AV32 Capacitors

Greetings all;

I have an AV32V14 board that had been working well, but then became
flaky. Upon further examination I realized that all four of the capacitors
in a group beside the CPU looked fried. Before attempting to replace them, I
was wondering if anyone else has had success with such an operation or is it
not worth the bother? Thanks.

Bill

Hi Bill.

I recently worked on a friend's machine, with a Shuttle AV32V13 board, and I think I noticed the same thing. There are four capacitors situated between the CPU and the rear connectors on the right edge of the board. In my case, three of the four look as if the electrolyte is leaking out of the top of the caps through the crimp closure.

In his case his BIOS was blown and I advised getting a new motherboard.

I don't generally do board-level repair, especially so on today's motherboards where the copper traces are not much wider than the hair on my head!

That said, if you're up for the adventure it couldn't hurt to try. In the worst case you completely ruin the motherboard and have to get a new one. Best case - the repair fixes your board's "flakiness." A flaky motherboard is no good. To my way of thinking a motherboard that intermittently craps out isn't much better than one which doesn't work at all.

Let us know what you end up doing. CYa,

JJK
in Dayton, Ohio, U.S.A.