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were all the motherboards (compatible with windows 98-ME) affected by capacitor plague?


caprireds

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On 12/1/2020 at 3:30 PM, farfigs11 said:

I have the ASRock  775i65G also, worked fine for a while then got progressively problematic. Seems to be USB 2.0 and/or BIOS related but maybe it's just bad caps.   The first boot attempt fails, usually gets past BIOS on the second or third attempt.  

 

according to the opinion of one technician I know , This is typical for a bad capacitor.

 

did you try installing pentium D or pentium 4 ,and it did  the same?

I have similar issue , it is that it takes long time for the bios to post.  it seems that it is a popular problem ,cause I read online lots of people complain the same issue ..

 

 

 

 

Edited by caprireds
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On 12/6/2020 at 3:58 PM, ZaPbUzZ said:

An important factor in capacitor plague is the Power Supply. If it was below 320 watt it was horrible.

Excuse me, what does that mean? Low-power power supplies having more problems with broken capacitors?

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4 minutes ago, Gansangriff said:

Excuse me, what does that mean? Low-power power supplies having more problems with broken capacitors?

Generally speaking a capacitor is essentially a power storage device capable of releasing the power it stores when needed, and they are usually employed to "level" the power passing in the circuit.

So - since during booting there is a peak request of power by the motherboard (and other devices) - if capacitors on it have lost some of their capacity,  a more beefy power supply is more likely to provide enough instant current to be able to boot the machine whilst a less powerful one simply cannot.

In multi-disk systems (like RAID storage) it was common to set them for staggered spin-up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin-up

to avoid the initial peaks.

 

jaclaz

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The only motherboard I've had capacitor problems with was from a 2006 Dell Dimension E510 (not Windows 9x compatible). We used it as a daily driver until it failed 2016. I looked at the motherboard, and pretty much all of those cylinder capacitors were blown.

I have Dell desktops from 1996 and 2001 (both compatible with Windows 98), and both still work and have good capacitors. The 2001 one got a lot of use. It was a daily driver from 2001 to 2008. I've had to replace a fan, power supply, and hard drive, but never capacitors.

Edited by CamTron
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On 12/8/2020 at 5:27 AM, Gansangriff said:

Excuse me, what does that mean? Low-power power supplies having more problems with broken capacitors?

I think he means that low power PSUs usually have a shorter lifespan because of the high load , for example caps in 650w PSU will last longer than in 350-400w under the same load. And yes , they get hotter  , hence the capacitors will be worn out more quickly . Low-power PSUs have more problems with broken capacitors because they usually stuffed with 85 degrees caps and these will be off pretty quickly. There are some exceptions , of course , like Delta and FSP (I mean the old ones , not the newer cheaply made) .

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I still have somewhere a windows-98 compatible Fujitsu motherboard from around 2006 and it was affected by this famous capacitor plague . Capacitor made by  OST went bad (bulging, leaking) , blue coloured to be precise , near the RAM slots . I had to replace it with Philips capacitor Made in Holland , from the 1980s and it worked just fine.

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On 12/8/2020 at 11:27 PM, Gansangriff said:

Excuse me, what does that mean? Low-power power supplies having more problems with broken capacitors?

simply: low powered supplies add stress to motherboard capacitors.

power supply rating is a peak rating that is in variation with power line conditions. No power grid is perfect 24/7.  a 1000 watt power supply with give at least 680 watts on demand for example regardless of PSU efficiency rating. A low end power rated PSU such as 320 watts can drop below 120 watts in bad conditions without shutting down also optionally adding overclocking there's an avenue to dead hardware and blown / reduced life caps. Not all motherboards had bad caps. The only motherboard I found with the "best" caps in early P4 generation was Dell and when I checked the PSU rating I thought they were walking on a tightrope. No CPU has a maximum energy draw bugs are in every aspect of design take a 4 slot ddr4 memory system use 2 sets of ddr 4 the fastest and the mid range speeds you get better average than just 4 x fastest sticks.

Most technological advances are based on theory. Mathematical equations. Even software is based on theory like digital pokies machines gambling strings is it really random.There is also too much hype in computer MARKETING

 

 

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Edited by ZaPbUzZ
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Very interesting! Here is the reason, why I asked that. A list with power consumptions from different computers:

P2, 400 MHz (1999)*: 52 W (idle power) - 58 W (high cpu usage)
P3, 600 MHz (1999)*: 44-48 W
P3, 750 MHz (2000): 41-70 W
---
Athlon, 1,1 GHz (2001): 93-107 W
Athlon, 1,2 GHz (2002): 94-122 W
P4, 3,0 GHz (ca.2006): 77-141 W
---
Pentium E2220, 2,4 GHz (ca.2008)*: 62-84 W
Phenom II, 3,2 GHz (ca.2009)*: 70-95 W
* indicates a smaller sized motherboard

Obviously the old computers (until the end of the single-cores) used more and more electricity, the more powerful they've got. So the power supplies of the old machines between 1999-2001 were much weaker, but still they look to be much more reliable on the capacitor side. Again, I'd argument with heat, because more power generates more heat, wearing the capacitors quicker...
So to conclude, it's not about absolute numbers, it's just good for a mainboard to have some extra Watts in stock.

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8 hours ago, Gansangriff said:

Obviously the old computers (until the end of the single-cores) used more and more electricity, the more powerful they've got. So the power supplies of the old machines between 1999-2001 were much weaker, but still they look to be much more reliable ...

