Solid Capacitor Motherboards Introduced

jckrbbt writes with news that Gigabyte has introduced solid capacitor motherboards in its Intel 945 chipset products. From the article: "[S]olid capacitors have a higher tolerance for higher temperatures and they also perform better with higher frequencies and higher current than electrolytic capacitors. The superior heat resistance and better electric conductivity will allow PC enthusiasts to tweak the highest levels of performance from their system without fear of excessive capacitor wear or exploding capacitors."

Comments

Average

[sporkme]

Solid capacitors also last longer with an average lifetime of 23 years compared to only three for electrolytic capacitors, according to Gigabyte.

I have seen popped caps on motherboards, but 3 years seems a little short as an "average."

Additionally, solid capacitors have a higher tolerance for higher temperatures and they also perform better with higher frequencies and higher current than electrolytic capacitors.

Yay for overclockers and NASA.

Re:Average

[Anonymous Coward]

I have seen them last less than a year. All you have to do is check where the capacitor is from. If it is from China (which is likely), then it has a high probability of failing very quickly. This is due to their stealing the formula from a Japanese company who became aware of the attempted theft and fed the women a recipe from the early 60's (and well known to hold up for only a year).

Re:Average

[thedarknite]

I'm curious as to how they calculate these numbers, I've never had a capacitor fail and I play with a fair number of boxes that are beyond their 3 year "average". Then again I've never used a Gigabyte board, so they may well have had a shoddy supplier at one point.

Re:Average

[Anonymous Coward]

The standard life test for an electrolytic capacitor is 1000hr at rated temperature. For most consumer equipment, this is 85C oe 105C depending on which electrolyte is used (and price paid). The life of electronic components doubles for every 10C reduction in temperature. At end of life, an electrolytic caacitor is allowed a 50% loss of capacitance and doubled ESR. For most cases these caps work fine (provided the designer included margin). In a PC application, it is reasonable to expect operating temperatures of about 45C to 55C. This would mean lives between 8000hr and 32,000hr.

I find it interesting that the solid electrolyte caps have finally found a home. These have been around fo about 20 years in one form or another. Maybe now the price will start falling and the small wet electrolytics will go the way of the vacuum tube.

Re:Average

[Tingler]

I have had to replace a couple of power supplies due to leaking capacitors. I also suspect my previous computer was becoming less stable over time due to some faulty capacitors. (No proof, just my suspicion.)

Re:Average

[multipartmixed]

I suspect your version of "fail" and "3 years" is different from theirs.

I'm guessing by "fail", they mean that N percent of them are Y percent out of spec, and by "3 years" they mean "3 years run-time", not "3 calendar years".

That said, I seem to recall electrolytic caps on digikey typically being rated for around 2,000 of use.... and their definitions of "fail" are exactly as I've said above.

Caps can (and often do) work in their intended application well after they have ceased to behave as the spec sheet says they should. Sometimes, they are not that critical; other times, the design engineers know how to derate parts to get a reaonable lifetime out of whatever it is they are building.

Re:Average

[Phleg]

and fed the women a recipe from the early 60's

That doesn't seem so bad. My mom still has some of her cookbooks from the 60s...

Re:Average

[Anonymous Coward]

> I have seen popped caps on motherboards, but 3 years seems a little short as an "average."

Three years is such an absurd statement that it can be only called a lie. Elcos would not be used in /anything/ if they had a 3 year average life.

The story here is why Gigabyte is saying such garbage, not the press release that ExtremeTech "writer" Bryan Gardiner has repeated with his brain turned off.

AFAIK, Gigabyte did not fare notably worse than other MB manufactures during the bad cap epsiode a few years ago, but possibly this nonsense is related to that?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

I've got gear spanning forty years of electonics addiction here. Excluding the pile of bum parts due to said plague, only one unit has dried-out caps, my Osborne 1. Everything else still works fine. I'm listening to my 30-year-old Technics amp, and have my 21-year-old Amiga 1080 displaying my Atari 2600 and PS1. Three years is complete crock.

Re:Average

[Gordonjcp]

So they've rediscovered tantalum bead capacitors, like in the old CP/M machines?

Re:Average

[thedarknite]

Then I guess I have been lucky enough to have good parts, because most of the systems I play with run pretty much 24/7 with only the occasional power down. The only things that I've had stop working properly are drives and fans.

Re:Average

[dave420]

"They"? Get real.

Re:Average

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah... mod this up. It doesn't sound like an urban legend or anything. The author was even kind enough to link to reputable sources that confirm the story. Man, and people say journalism is dead.

