I think they're fine after 2007. I know KZGs stopped popping after a certain year (though it's possible the bad batches were still circulated until later than 2008, no info on this).

You can replace them if you feel so but I don't think they need it, given the board appears to be made fairly late (the ICS clockgen(?) having a 0833 datecode).

That board is around 18 years old and the capacitors may well be older. I'd replace ~20 year old caps on general principle due to their age.

Of course it may still run, I've seen Socket 478 Pentium 4 boards that worked fine despite several caps bulging and venting. But I wouldn't risk it myself.

I recently repaired a pair of AIMB-742 motherboards. One board had perfectly fine caps, while the other had a number that were buldged and leaking. I opted to replace caps on both boards with polymers and they seemed fine after the recap.

You can read about my repairs here if you're interested: Advantech AIMB 742 industrial P4 motherboards repair (update: both boards repaired and working!)

In the case of your board, I'd probably leave the caps as is. If it's not showing an sign of failure, they are likely still within spec.

I guess I'll leave them there for now. It also looks like many of them are used as general purpose filtering caps or in parallel to polymers, such as two KZGs on right in the first picture, so they probably won't break anything if they decide to poop out their innards.

Apparently terminating voltage for RAM is done with a linear regulator.

https://in.rxelectronics.com/datasheet/ba/RT9173AGL5.pdf

PcBytes wrote on 2026-09-24, 22:23:

I think they're fine after 2007. I know KZGs stopped popping after a certain year (though it's possible the bad batches were still circulated until later than 2008, no info on this).

You can replace them if you feel so but I don't think they need it, given the board appears to be made fairly late (the ICS clockgen(?) having a 0833 datecode).

Good point, that board is much newer than you'd expect based on the socket. It also looks like its completely new, so it probably wasn't in use in a machine shop or something for the last 20 years. 😁 Maybe it was a spare part or something. And now that you mention it, there's something that looks like a date code (04 11) next to the serial number...

rorirub wrote on 2026-09-24, 22:37:

That board is around 18 years old and the capacitors may well be older. I'd replace ~20 year old caps on general principle due to their age.

Of course it may still run, I've seen Socket 478 Pentium 4 boards that worked fine despite several caps bulging and venting. But I wouldn't risk it myself.

Normally quality caps shouldn't auto-fail even after 20 years, it's just that socket 478 and socket A era had the capacitor plague... but many of the caps on this board are polymers and apparently this was manufactured at a much later date.

rorirub wrote on 2026-09-24, 22:37:

That board is around 18 years old and the capacitors may well be older. I'd replace ~20 year old caps on general principle due to their age.

There are vacuum tubes radio that work after 80 years. Replacing capacitors "just because" is not only not required, but can add a risk of some trace that breaks, or whatever else during the soldering/desoldering process

Of course it may still run, I've seen Socket 478 Pentium 4 boards that worked fine despite several caps bulging and venting.

If happens just replace the affected capacitors, as you would have done years before. Where's the problem?