Yes , you're right , older ones are more reliable because they used higher quality parts ,but not "high-end" , just the manufactiring process itself was better and testing after assembling too. As I wrote in the previous post , some were very good : Delta , FSP and some others. Also I think we shouldn't disregard how hot it became nowdays , esp. during summers. I bet it's so hot in Germany these years ! And not everyone have an A/C . I know electricity now is very expensive in Germany (wondering why , cause I know a guy in Austria and they have very cheap electricity) . So the result - computers parts will die sooner . The funniest part , I read soooo many articles were they say "change caps every 3-5 years or so" , yet I still have plenty of caps alive and well from the 80's - early 90's . I've salvaged them from TVs and HiFi sets . Very useful when repairing old PSUs and mobos. Even though most are 85 deg., they are better than modern 105 deg.

The best are Philips and and Rubycon , Nichicon is ok too. I even have RDE caps Made in Germany , oh man , that are glorious caps ! Those were the golden days when exceptional  qulity goods were made in Austria , Holland and Germany.

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On 12/10/2020 at 7:54 AM, D.Draker said:

I think he means that low power PSUs usually have a shorter lifespan because of the high load , for example caps in 650w PSU will last longer than in 350-400w under the same load. And yes , they get hotter  , hence the capacitors will be worn out more quickly . Low-power PSUs have more problems with broken capacitors because they usually stuffed with 85 degrees caps and these will be off pretty quickly. There are some exceptions , of course , like Delta and FSP (I mean the old ones , not the newer cheaply made) .

Absolutely true observation , confirmed by many years of my personal experience , with one exception , don't forget that the load these days is nowhere near the load we had in the 90s , these days we have power hungry GPUs. I don't think there was something like that in 1993 , so the results would be much different and Delta wouldn't seem so good , I guess . If you want older mobos/PSUs to last longer , just turn them on once in a while.

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2 hours ago, Dixel said:

Absolutely true observation , confirmed by many years of my personal experience , with one exception , don't forget that the load these days is nowhere near the load we had in the 90s , these days we have power hungry GPUs. I don't think there was something like that in 1993 , so the results would be much different and Delta wouldn't seem so good , I guess . If you want older mobos/PSUs to last longer , just turn them on once in a while.

But ...

power requirements have shifted, the +12V was once largely in use by 3.5" disks motors, nowadays more power is needed at +5V (think of all the USB devices) and the +12V on the PCI bus can be used by the GPU ...

it has to be seen on a case-by-case basis ...

BTW (and as a side-side note) new-new PSU's are (will be) 12 V only (with DC-DC converters on the mainboard);

What can possibly go wrong? :dubbio:

 

jaclaz  

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Just reburbished 3 CRT televisions that may reflect the power requirements, load and capacitor quality of 1980-1990s vs 2000 era hardware. The older sets work like new and the capacitors appear immaculate. The newest set requires more warm-up time, sometimes has a fluctuating image and one of the primary capacitors was bulged and leaking. The oldest sets have the most runtime by far.

1987 92-Watt 21" Zenith (perfect)
2000 110-Watt 27" Sharp (perfect)
2007 180-Watt 27" Sony (capacitor issue)

Aside from the above, a <10 year old LCD television was received as a giveaway a couple years ago. The set would sporadically turn itself off. After spending way too much time replacing capacitors, there was minimal improvement in runtime and the problem persisted. Finally gave up and sent it for recycling.

Does this mean today's engineers can't design a decent capacitor? Of course not, it's probably the easiest component to manufacture that works well for about 12 months then starts to fail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_failure

Edited by Wunderbar98
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Thanks for the information @dencorso. Unfortunately i don't purchase online and there is no longer a bricks and mortar here. There is, however, a large hoard of tediously salvaged capacitors in the basement. If the set gets worse will need to find the closest match. The leaker is the largest capacitor on the board, grouped in a too tight cluster of other capacitors, right beside the warm and cozy heat sink of a bridge rectifier. Now i'm no electrical engineer but there's lots of real estate under a picture tube to design a spacious board so all components can maintain ventilation and temperature.

The television sizes were added to my post above. Lots more current and heat through a 7 year newer same-size 27 inch set. Proabably not coincidental, the same time period users are noticing more failed computer hardware (2000 vs 2007).

Edited by Wunderbar98
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  • 1 month later...

I *really* have no faith in the capacitor plague being related to the size of the PSU (other than if the voltage from it is far from the nominal rating, but thats not a size thing). I have had several PCs with capacitor issues, the most interesting of such was (caps are replaced now) my Compaq Presario 3550.That has an 85 Watt (yes, 85 watts total) power supply, and that is the computer that lasted by FAR the longest with bad caps. by the time the cpu voltages finally drifted too far out of tolerance, I think it had 12 spoiled capacitors. Until the very day that it failed to POST any longer, it was completely reliable, which is rather unusual for capacitor issues. Of course, upon recapping it, it immediately started working again.

One could ask if the psu size and capacitor deaths are related. I think not. It did have the most busted caps, but that system has seen much more use than my others. And the others of mine dont have as many caps that are affected by the plague anyway. That system was in daily use from 1999-2012 and i beleive by 2012 a few had already spoiled. It then saw semi daily use by me from 2015-present. I think it's more about power-on hours (and maybe thermal cycling) than anything else. Of course the TRUE root cause is that they're misformulated, though.

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