PcBytes wrote on 2022-09-05, 11:01:Nah, OST is a special kind of caps to me - they're cheap and hardly ever fail. KZGs (and Toshin Kogyo (TK) ATWY series) are abs […]
Show full quote
Nah, OST is a special kind of caps to me - they're cheap and hardly ever fail. KZGs (and Toshin Kogyo (TK) ATWY series) are absolutely craptacular - I've had KZGs fail bloated IN STORAGE! So just by mere sitting unused, they went a' poppin'. TK's failures are literally without any bloat. They just develop insane ESR or are totally dry.
The mainboard did get dried with an "industrial" paint removing heatgun (the kind you find in hardware stores and usually ranges anywhere between 300 and 500*C). It indeed had some soil on it, though it wasn't much and washed just fine with tap water in the kitchen sink, without any detergent/soap water. Just plain water that was later dried with the said heatgun (which I also use for reflowing GPUs every now and then, on the 350*C setting.)
As for Nichicon - their issue with the HM and HN caps wasn't the stolen formula. The 2001-2004 batches had actually TOO MUCH electrolyte than the can allowed. Not sure but KZG and KZJ might be in the same boat, although I've seen way much less KZJs failed than KZG. IIRC Sanyo also had this issue with the WF series - I've legitimately had Sanyo WFs bloat. As far as my memory goes, it wasn't any of the known brands that stole Ruby's formula - UCC, Sanyo, Panasonic, Nichicon and I think ELNA too (they weren't as present in the PC industry though - I remember finding ELNA in audio equipment and some of the older ATMEL-based gas boilers). It was the chinese companies (and mostly the bottom of the barrel ones like GSC/Sacon/Evercon) that stole it. Though that doesn't explain at all how come that OSTs and some of the black sleeved G-Luxons (which I suspect are rebranded Teapos at this point) are way more less failure prone than other chinese caps.
About TEAPO - I would pick them too, just not their SE/SEK series. Those are absolute plague - I recall finding them by the hordes on EPoX and MSI mainboards, and most would bloat in storage. I had at least two of them bloat on a Totem TM-S730LMR (which is a rebranded PCChips M810, forgot the revision but I know for a fact the I/O ports are placed differently than other M810 revisions.) and I bet on anything that I might find some more bloated TEAPOs if I check it again.
Yes OST i find them to be one of the best dog brands, ASSrock has that brand alot on their crap boards, and u will very rarely see OST to be blown up, really good brand. Teapo is worse then OST, they fail more, specially the Teapos on ABIT, EPoX and other brands, not as reliable as the OST, but still WAY better by far then others.. Hitano is also very good brand, at least the newer ones, that i used some years ago. SaNyo is mostly good brand, yet some of their caps did spill guts, saw multiple GEforce cards (MSI ones) that had x3 caps on the end of the board, and they were all blown up... As for Rubycon i never saw them fail on normal boards. But i saw multiple HP Pentium 4 era mobos, to have alot of blown Rubycons, but the cooling on these systems was non existent, so the blame is not on the caps, but on the idiots from HP... Nichicon yes they had some bad series, that sadly did blow up as well, multiple Gigabyte mobos 2002-2006 did have bad Nichicons...
The caps i find on the older ABITs (pre orange NF7 V2) are supreme garbage they just fail no matter what, similar to the shitty KZG (god the KZG should be one of the worst caps, and when you take into account, that they are Japan brand is retarded really), so older ABIT boards should be 100% recapped...
Maybe OST have some good formula, or skilled alchemist is working in OST, since their caps are for sure one of the best dog brands, and very realiable as well.. I used to check on dead boards OST caps, and all of them did have still good amount of electrolyte inside... Too bad most board makers did not use OST, it was going to be ALOT better for many of us but ehh what can be done...
The fact u stated about why these 2 Nichicon series are bad is very interesting... I will think the more the better, seem that is not the case 🤣... Anyway early Nichicons from before 2000 are fine, the brown ones, u can find on OEM Intel mobos mostly...
I have Elna caps on some parts of my IBM PC 365, that whole machine contains only high end Japan brands, like Elna multiple caps, Panasonic, Rubycon... So yes ELNA is motly found in audio stuff, but some times they are in some PC parts.. I think there was even some ELNAs in Compaq Deskpro AP550... Rubycon and Panasonic are insane caps, never saw them on consumer boards to fail, too bad most brands did not use them instead..
I wonder since the caps on some parts (for example Voodoo III) are polymer, they should be WAY more realiable, even if they are some shitty brand like G-lyxon or other, then the same crap but electolytic caps...
I used to dry up boards and parts by hand i did shake them alot till there is no water drops, and then i will put the part on the sun, or somewhere high (like wardrobe) where to dry up faster. But these days i also use heatgun to reflow GPUs, and i use it on the washed parts too. BTW how much time do u take to heat up the mobo in order to dry it ? Since as we know the electolyte caps dont like so much heat at all, even 100c is bad for them...
Mah systems retro, old, newer (Radical stuff)
W3680 4.5/ GA-x58 UD7/ R9 280x
K7 2.6/ NF7-S/ HD3850
IBM x2 P3 933/ GA-6VXD7/ Voodoo V 5.5K
Cmq P2 450/ GA-BX2000/ V2 SLI
IBM PC365
Cmq DeskPRO 486/33
IBM PS/2 Model 56
SPS IntelleXT 8088