Some of the caps appear to be a bit round at the top? Is this what they call "bulging caps?"

Yeap, 2 caps are bad!

GeorgeMan wrote:

Yeap, 2 caps are bad!

I just got a Gigabyte S370 board that also has such caps 🙁

Need to learn how to replace them one day...

Very easy!
You go to an electonic equipment shop, buy same volt/uF caps, desolder the bad and solder back the new ones. Be careful, they have polarity! If you solder the opposite pins, you'll end up with smoke and some little explosions xD

PS: If the shop doesn't have exactly the same caps, just buy same uF (capacity), higher volts. Be careful to see them, as higher voltage caps are usually taller of bigger! 😉

edit: Now that I look closer, 4 caps are actually bad!

Super easy, it is safe to get the specs right but it does not hurt to have different uF provided you are with in range but stick to the same volts.

Nope. Volts rating is actually "max volts the capacitor can handle".
So it doesn't hurt to buy a capacitor with higher voltage rating, but sometimes it hurts to buy a cap with higher uF, if an electronic circuit is designed to work with a specific cap.

On the mainboards though, this is not the case as there is no problem with higher uF and volts capacitors. The only problem is that they have to fit in the provided space. 😀

Well I'm thinking "might as well replace them all". It's definitely something I want to tackle...

For de-soldering, best would be a de-solder station with automatic pump and there is the little manual pump as well. Is this what you would use?

I've seen some videos on YT. It looks easy, but they know what they're doing 🤣

If the prospect of recapping frightens you, then you want to stay away from the Mac SE/30. They ALL end up needing recapping eventually. They are infamous for it.

Cool!

Ordered a soldering station, a little toolkit which comes with an IC remover, de-solder pump and other tools and a roll of solder 😀

Well, I've learned something here which I didn't spot before.
Bit of a dilemma now as to whether to sell it at the boot sale on Sunday.
How mush longer is it likely to work with caps like that I wonder?

Well, not an expert, but issues often appear as

- intermittent behaviour
- instabilities
- crashes or freezes

My board works fine and not all caps have rounded top. Only the very tall ones around the socket. I take a look at some of my boards and see if any capacities appear very often and then do a bulk order. A friend gave me an old AMD board for practice 😀 It also has rounded caps...

Splinter wrote:

Well, I've learned something here which I didn't spot before.
Bit of a dilemma now as to whether to sell it at the boot sale on Sunday.
How mush longer is it likely to work with caps like that I wonder?

You don't really know how long.
It may be days, weeks, months or you would have tossed it before it failed 🤣
Caps work as a "filter", or "smoothener" for the mobo to provide good voltages.

Also ordered a rework station 😀 Might as well get all the tools to do this properly.