holy cow
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tuxchick Feb 28, 2011 12:41 AM EDT |
Of course the fates had to attack your pretty not-frugal machine! Here are some pics of exploded capacitors on my video card from a couple years ago. It was weird-- every so often I heard a muffled pop, until four of them were toast and finally the card failed. I had no idea what it was until it quit working and I opened the case. http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/6728/2/ |
| cr Feb 28, 2011 2:35 AM EDT |
Depending on how old that video card was, Carla, you might just be a victim of bad-cap syndrome (Google on "bad caps" to see how prevalent it was -- I had three Biostar mobos die on me because of it). If you bought the system with the video card in place (which means the whole system was manufactured about the same time), you might want to check the caps on the mobo and inside the PSU for bulging, leaks or discoloration because they might be affected too, especially near hot things like regulators. Better to catch it now before they fail, because a PSU fault sometimes likes to take the rest of the system with it, drives included. |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 28, 2011 10:33 AM EDT |
Well, it's certainly expenses I don't need, but it makes for some fodder for the grist mill. Interesting is that I am told "MC" stands for monolithic capacitor, which should NOT burn and in fact should be the most stable and unbreakable thing on the entire board. Oh well. Back around 1986, when I was assembling PCs for a living, I had a cap explode right under my nose. I learned the real meaning of the term "Smoke Test", and have used that phrase most every time I turn on a newly assembled system ever since. |
| cr Feb 28, 2011 4:32 PM EDT |
I had that happen nearby, back when I was working as a test-and-repair tech. A shiny-new-degree "too cool to read the procedure" engineer took over testing a unit nearby. The loud pop as the cap's can embedded itself in the ceiling insulation happened because he gator-clipped the thing to 120V instead of to 24V as written. He looked around like he was expecting sympathy and said, "I don't think it's working right." Looking up at that two-inch hole punched in the insulation, I got a healthy respect for elecrolytics right there. |
| jdixon Feb 28, 2011 6:37 PM EDT |
> I learned the real meaning of the term "Smoke Test", That's always been what it meant, Bob. :) |
| Steven_Rosenber Feb 28, 2011 8:33 PM EDT |
Curt, sorry to hear about the motherboard dying. That sounded like a really sweet system. I've been thinking of building an AMD box like that myself. Did I miss the brand of motherboard that died and what you are getting to replace it? |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 28, 2011 10:03 PM EDT |
Oh. Good point. The one that popped a cap on itself was an ECS A740GM-M, I'm replacing it with an ASRock N68C-GS UCC DDR3 + DDR2,Onboard Video, GB LAN ( I love copy/paste, if only the "three button emulation" didn't vanish last week, it's driving me crazy.) The benefit is that I get to re-use the DDR2 RAM that I have, while I can upgrade CPU and RAM to DDR3 in the future. The really nice one with the near 1GBps RAM access according to Memtest86 was an ASRock M3A790GXH/128M, which I was very happy with once they provided me with a ROM update that allowed the CPU to throttle all four cores from 3GHz to 800MHz independently. Handbrake reported a DVD to H264 conversion rate of around 100fps while I was using the machine to do normal desktop stuff. I'm replacing it with an ASRock M3A770DE, AMD 770, Cross Fire, GB LAN which saves me about $80 off the one I was considering, because I decided I didn't need on-board video. The spare Nvidia is doing just fine, and I really don't need USB3.... ...but it would have been fun. Being able to spend money for something I like has passed, now it's maintenance until I get some income. BTW, the blog made 23 cents today. At that rate, I will be able to get new ram in about 10 years. :^) |
Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]
Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!