycon, hell, even Teapo was better before they bought G-LUXON.

Nichicon make excellent caps. Generally, "audio grade" caps aren't worth the money, but appropriately specced regular caps should work nicely.

Nichicon make excellent caps.

Like those died during capacitor plague, bulging or increasing capacity during shelf life. Sure. And Creative or Gigabyte mix them with G-luxon, GSC, CapXon and other reputable brands within one product don't bothering wtih that Nichicon make excellent caps.

NCC also had KZG and KZJ caps failing left right and center. Nobody is proof against having a bad batch of product.

I’m considering Nichicons mainly because when looking online, one seller has all of the caps I need and they just happen to be Nichicons. 😁 (and they’re gold-colored, so they’d fit the color theme perfectly, but that’s a minor thing)

You reckon they won’t make that much of a difference?

The FG are like 2 times the price of normal Nichicons, but if you gents don’t really recommend them, I’ll look online for some other brands. I don’t really want to buy 20 caps from 5 different sellers.

And in the process of figuring out the missing caps on my own, I also noticed that the card I have has a 4,7uF 50V cap soldered where w 10uF 16v cap should be! The PCB has visible flux residue; I don’t know what the previous owner was thinking. Crazy.

My request for the 2 missing ones still stands; if you can, help a brother out!

As an audio DIYer, I used Nichicon capacitors many times: mostly their old “Great Supply” series in PSUs, but also FG and KZ series (advertised for audio applications), and also Muse BP where the circuit in question calls for a bipolar capacitor. I’ve never had one go bad on me, but then again these are all premium caps and I won’t be surprised if they’re made better than their cheap series.

That said, nowadays I prefer Panasonic caps which are usually cheaper and have better ratings re: their lifespan.

Yeah, I’m going to see if I can order all of them at once from one seller.
And I assume I can use higher voltage rating, correct? Like, 4,7uF 25V instead of 16V?

_UV_ wrote:

Nichicon make excellent caps.

Like those died during capacitor plague, bulging or increasing capacity during shelf life. Sure. And Creative or Gigabyte mix them with G-luxon, GSC, CapXon and other reputable brands within one product don't bothering wtih that Nichicon make excellent caps.

nichicon is definitely one of the "good ones" imo, they were not part of the capacitor plague, they had a bad production run during the early 2000s but that was unrelated.

The fact that nichicon caps were mixed in products with crap ones most likely means that nichicons were used in critical sections and the rest in sections that were not demanding. Nichicon are good caps.

What position do these caps hold on the AWE64? Any pictures? If they are decoupling caps, which are in-line with the signal trace (part of the signal path, itself), then you have something you can work with, but if they the typical, LARGE output caps, of the 470uF-1000uF variety, then you're pretty much stuck with those if you want to keep the correct low-frequency extension for any given external speakers. However, since I'm assuming we are talking about the RCA outputs of the Gold, then they should be simple decoupling caps. Usually, Creative used something along the lines of a 10uF miniature electrolytic, which I would exchange for a 1uF radial film (WIMA).

Pardon for the late reply. Here are the exact locations of the missing caps (the yellow circle is a cap that I'm pretty sure is the wrong value on my card).

https://imgur.com/a/p6CEXAi

This card has been turned on like this - it was advertised as "plugged in, worked, then didn't". That is somewhat worrying. For now all I want to do is see if this card is even alive, and without these caps I can't really go ahead anywhere.

100uF+ is going to be a bulk cap. 1-10uF will be AC-coupling in an audio circuit. Only common exception to that is video, where the sink end will have a 75R terminating resistor and you need decent near-DC performance for the sync pulse.

Nichicon is a reputable company. I use their caps pretty much exclusively in all my recaps and projects. Panasonic and Rubycon, and others, are perfectly fine as well. Yes Nichicon had a run of bad caps in the early 2000s. Geez.. practically everyone did. It was a bad time to be a capacitor. But, Nichicon caps from the 80s and 90s, in PSUs from the likes of IBM and Delta, are still A-OK. (I replace them all anyway, because it's time. But they're usually still fine.)

Sorry, OP -- I don't have an AWE64 Gold, just a Value .. otherwise I would help you out.

FWIW, though, I would not waste money on "Audiophile" caps. A general-purpose electrolytic is fine. If you really want to, you can bypass it with a Wima film cap to get better resolution in the HF. Although I doubt you would be able to tell the difference. I have examined plenty of professional audio equipment that still uses electros in the audio path. (And op-amps! The horror!) When I'm designing something where overkill is the baseline I'll go with film. Panasonic makes some decently priced brownish-red epoxy blob film caps in the 1-4.7uF range that work well for audio decoupling. They're huge though, so good luck finding a spot on an ISA card for two or more of them. It's a PC sound card, just use an electro.

