On Jan 6, 8:38*am, D Yuniskis wrote:


I'm wondering what the prevailing approach is when
it comes to dealing with kit that has been found to
have "bad cap-itis". *Particularly, PC's.

I suspect most machines are just recapped and re-used

Firstly, the reason for 'bad caps' could be (1) faulty
chemistry of a batch at the factory, (2) substandard
or counterfeit products, (3) poor design.

For the 2002-2005 period, there was lots of (1) and (2)
going on. If that's the issue, you have to replace all
the high-ripple-current capacitors at the same time (and
it might not be terribly difficult to do so). The ones that
haven't failed, are VERY LIKELY to die soon.

I've never had all the right sizes and ratings of capacitors
handy in my stock, so it takes a week or so to order
replacements (and a half hour or more to compose an
online order of the dozen different types for a board).
Mainly, if this were a work machine, it'd be too
slow getting it back to the customer, so "time to upgrade"
is the rule. If it's for a spare/backup computer, or other
low-time-pressure situation, sure, I'd recap. Have
done a few, in fact, just here at home (four DTV boxes
and a computer or two).

Warning: if the motherboard caps failed, check also the power
supply (same time-of-manufacture, after all).