Re:Average

[ArsenneLupin]

and fed the women a recipe from the early 60's

That doesn't seem so bad. My mom still has some of her cookbooks from the 60s...

And how often do her dishes explode?

Re:Average

[ArsenneLupin]

The author was even kind enough to link to reputable sources that confirm the story. The story is pretty well-known, and has even been featured on Slashdot. Here are them links:

• The Great Capacitor Scare of 2003
• Leaking Capacitors Muck Up Motherboards
• Illicit Leaky Capacitors Killing Motherboards

==> only error of GP: the formula muck-up was not intentional, but the thieves themselves made the error while copying it.

Re:Average

[Sique]

The life of electronic components doubles for every 10C reduction in temperature.

This is called van 't Hoff's rule, not to be confused with van 't Hoff equation, which describes the chemical equilibrium or van 't Hoff factor, describing the solulibility of salts. Yes, Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff was a very productive chemist.

Re:Average

[Propaganda13]

You forgot the problems two years ago with caps leaking
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/ 04/1751210&mode=thread&tid=137

I've had a Gigabyte socket A board for a couple years and have had no problems.

Re:Average

[markh1967]

For the full story see www.badcaps.net

Re:Average

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had to replace the same electrolytic capacitor in a DSL modem several times. It fails within months due to a bad design of the circuit which uses the capacitor out of spec. It's not too big of a problem because the modem works fine without the capacitor as long as the power stays on. After a failure, it doesn't restart. Then it gets a new capacitor and things are fine until the next blackout. I'm not sure what that observation says about Gigabyte's expectation regarding the MTBF of electrolytic capacitors on their mainboards, but there you go...

Re:Average

[mrchaotica]

I have seen popped caps on motherboards, but 3 years seems a little short as an "average."

Two of my friends and I all bought Gigabyte 7VRXP motherboards at about the same time. Out of the three, mine is the only one that still works -- both of theirs failed within 3 years due to popped capacitors. Yeah, it's only an anecdote, but it makes me have no trouble believing that 3 years can be "average" for Gigabyte motherboards.

Re:Average

[PopeRatzo]

That was also my thought. I can't remember ever have a capacitor fail in my 25 years of torturing various computers. Even some Chinese ones.

Re:Average

[canuck57]

I have seen popped caps on motherboards, but 3 years seems a little short as an "average."

I had an Intel PERL motherboard with a P4 HT 2.4GHz that died from shorted and bulging caps. The power supply that was used has been powering another system for over two years steady without problems. It was my first and last Intel mobo. Knowing other manufacturers have also had problems, I treat them like the plague. It lasted 18 months.

The only other mobo I have had fail while in service was ABIT dual celeron that lasted just over 6 years. There were even repair kits for it, but I didn't bother.

The real problem is they are not made well, there is no reason for an electrolytic capacitor to die so early other than they are made incorrectly.

I have devices in my home with electrolytic caps in them that have lasted a long time, alarm clock 27 years, microwave with display 17 years, a television 15 years - even knew a Hallicrafter short wave receiver that had caps and high voltage that lasted at least 45 years and worked until it was replaced.

They are just made cheap and not to last in the mobo business. So when you buy a computer, it is not a bad idea to find out who made the motherboard, and what is theuir "capacitor" reputation.

Re:Average

[EveLibertine]

and fed the women a recipe from the early 60's

That doesn't seem so bad. My mom still has some of her cookbooks from the 60s... And how often do her dishes explode? The average lifetime is around 3 years.

Re:Average

[multipartmixed]

No, you're probably using parts that would classify as having failed capacitors -- but overall, they still work.

I have a couple of IBM Netvista P3 566s here.. The capacitors on the motherboard are so bad, they are bad upon *visual* inspection (swollen cases). Yet, one of them has been on since before Christmas without issues.

Like I said, it really comes down to how you define "failed". A capacitor which has, say, a 1 meg-ohm short that reads 25% below the value stamped on it with a lousy ESR would certainly be classified as "failed" by any reasonable capacitor-evaluating standard... but it would also probably still do whatever filtering job it was spec'd for.

Re:Average

[jimstapleton]

The trick is the "average" part though...

All it takes is one critical capacitor, or several not-so critical capacitors to fail. There are quite a few caps on a motherboard, and the motherboard should typically fail before the average capacitor time.

example, the following demostrates a set of 5 capacitors, and the average fail time is 3 years...

cap - life
1 - 2 years (2)
2 - 2 years, 3 months (2.25)
3 - 2 years, 6 months (2.5)
4 - 3 years (2)
5 - 5 years, 3 months (5.25)

total lifespan: 15 years, average lifespan 15 years/5 = 3 years

The average lifespan is 3 years for the caps, but it's quite likely the board will die by 2 years, 6 months (over half the caps gone).

