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The bad caps problem was well known to anyone in the industry and it hit other manufacturers as well, not just Dell. It also was not just the Optiplex line as
by dmfdmf 16y ago
The bad caps problem was well known to anyone in the industry and it hit other manufacturers as well, not just Dell. It also was not just the Optiplex line as Dell claims. I replaced many motherboards and Dell would ship a replacement board if you caught it while under warranty and mentioned swollen, leaky caps on the mb. Unfortunately, the problem usually would not be apparent until the warranty expired and, yes, they would ship you another defective motherboard that would work about 18 months. If the computer was out of warranty I would tell my client to pay for the mb or buy a new PC. I never saw data loss or fires from the bad caps just mysterious BSODs and boot failures (hang on startup).
- LogicHoleFlaw 16y agoI just desoldered a half-dozen bad caps from my current motherboard and replaced them with new ones from a reliable manufacturer. It was a huge hassle. Fortunately the new caps are a lot cheaper than doing a motherboard swap/upgrade on the PC. It's an older one that I don't really want to mess with too much yet.
- kbutler 16y agoWait - you just said you "desoldered a half-dozen [capacitors] and replaced them" because you "didn't want to mess with it too much"? Hmm. "LogicHoleFlaw" seems an appropriate name... kb
- LogicHoleFlaw 16y agoWell, I specced out replacement/upgrade parts as costing several hundred dollars and a lot of time reinstalling the OS, restoring from backup, etc. I've done this sort of hardware work before and am familiar with the risks so this was actually the path of least resistance. I've got a major PC upgrade planned for this winter so I just need the system to live until that goes through. I've had no BSOD/crashes/spontaneous reboots since I did the capacitor swap, so I consider it a success.
- ern 16y agoI think this Wikipedia article covers the issue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
- stretchwithme 16y agothats a good writeup. I wonder if there's anything UL for components.