Eeyore wrote:

Meee wrote:

I was wondering why vertical mounting electrolytics have like an
indented cross on them.

To release the pressure and gunk under fault conditions (or bad
manufacture).

The reason I ask is because there's 4 largeish
one around my CPU on the motherboard and they have all split open,
along the indentations.

Oh dear.

A: How old is it ? (from date of manufacture)

B: Can you read what brands they are ?

C: Has your PC sharted behaving strangely yet ?

D: What brand mobo is it ?

E: Replace ASAP with well-known brand, low ESR (switching) types.

That is REPLACE ALL OF THEM, NOT JUST ONES THAT HAVE BLOWN TODAY


You will find a lot of info here.
http://badcaps.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

Nice quip from the above

" From so many users, ranging from large corporate networks all the way
to the home user, the number one reason people give for wanting to
repair their hardware is they want to avoid a new system and the
disaster known as Windows Vista!

On a humorous note regarding Vista, I spoke to an IT guy who manages a
small business network for an insurance company (maintains a 100
terminal network), and had a bunch of failing Dell SX280's, which I
repaired. One branch had the brilliant idea to "upgrade" to Vista
systems, and his job was to make them all play nice with each other.
This gentleman was probably the most professional, polite, and courteous
clients I've ever spoken with on the phone, until we got onto the
subject of Vista....then the four-letter words started flowing
freely... In the end, he wiped all the Vista machines, and upgraded
them back to XP Pro."

Graham