I guess what I'm saying, is on average, a board usually will have *less* than the average lifespan of it's capacitors, or any given component where there are multiple copies.

Given the statistics involved with a large number of capacitors - chances are many boards will die before their half-lives are up. I've worked at a place with hundreds of computers, and much less than 10% of the boards went after 3-4 years (we never determined the causes, we just knew they needed replaced - but this does say that at least 90% of the machines didn't have their capacitors die after 3-4 years), which leads me to suspect that the electrolytic capacitors have easily more than a 3-4 year average lifespan.

I guess your friends were just unlucky and got hit by a bad batch.

Re:Average

[larkost]

Then you have luckily missed out on a lot. Dell has a few major lines that have failed at nearly 100% over the course of 2 years, ATI has a few lines of video cards that need replaceing, and even Apple has been stung by some production runs of iMacs and PowerMacs.

The University I work for had major problems with the Dell models. We bought into them in a big way. The department I worked for had 2 or 3 computers fail from this problem every day for over a year.

Re:Average

[KUHurdler]

As a part time TV repair guy, I'd like to personally thank the Chinese for giving me so much simple-repair business. Bad capacitors are easy to spot (usually) and easy to replace.

Re:Average

[jandrese]

I find it odd that people are talking about Caps with a "3 year" life and trotting out 1000 or 3000 hour estimates. Your 32,000 hour estimate is much closer to a year than any of those.

I have to echo many other Slashdotters in saying that unless it was one of the badly bungled caps from 3-4 years ago, I rarely have them fail enough to cause problems on my machines. I still have Pentium 133s running here doing menial tasks 24/7 for the past 7 years, and they were used when I got them. It's rare for me to have to throw out a computer part because it stops working, typically I have to throw them out because they're obsolete or some new piece of hardware replaced it (like buying a new motherboard with built-in ethernet, allowing me to squirrel away my ISA ethernet card). I do try to make sure my case doesn't run too hot however, high heat is so bad for so many components (Power supply, Hard Drives, caps), that improperly cooling your case is a sure road to replacement hardware.

Re:Average

[Howserx]

Myself and coworkers had to swap out close to 1500 of these boards. IBMs of various makes and models. Thankfully I found a better job before the project really got rolling. I only had to do about 70.

Re:Average

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I don't know if what parent posted is quite accurate, but here's the closest to substantiation that I could find:

http://www.burtonsys.com/bad_BP6/story1.html

Re:Average

[LilGuy]

That depends on how drunk dad gets.

Re:Average

[bperkins]

There are a couple reasonas I can think of.
First of all, most "failures" would include not meeting the specified rating, which wouldn't necessarily cause a noticible devices problem.
Also, those numbers are probably for maximum load at maximum temp. If your caps are less than 100C, they'll last much longer.

Finally, the 3 year figure may be the amount of time you expect to see one failure out of a thousand (or some other arbitrary number).

Which brings us to an important point. Quoting specs without definitions can be very misleading, especially for failure ratings.

Re:Average

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF are you talking about?

You just made that up.

Re:Average

[Anonymous Coward]

Alright, maybe _you_ didn't make itup but someone did.

Capacitor technology has improved significantly over the last 7 years and people are connecting this 'bad cap' stuff with 1999.

ESR and ESL have fallen significantly.

I can't believe that it is economic to use an old capacitor design (1999 (or 1960 for that matter)) in this application.
It just wouldn't cut the mustard.

Someone, however, is making money from this.

The only bit I do agree with is that 'electrolytics are unreliable'

You can mitigate it to some extent by:
running them cool
running them well below max voltage (say 75%)
using as few as possible to achieve system reliability

See MIL-HDBK 217

Re:Average

[Pentavirate]

People still have their TVs repaired?

Re:Average

[KUHurdler]

"People still have their TVs repaired?"

In general, I've found that people hate to throw stuff away. Believe it or not, some people don't really want a new TV. Repairing it is usually quite a bit cheaper than buying a new one.

Some even try to repair their own TVs.

And for those that just want to get rid of it, we offer to come pick it up and haul it off... Then we fix it, and sell it to someone else. There's a pretty decent Repair/Used-TV market, in my opinion.

Re:Average

[Fordiman]

As an ex electrical engineer, I can say there are two things you remember about capacitors when designing a circuit:

1) If signal consistency is important to you, never use an RC oscillator
2) If you need it to last at least as long as you work there, always use a cap with a voltage of ceil((inputSignal.average+inputSignal.stddev*3)*1. 25)

These ifs are usually rhetorical; you always want signal consistency, and you always want it to last as long as you can be held responsible for it. Period.

