Saturday, May 25, 2013

Replaced the Capacitors on a XFX Geforce 8600 GT

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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.

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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.

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These FZ caps look ok but I’ll replace them as well.

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Bye-bye. I did the standard heat, glob some solder on and wiggle method of removal.

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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.

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Caps in place.

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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:

Anonymous said...

My problem is an Asus P4P800 motherboard with blown caps at the CPU and I have considered replacing them.

Anonymous said...

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...