Do I need to use capacitors with same voltage? The capacitors in the kit are 1000uF 16V and 220uF 25V)?
After re-cap, and before I put in my desktop, how can I check for shorts?
the kit looks good its got everything you need to get started, you should also get some flux as well, i wouldnt bother with the box of capacitors just buy what you need for the job, i'll buy caps in packs of 5 or 10 for the amount i need with a few extra spares and from a brand i've heard of, or at least are known to be good quality, ideally you want caps of the same rating, also the same diameter and height or as close to as the originals.
Do you really want to replace all of them? I'd leave the small ones alone, they are probably completely fine. 99% of times i've desoldered capacitors which looked fine they were fine.
In another words - i hate the idea of "recap" in general - there is no need to fix what is not broken. Replace dead capacitors, perhaps the one of the same type next to them, but not every capacitor on the card...
As for specs - voltage needs to be the same or higher (but likely the same as otherwise the capacitor will have to be larger which is not ideal), capacity the same, ESR - similar. Also mind the size - diameter matters.
Also buying random unbranded capacitors from amazon is a bad idea, they are very likely going to be garbage.
As for soldering tools... i would strongly advice against buying soldering iron like that. It is primitive and only works if you want to solder a couple of wires together. Look into something like TS100 or numerous clones/improvements - it is a complete game changer. I am using pinecil personally...
Not sure about the Ifixit soldering set, doesn't appear to be temperature controlled, and their better ones are way more expensive than a temperature controlled station on Amazon
sangokushiwrote on 2025-08-16, 09:50:Recently my friend gave me a non-working FX5500 PCI video card. I would like to use it for my first re-cap project. […] Show full quote
Recently my friend gave me a non-working FX5500 PCI video card. I would like to use it for my first re-cap project.
Do I need to use capacitors with same voltage? The capacitors in the kit are 1000uF 16V and 220uF 25V)?
After re-cap, and before I put in my desktop, how can I check for shorts?
Thanks
How on earth are iFixit selling a non temperature controlled iron in 2025? Please don't go for that kit, I think most expensive part in that set is the Hakko tip cleaner pot (which is a good one, that's what I use), the rest is junk and you could source all those parts separately a fair bit cheaper. If you're going to be soldering things more than once then get something like a Fnirsi HS02A or the TS100 / TS101 (I have both and they're great) / Pinecil - this post has some good details on what's around lately: https://www.reddit.com/r/soldering/comments/1 … omment/m5ayq4z/
and this one debunking a tomshardware article: https://www.reddit.com/r/soldering/comments/1 … 2025_lies_lies/
Desoldering capacitors, clearing the holes and resoldering the capacitors requires a fairly powerful soldering iron because the ground plane sucks away lots of the heat, making it especially tough to clear solder out of the holes. My TS101 struggles a bit with that job and the Fnirsi HS02A should be better for putting heat into the desired spot.
You'd also want some leaded solder, some flux and a desoldering pump like the Engineer SS-02 (cheap but good clones) or SS-03 (the genuine one), as well as probably solder wick
Archer57wrote on 2025-08-16, 10:44:Do you really want to replace all of them? I'd leave the small ones alone, they are probably completely fine. 99% of times i've […] Show full quote
Do you really want to replace all of them? I'd leave the small ones alone, they are probably completely fine. 99% of times i've desoldered capacitors which looked fine they were fine.
In another words - i hate the idea of "recap" in general - there is no need to fix what is not broken. Replace dead capacitors, perhaps the one of the same type next to them, but not every capacitor on the card...
As for specs - voltage needs to be the same or higher (but likely the same as otherwise the capacitor will have to be larger which is not ideal), capacity the same, ESR - similar. Also mind the size - diameter matters.
Also buying random unbranded capacitors from amazon is a bad idea, they are very likely going to be garbage.
As for soldering tools... i would strongly advice against buying soldering iron like that. It is primitive and only works if you want to solder a couple of wires together. Look into something like TS100 or numerous clones/improvements - it is a complete game changer. I am using pinecil personally...
I kind of agree, just replace those caps with the blue lettering but those do all need to be replaced whether bulging or not. They're probably Sacon FZ capacitors and if you have a read around on badcaps all they do is fail.
The smaller capacitors are probably fine though, in part because they do less important jobs than running the switching power supply for the GPU.
That kit from Amazon with the capacitors isn't really suitable either, those caps are unbranded and will be okay for hobby projects like with an arduino but probably aren't good enough to run a video card or power supply for very long, they might not even be rated for 105c operation, which they need to be for a video card.