Re:Average

[OrangeTide]

I've worked for companies where we had to RMA an entire run of our product because the caps we received from the supplier were below spec and were exploding in the field (DSL modem). I've also have replaced people's motherboards because they were running pretty unstable (even in memtest86) and had some lumpy looking caps on the board. The PSU seemed large enough so I can only point the finger at out of spec caps.

Most motherboards are Taiwanese not Chinese. Although I'm sure the government of China would like us to believe the two places are equivalent. I still can't believe GW Bush would rather play around in Iraq than help foster democracy in Taiwan which actively asked us for help in leaving the ROC and the influence of the PRC. *sigh* I guess Taiwan didn't have enough oil interests.

Re:Average

[NerveGas]

Higher currents aren't just about overclocking. "Back in the day", chips drew 20 watt, and that was at 5, or 3.3 volts, so you had 4 or 6 amps. Today, chips drawing over 100 watts are running at around 1.3 volts, for over 75 amps of current. That's a lot.

Re:Average

[elgatozorbas]

Also can't believe this is generally true. Bear in mind that elco's are not only used in mother boards, but in almost every power supply. If they are worn the net frequency is no longer filtered, for audio amplifiers this would lead to 50/60Hz hum. Yet we don't throw away our radio's after that time, do we? A few weeks ago I revived an old tube amplifier. It kept playing for two seconds after being switched off, meaning that the caps were still ok after 30 years.

Re:Average

[Anonymous Coward]

[quote]
I'm guessing by "fail", they mean that N percent of them are Y percent out of spec, and by "3 years" they mean "3 years run-time", not "3 calendar years".
[/quote]
Those of us that do not use Microsoft OSes, these ARE the same thing. By the way, crash/shutdown/boot-up are also on the clock. So remember that when you are attempting to determine if your machine needs to be restarted due it locking up. For me I always get server motherboards for my desktops (more reliable) and wish that I could in my laptops as well.

Re:Average

[thedarknite]

I define failed as "To cease functioning properly". Which is the correct definition based on the language used in the article

A capacitor which has, say, a 1 meg-ohm short that reads 25% below the value stamped on it with a lousy ESR would certainly be classified as "failed" by any reasonable capacitor-evaluating standard.

I qualify that statement using "begin to fail" or "fail to meet specification" neither phrases were used in the article.

Re:Average

[amRadioHed]

Leaving the ROC? I thought Taiwan was the ROC. Am I missing something?

Re:Average

[OrangeTide]

Factions within Taiwan want it to quit being the ROC. I was trying express that the ROC is just a puppet government of the PRC and neither should be in charge of Taiwan.

Re:Average

[fluffy99]

It's back btw. We had a butt load of Dell GX270s installed in Oct 2004. 60% have had the power supplies fail with bad caps. 35% have had the motherboards die as well with bad, oozing-brown-crap caps. Yet another sign that the quality of Dell is circling the bowl and ready to go down even further.

Re:Average

[amRadioHed]

Gotcha, thanks!

Re:Average

[Coolnquiet]

There's more about capacitor average life span on the gigabyte website: .

Re:Average

[tedgyz]

I have seen them last less than a year. All you have to do is check where the capacitor is from. If it is from China (which is likely), then it has a high probability of failing very quickly. This is due to their stealing the formula from a Japanese company who became aware of the attempted theft and fed the women a recipe from the early 60's (and well known to hold up for only a year). Isn't that old news?

I had 5 motherboards from that era pop caps. :-(

Re:Average

[Anonymous Coward]

You've obviously never had to provide support for a company that uses Dell systems exclusively. Mention GX270 to anyone that has dealt with Dells, and watch them fill with rage. Every single GX270 at the company I work at has failed with blown capacitors. Some have failed more than once. Dell of course won't admit that they have any problems. They should be sued.

Re:Average

[Anonymous Coward]

>>> and fed the women a recipe from the early 60's
>
>> That doesn't seem so bad. My mom still has some of her cookbooks from the 60s...
>
> And how often do her dishes explode?

The black bean, pepper and cabbage casserole caused quite a few explosions. :-)

FUD

[macadamia_harold]

The superior heat resistance and better electric conductivity will allow PC enthusiasts to tweak the highest levels of performance from their system without fear of excessive capacitor wear or exploding capacitors.

Yeah, you know, because that's *the* biggest complaint you see on enthusiast/overclocker message boards. Exploding capacitors.

