I bought three of these at the computer bonanza yard sale last year. One didn’t work. I threw it in a box and forgot about it. Then I needed a graphics card. They aren’t bad cards for general use. I figured it was worth half an hour and a couple of bucks worth of capacitors* to see if I could get it working.
This is why it didn’t work. Exploded FZ brand capacitors. They are known to go bad and many people took advantage of XFX’s lifetime warranty on these cards. I don’t have that option. Notice also that they are through-hole capacitors on a card that could have taken higher quality solid surface mount capacitors (the PCB had both options). Likely a bean counter at XFX saved the company 30 cents, then lost tens of dollars on the warranty.
These FZ caps look ok but I’ll replace them as well.
Bye-bye. I did the standard heat, glob some solder on and wiggle method of removal.
I ordered new caps (1000, 1500 and 470 mF, 6.3V for the first two and 16V for the last) from Mouser and had a few already from Jameco. 105 deg. C, low ESR. The black ones are Panasonic.
Caps in place.
Soldered them in. The card works, at least for the last 12 hours it has.
*It always ends up being around $20, because you buy a bunch of other crap at the same time, just because. In my case I ordered extra capacitors and a bunch of Attiny 45 microcontrollers.
2 comments:
My problem is an Asus P4P800 motherboard with blown caps at the CPU and I have considered replacing them.
When your hand shakes removing caps and replacing them is a tad more risky, not that the board is worth anything with the blown caps as it is. Do a burn in test over a few days to test the new ones or check the scope for voltage transients...
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