Buying capacitors from Amazon in general isn't great, since fakes are a problem and capacitors aren't something that generally is sold at retail so what there is on amazon is all over the place. Best place to get capacitors is Mouser or DigiKey, but for small quantities of capacitors I find ebay is generally best. Just search for
I kind of agree, just replace those caps with the blue lettering but those do all need to be replaced whether bulging or not. They're probably Sacon FZ capacitors and if you have a read around on badcaps all they do is fail.
The smaller capacitors are probably fine though, in part because they do less important jobs than running the switching power supply for the GPU.
What i usually do is - replace what's visibly faulty (bulging, blown, leaking, etc) verify that the card is functional, do any other repair if needed, only then replace the rest of the "suspicious" capacitors some of which failed.
Good capacitors are not cheap and the work takes time, IMO it makes sense to do things step by step to avoid situations where you make a "full recap" only to find out the GPU itself is dead and the card is hopeless.
Also i'd say what is minimally needed is good sodering iron, wick, flux, solder (leaded). Things like solder sucker or desoldering iron are useful, but for someone new may just create confusion and do more harm than good.
And i would not expect someone doing it for the first time to succeed. I know i butchered some boards before i could do it consistently with minimal risk. So if OP values the card they probably should pick up some dead junk and do some practice first to get a feel for how it works.
At least whatever company name Sacon is using now remembered to start putting vents on them again. For a while, they would blow up good.
The two little 220uF caps probably don't need to be replaced. Just change the five FZs, but also check for shorts on the core and RAM supplies to get a small level of confidence that it didn't run long enough with bad caps to fry the main chips. Momaka has some posts here and on Badcaps that go into a lot more detail.
Thermalwrongwrote on 2025-08-16, 17:19:How on earth are iFixit selling a non temperature controlled iron in 2025? Please don't go for that kit, I think most expensive […] Show full quote
How on earth are iFixit selling a non temperature controlled iron in 2025? Please don't go for that kit, I think most expensive part in that set is the Hakko tip cleaner pot (which is a good one, that's what I use), the rest is junk and you could source all those parts separately a fair bit cheaper. If you're going to be soldering things more than once then get something like a Fnirsi HS02A or the TS100 / TS101 (I have both and they're great) / Pinecil - this post has some good details on what's around lately: https://www.reddit.com/r/soldering/comments/1 … omment/m5ayq4z/
and this one debunking a tomshardware article: https://www.reddit.com/r/soldering/comments/1 … 2025_lies_lies/
Desoldering capacitors, clearing the holes and resoldering the capacitors requires a fairly powerful soldering iron because the ground plane sucks away lots of the heat, making it especially tough to clear solder out of the holes. My TS101 struggles a bit with that job and the Fnirsi HS02A should be better for putting heat into the desired spot.
You'd also want some leaded solder, some flux and a desoldering pump like the Engineer SS-02 (cheap but good clones) or SS-03 (the genuine one), as well as probably solder wick
That kit has all name-brand stuff (Hakko tools and Chipquik solder wick). The non-temperature-controlled iron isn't ideal, but I'm still using one. Whenever I've seen someone other than Louis Rossmann using a TS-100 or Pinecil, they were really struggling to do stuff that my old $20 Zhongdi can do easily. I can only guess that tip quality has really decreased along with setting the temperature too low (but you don't have to set it to 400°C like the irons where I work).
I thought the Engineer SS-02 was genuine. I didn't know there was an SS-03. There's also one from Vampire that looks the same (a lot of Vampire and Engineer tools look the same, so I think they're coming from the same original manufacturer).
You don't need flux, but it's nice to have if you use solder wick a lot. Good solder wick has flux embedded, but there are still some brands of wick where the flux burns off quickly enough to be annoying (like the Easy Braid that's used where I work). Chipquik 63/37 solder (not the low melting point stuff - I haven't used it) works well and costs less than Kester or Alpha Metals.
They're cheaper than shipping. You can even get polymer caps surprisingly cheap at the values commonly used on motherboards and graphics cards (probably due to volume).
I don't know if it's been mentioned, but since they look to be smd: for removal, it is easier to just destroy the old ones.
Some wriggle them until the legs break, but there's a risk of breaking the pad then.
Others hack away the tube with sidecutters until they can snip the legs.
Fresh blob of solder on the remains and they come off easy.
If they're throughhole, ignore that. Just heat one leg and wiggle, then the other, repeat.