Roger. I'll just go for normal Nichicon caps with slightly bigger values to give more headrom on the caps that I noticed are starting to bloat already on this board.

Studying lots of eBay and other sites like that I'm 95% sure that the missing cap on the upper side of the board is the same as the others (4,7uF 50V), meanwhile the missing cap in the middle, the C78, is *most likely* a 1uF 50V ( 😕 ) capacitor. Really weird value, so I'll have to delve in the pics a little more.

And although I'm striving for the best possible caps when recapping, stuff like film caps is somewhat out of my realm of knowledge/expertise. I've only ever worked with barrel TFT or SMD caps. 😁

I'm not really an audiophile, plus the card won't be run through the RCA jacks for now anyway, so any potential loss of ~~1-5% of quality is fine for me. Neither am I going to use the AWE64's on-card chip synth engine; I'm really interested to experience soundfont technology for the first time ever. 😁

Thanks for replies so far, gents. I really appreciate it!

kikipcs wrote:

I'm not really an audiophile, plus the card won't be run through the RCA jacks for now anyway

huh? how else will you use it? SPDIF?

imi wrote:

_UV_ wrote:

nichicon is definitely one of the "good ones" imo, they were not part of the capacitor plague, they had a bad production run during the early 2000s but that was unrelated.

I send this, nichicon does make good caps. Not sure why that guy hates them just because that had a failed batch.
Yet he says Teapo is good ? 😕 🤣 they were ok'ish before 2002 when they still made there own caps. After that 100% junk. Panasonic ? There not much better then nichicon. Seen my far share of bad Panasonic caps. I not seen any failed Rubicon, does not mean they can't fail.
But TBH going by brand name alone is a bad idea with caps.

kikipcs wrote:

Roger. I'll just go for normal Nichicon caps with slightly bigger values to give more headrom on the caps that I noticed are starting to bloat already on this board.

Hm, what do you mean by bigger values? The capacity (uF) rating? Or voltage?

You can go bigger on voltage, although voltage rating directly affects the diameter -- except for the <10uF capacities where they're all small -- so you may have trouble with fit if you go more than one step higher. Regardless, this is usually not a factor in the old ones having failed. Capacitor Plague victims, heat, and end-of-life are. If you want a more robust cap, compare MTBF ratings. You can also look for 105C rating, although that's probably overkill. The more common 85C, even considering the internal working temp of the cap itself, is pretty severe for the inside of a computer.

Do not change the capacity, though. In some (perhaps even most) cases, it won't matter much. But unless you know what the cap is doing in-circuit, it's really best to stick to the uF rating of the original. You have 20% wiggle room by specification, unless the OEMs happen to be tight tolerance (they almost never are), but things tend to use standard sizes: 1, 2.2, 3.3, 4.7, 6.8, 10, and multiples thereof.

kikipcs wrote:

Studying lots of eBay and other sites like that I'm 95% sure that the missing cap on the upper side of the board is the same as the others (4,7uF 50V), meanwhile the missing cap in the middle, the C78, is *most likely* a 1uF 50V ( 😕 ) capacitor. Really weird value, so I'll have to delve in the pics a little more.

1uF 50V is an extremely typical value. You may think "what's ever going to use 50V on an ISA card?" And the answer is: Nothing. (Well, maybe a modem.) But, "small" electrolytics -- 10uF and less -- are usually rated 25V, 50V, or 100V. The case size is the same regardless, and cost difference is negligible, so it's common to stock a ton of 50V parts rather than mess with "right-sizing" the voltage rating. 50V is higher than you'll need for most anything except a PSU's mains inlet side, so it's a good catch-all rating. (Although 25V is usually more than enough for LVDC stuff as well, so it's also quite common.)

SirNickity wrote:

100uF+ is going to be a bulk cap. 1-10uF will be AC-coupling in an audio circuit. Only common exception to that is video, where the sink end will have a 75R terminating resistor and you need decent near-DC performance for the sync pulse.

Oops. ^^ This guy was confusing the ornament on the top of his neck for the one he sits on. Many sound cards (particularly the earlier ones) are designed to drive headphones and small speakers -- i.e., low-impedance sinks. So, a 4- to 64-ohm load has to work without loss of bandwidth too. That would, indeed, mean you will find larger caps in the audio path. My mistake.

Yes,yes, I mean voltage. For example, use 10uF 25V instead of the basic 16V. The 25v ones are easier to find than 16v, too. These caps are exactly what I meant by „bigger values”.

As for the 1uF cap, I just never have seen such a rating on any of my stuff before. Maybe that’s why I thought it was a weird cap 😁

Your reply was very explanatory. Thank you!