kenrouholo wrote:They definitely weren't installed backwards.
Even though ASUS supposedly chose to ignore a long-established industry standard of capacitor polarity designation you're willing to say with absolute certainty, without checking for yourself, those caps were installed correctly by the factory?
kenrouholo wrote:Go apply DC voltage to a backwards electrolytic cap 😉 (not a non-polarized one; those are impractical to use when not required)
Sure, I'll bite. Do you want to know what typically happens? They swell, leak, and fail prematurely--just like the caps on that board.
I do this stuff professionally and I can tell you from years of experience that catastrophic failure (venting/explosion) from reversed polarity is NOT a common failure mode for electrolytic capacitors. Designers deliberately de-rate capacitors' voltage rating for a margin of safety, which is precisely why the OP's caps are 6.3v parts on what is likely a 3.3v or less rail. So go ahead and take a 6.3v cap and reverse it's polarity across 3.3v--but don't hold your breathing waiting for it to fail.
And since I like to back up my arguments with facts in context of the conversation, I suggest you read up on the Amiga A3640 CPU board. The electrolytic bypass caps on those were stuffed backwards at the factory and eventually lead to LONG-TERM failures plaguing thousands of Amiga 4000 users as the leaking electrolyte permanently damaged countless boards.
Now I'm not saying ASUS installed them backwards, I'm saying since there is confusion about their unconventional choice of silkscreen orientation, as a best-practice it would be a good idea check and be certain. It wouldn't take but a few minutes. And to be honest I'm surprised that users of a technical forum are so reluctant to supporting the idea of spending a few minutes to verify something that's a definite possibility.
Growing up in a family of skilled laborers I was frequently reminded, "If you don't have the time to do the job right, then you don't have the time to do it twice..."
