Motherboards & Flaky Caps (was: 4.11 Server Locks Up)

[wc_fbsd at xxiii.com]

At 04:23 PM 3/28/2006, Mark Cullen wrote:
>Upon further inspection of the motherboard, just before looking to 
>buy a new one, I noticed bulging / leaking capacitors around the CPU 
>socket. It looked like *all* of the most important caps were 
>knackered. I am suprised it managed to turn on and stay up (for a 
>while) at all.

Yup, agreed.  Caps are really the only components that go bad just 
from age.  And on Intel Pentium 2 & up mobo's, as well as AMD 
stuff >= Athlon,  they're heavily stressed and often marginal quality 
from the start.

On any mobo's that support different CPU voltages,  you'll see a 
bunch of caps, coils, etc usually adjacent to the CPU socket.  It's a 
DC-DC power converter to generate all the required voltages.  Lots of 
folks are also running later models CPUs that draw more power than 
the board was designed to work with, stressing they further.

Thanks for the BadCaps.net tip -- I see *lots* of kits for ABIT 
[crap]  -- why am I not surprised?

   -Wayne