Small leaky thing on motherboard \ VOGONS

Small leaky thing on motherboard

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First post, by zstandig

Posted on 2014-12-08, 00:31

zstandig Offline

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I'm sorry if it isn't retro enough, but I have an HP xw6200 (made in 2006, netburst era Xeons). It's very fussy with RAM. Now when I first acquired it I noticed that near the south bridge there is a small silvery cylinder on its side and it appeared to be leaking a really thick.

Now, because it booted fine I ignored it..., but as of late it just likes to beep at me. The "beep code" translation of HP machines said that 5 beeps means the RAM is bad. I've tried many DDR2 3200 ECC Registered sticks and the fussy thing just beeped away for each stick of RAM, even the original sticks it came with.

So my suspicions have drifted back to this tiny leaky thing. When I looked for anything on google, all I found were large leaking capacitors that look nothing at all like what I have. I don't expect any sort of magic bullet here, but I'd like to know what this thing is. here's a pic.

Any ideas what it could be and if that one thing could render an entire board inoperable?

Last edited by zstandig on 2014-12-08, 01:12. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 1 of 10, by luckybob

Posted on 2014-12-08, 00:48

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wow, i thought i wasn't wearing my glasses when i saw that...

I can't make heads or tails of anything in the image, can you try again? look for a MACRO setting on your camera, that usually helps a lot with close up pictures.

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

Reply 2 of 10, by zstandig

Posted on 2014-12-08, 01:06

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I'll try, as you can see, I'm not experienced at all when it comes to photography 😵

- Damn, I can't believe I didn't think of moving my desk lamp before..., anyway, it's a much better image now.

Reply 3 of 10, by RogueTrip2012

Posted on 2014-12-08, 03:10

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That white stuff is silicon glue meant to hold that lil guy down to the board so the 2 legs coming out do not touch.

How many beeps is the board giving you?

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Reply 4 of 10, by smeezekitty

Posted on 2014-12-08, 03:23

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That is a 32768Hz crystal for the cmos clock. And the white stuff is glue.
That is not your problem

Reply 5 of 10, by tayyare

Posted on 2014-12-08, 18:08

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I'm not sure but it looks like the left hand connector is broken (separated from the soldered point). If the schematic on the board is correct, it looks like it should be staying horizontally on the board, both ends soldered. Am I wrong?

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Reply 6 of 10, by zstandig

Posted on 2014-12-08, 18:10

zstandig Offline

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Okay, that's a relief, I thought it was something serious. Thanks for the clarification. I've checked a bunch of different RAM sticks of the correct type, so I doubt that's the problem unless by some chance they're all bad. But I don't know what else to suspect as the HP site says that 5 beeps means a RAM problem.

I guess, I'll just have to mess with it some more.

Reply 7 of 10, by zstandig

Posted on 2014-12-08, 18:15

zstandig Offline

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tayyare wrote:
I'm not sure but it looks like the left hand connector is broken (separated from the soldered point). If the schematic on the board is correct, it looks like it should be staying horizontally on the board, both ends soldered. Am I wrong?

Nope, you aren't wrong at all, in my haste to try to get a better picture of the numbers on the side I lifted it up slightly. But that end wasn't soldered, just glued (at the time I assumed it was some sort of leak because of the way it appeared to be pouring out of it.)

Reply 8 of 10, by devius

Posted on 2014-12-10, 19:29

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Are there two metal legs soldered to the motherboard? If yes it's fine, if one of them is broken that could be a problem.

Reply 9 of 10, by Half-Saint

Posted on 2014-12-10, 20:25

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I'd look for bad capacitors around RAM slots...

Reply 10 of 10, by zstandig

Posted on 2014-12-11, 03:15

zstandig Offline

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devius wrote:
Are there two metal legs soldered to the motherboard? If yes it's fine, if one of them is broken that could be a problem.

Yep, the two legs are present. I won't have time to fiddle with it for a while.

I don't know if its relevant but for some reason it only detected 2GB of RAM when it had 4GB. Now, it had XP(32bit) on it, so I knew it wouldn't see 4GB, however in every other machine I used with 4GB of RAM and 32 bit XP, it usually showed 3.x GB or so. That surprised me, and still baffles me.

I'd like to thank everyone who commented, I was going nuts trying to figure out what that thing was. Though I still don't know what's up with the RAM, at least I now know that the "thing" isn't the problem.

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