Yeah, this is it. I've looked around in the Badcaps.com for advice regarding replacing the m/b's capacitors. And, also, visited their forums. So, I have a MSI-5184 m/b which is behaving erratically because of swollen capacitors. Y'know how I test for swollen caps? I took a pen, place it horizontal 90 degrees on the cap. If it lies flat on top, this cap is good. If it forms a tangent, (or cannot stand horizontally), then the top is curved and the cap is in bad condition. My pa, repaired radios and televisions and VCRs before, wanted to try that. Today, he's going to an electronics shop and buy the new caps that are listed to be broken in my m/b. Well, I pray that the thing is going to work. Or even work better. I hope to give you the photos of broken caps on the m/b.... Have you replaced any capacitors on the board before? Just curious...
i have swollen caps in this pc (intel P3) so far no problems actually i thought of replacing the caps but nvr did so.
Yeah, thanks, but first with a low-power soldering iron. But fortunately, the board underneath, the soldered points for the caps are quite far away, and will not affect any nearby chips whatsoever. Well, I hope he really fixed that. If the whole MSI-5184 is back to normal, well, mission accomplished. Well, pray for this board to work. If so, ha, that senior Socket 7 board will survive for another 5 - 10 years.... Edit: I'll borrow a digital camera real soon, to get the pics of the broken caps on the board....
Aha, on evening I did the recapping on the board. So far only 3 out of 9 replaced, and the system started out nice! But I haven't really tested yet.... i'll do it tomorrow... I used a soldering iron (low-power) and a long needle (preferbly jangka lukis) and of course a very strong desoldering pump. I put some solder on the point where the cap needed to be removed, then pump it out immediately. Then, do the same thing for the another terminal. Then, clear the hole by picking the hole using the needle. (I hope you understand... I'm not really sure how to explain this!) The easiest is soldering back the new cap into the board. Wao, I don't know whether this system is stable right now, but I have to make the rig to undergo rigorous testing....
I think pictures are better in explaining all the soldering stuff,... Before having my rig recapped, all the strange problems occurs during the installation of XP. Well, today I tested my recapped rig. It did fine in installing WinXP and there's no problems. I can even start WinXp without glitches... Now I'm testing it more thoroughly. I want to stuff some more cards and RAM into the PC to see how stable it is.... Anyway, the whole thing is nice to use anymore and now I want to put a USB card into it.... The hint: If your system is acting up (BSODs and system hangs) and you narrowed down most problems like RAM there but still no proper solution, then take a look at your m/b. If you see bulging caps, quickly get it recapped, if not, will cause tons of problems in future. Try looking at www.badcaps.com for more info...
I was so disappointed to have scrolled all the way down and discovered no pictures. I was curious about how you determined the value of the replacement caps. Do you have a schematic, or did you make an educated guess? Also, I can send you a picture of my solder sucker tool that I kept from a previous job. We also used a wick that had flux in it, but I think modern circuitry would be too small to use that safely.
Oooh, I'm really really sorry as I didn't have a camera for all the job yet. Yes - you can do it with the normal basic soldering equipment, but you will need more time and another person to help you for all that. And if you want to do it, get a low-powered soldering iron and the mechanical pump must be in a very good condition. Also, get a already broken motherboard to practise. You know practice makes perfect, okay? A better one will be vacumm pump which is very expensive, but surely, you can get more work done by using it.
Cap values I've seen markings on some of these caps, and you can't really tell the value if they're not plainly marked. Also, there are different kinds -- tantalum, ceramic. Maybe things like caps on a motherboard have become so standardized that there is only one value.
Electrolytic capacitors on motherboards are Low ESR types which can be purchased from RS Components or Farnell. The variety caps found at Pasar Road are mostly rated as general purpose and the dimensions are largely unsuitable. Do buy and use long time branded capacitors such as Elna, Nichicon or Rubycon. When shopping around for motherboards, I always look out for the brand of populated capacitors and its beneficial for long term (3 years?) reliability.
