PCs Plagued by Bad Capacitors

Hawaiian Rules writes "CNET has a story detailing a new threat to Dell PCs, Apple iMacs and other computers with Intel boards. This has been documented on BadCaps.net for some time, but the article also discusses what to do if you suspect you've got a case of the bad caps."

Comments

If you don't wanna get ripped off.

[neologee]

Never buy brand new high-tech toys before they've actually passed major consumer testing.

It's the same for everything technological! Only through trial and error, consumer brute force sort of do they get the best product after 1-2 years for most products such as Dell's, i'd cite motor companies too but bah.

Re:If you don't wanna get ripped off.

[lbrandy]

Never buy brand new high-tech toys before they've actually passed major consumer testing.

It's the same for everything technological! Only through trial and error, consumer brute force sort of do they get the best product after 1-2 years for most products such as Dell's, i'd cite motor companies too but bah. Well, considering electrolytic caps were invented in the 30s, I'd think we've given them enough spin-up to get that newfangled technology under control. The problem here is just poor quality control and cost-cutting. Luckily in the free-market, this type of things tend be a short-lived trend... it just requires the spotlight.

Nothin new here. Just like Car Makers.

[Vorondil28]

If a car maker can get away with a cheaper, flimsier [insert part here], save a few cents on each car, and sell millions of cars, they can make a mo'load more profit than if they'd gone with the slightly better quality part on every car. Same thing here only with mobos and capacitors -- nothing new.

After I knew what they looked like

[saskboy]

It was easy to spot obviously bad capacitors once I knew what they looked like. The ones I notice look like little cylinders on metal legs, with a rounded instead of flat metal top.

My least favourite kind of capacitor though, is one that works properly, but has been put in the worst place possible so that putting the heat sink on that is supposed to match the CPU, is impossible. And you can't exactly bend those suckers over out of the way, so you have to buy another heat sink that conforms to the annoying motherboard layout.