Swollen Capacitor Disease - Help

[eddy]

If there is any one out there in the know could you please explain Swollen Capacitor Disease?

And if you are smart enought to know what it is could you please tell me if this the capacitor in this pic has swollen?

Just took these pic of my pc - its not very happy uc

Eddy

[Marky Mark]

I'm not an expert, but it doesn't look any more swollen than the others to the right of the picture. I imagine it's caused by overheating the cap, build up of pressure, but the board would probably be discoloured if it got that hot. So basically, no help, but I'll be interested to see how the thread progresses, sorry.

[Sean]

that looks like either a poorly made capacitor or something has dropped on the board during production, I've seen this on old PC's before. Be very careful if that goes it will go with one big mother of a bang enough to take a hand off. To see if its the latter power everything off and see if it will wipe off if not get another board before it goes bang

Sean

[eddy]

The reason for asking is because my Dell Optiplex GX270 is well known to have this problem and i have been having all the symptons - i.e. shutdown without warnings (i've actually written this sentence 3 times already!!!)

Like you say its the stuff coming out of the capacitor which is worrying.

Any other suggestions, its out of warrenty so thats a no go...

Eddy

p.s. that image is of a 1/4 inch capacitor - are they really that dangerous?

[Sean]

Originally Posted by eddy

The reason for asking is because my Dell Optiplex GX270 is well known to have this problem and i have been having all the symptons - i.e. shutdown without warnings (i've actually written this sentence 3 times already!!!)

Like you say its the stuff coming out of the capacitor which is worrying.

Any other suggestions, its out of warrenty so thats a no go...

Eddy

p.s. that image is of a 1/4 inch capacitor - are they really that dangerous?

Eddy I would get a new board mate before its goes bang

[Scuttler]

I have seen them but not like that. Typically I've seen what's called "wet slug" capacitors. They have a ruberised end cap. As the insulation material expands with heat and over time the force the caps apart and then...BANG....spews what looks like wads of paper all over the board.

[Scuttler]

If you can read the caps then you should be able to source replacements.

[Bantam]

I'm afraid you've diagnosed it entirely correctly.

Capacitor plague - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I've seen loads of it on Dell machines and on the newer iMacs. A certain brand was mentioned (Nichicon) however I don't know how accurate that is.

Now you've said you have a GX270 I can categorically state that it is a known issue (as a Dell house here we have hundreds of them) and Dell will replace the motherboard under warranty.

If you're out of warranty it's worth hassling them because they have been known to replace them.

The problem is caused by them overfilling the capacitors with electrolyte. After 2 and a bit years the unit generally stops working for no reason and the expanded caps are the cause.

[DAFFY]

Eddy, it is acid leaking through the capacitor. we had a mail from IBM about five years ago to warn us that tens of thousands of faulty capacitors had been purchased from the far east and installed onto system boards. Sure enough about two yerars ago we started getting loads of calls right across site with users complaining about pc shutdowns ect. It turned out to be faulty capacitors as predicted which meant a system board and cpu replacement

[DannyB]

Originally Posted by Scuttler

I have seen them but not like that. Typically I've seen what's called "wet slug" capacitors. They have a ruberised end cap. As the insulation material expands with heat and over time the force the caps apart and then...BANG....spews what looks like wads of paper all over the board.

Not only does it look like wads of paper, it can actually be wads of paper.

Danny