Re:FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

It is for people who work in IT who have to replace boards with bad caps

Re:FUD

[snowgirl]

Yeah, you know, because that's *the* biggest complaint you see on enthusiast/overclocker message boards. Exploding capacitors.

It could be worse... they could be a company selling a network card to reduce network lag... lol.

Re:FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

It's fairly common for top end overclockers to replace the caps on their boards to allow them to run higher voltages on the CPU and memory. Heat has also been a real issue for motherboard components for quite some time now.

Re:FUD

[sporkme]

HA! Thanks for that. Maybe this is one of the "sucker born every minute" deals and maybe not, but there has not exactly been a demand.

Re:FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that is definitely FUD. But a little extra to ensure a board will last a few years is a worthy investment IMO. There's lots people out there still using Pentium 3s and such. A Core 2 Duo board (like the Gigabyte DS3 with solid caps) should have a very long useful life. If the extra 10$ on a 150$ motherboard (not even 10% extra) makes that the board's caps won't leak in a year i.e. extend its lifetime significantly, then why not?

Re:FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

"It could be worse... they could be a company selling a network card to reduce network lag... lol."

I've seen it! right here!

Actually, I first say it HERE!

Re:FUD

[snowgirl]

I kind of doubt at this time that it's a "sucker born every minute" sort of thing at this time. I'm sure that people introducing "electrical vacuum-tubes" might have had a bit of a hill to climb as people thought they were trying to sucker them into something, but fortunately for us, transistors actually did catch on.

So, while my first instinct is "how do you make a solid capacitor? Doesn't it work by keeping a charged capacitance between two nearby electrical circuits seperated by a vacuum?" But hey, I'm sure I would have wondered the same thing about transistors.

Of course, for every sucess (transistors) there's about a hojillion other hoaxes and snake-oils out there... so, I would recommend cautious-optimism. I certainly know a batch of Apple Airports went bad because one or two capacitors were underrated and eventually burst. If this would have extended the life-time from 3 months to 3 years, then it might have been a good trade-off. As for me, I was able to buy it for really cheap (I think like $10 or so) and then after some searching on the net, replaced the capacitors ($2 including solder and iron) and had a nice wireless base point for awhile. (My cat chewed through the power cable, and replacing it hasn't been worth the effort.)

So, anyways, back on point, anything that increases the reliability of my computer, I'll be happy to see it, as long as it doesn't cost me significantly more. (After all, 3 years is about the standard useful lifetime of a computer, even if the capacitors stay good.)

Re:FUD

[n1hilist]

But having a network card with reduced lag will help me get a first post!

Re:FUD

[mano_k]

Yeah, you know, because that's *the* biggest complaint you see on enthusiast/overclocker message boards. Exploding capacitors.

Well okay, I didn't overlock my system, but I had several capacitors explode on my mainboard some years ago! Turnes out to be a problem with the PSU...

Re:FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

*whoosh*

Re:FUD

[The Darkness]

how do you make a solid capacitor? Doesn't it work by keeping a charged capacitance between two nearby electrical circuits seperated by a vacuum? You're close, but I recall from my physics classes that capacitors aren't required to have a vacuum between the plates. I just checked the wikipedia entry on capacitors and found the following piece of text:

The capacitance is proportional to the surface area of the conducting plate and inversely proportional to the distance between the plates. It is also proportional to the permittivity of the dielectric (that is, non-conducting) substance that separates the plates.

So, if I understand that text correctly, you can create a smaller capacitor with the same capacity to store charge as a vacuum-gap capacitor by placing an appropriate dielectric material between the plates.

Re:FUD

[Carewolf]

Or a CPU company selling CPUs claiming to make the internet go faster

Re:FUD

[unitron]

So, while my first instinct is "how do you make a solid capacitor? Doesn't it work by keeping a charged capacitance between two nearby electrical circuits seperated by a vacuum?"

Anytime you have two conductors separated by an insulator you have a capacitor, or at least capacitance.

If you put a sheet of wax paper between two sheets of aluminum foil, that's a capacitor. If you replace the wax paper with a layer of air, it's still a capacitor. If you replace the air with a vacuum, it's still a capacitor. You can even replace the vacuum with a non-conductive liquid. It'll still be a capacitor.

As long as whatever separates the two conductors is an insulator, then you've got a capacitor.

Electrolytic capacitors use stuff that's a sort of paste, or "goo", which, combined with a layer of oxidation on the inner surface of one of the conductors, makes up the insulator. "Solid" capacitors use something that's, well, solid.

If you have a further interest, Googling for "capacitor disease" may prove instructional.

Re:FUD

[Ceriel Nosforit]

I'm making variable capacitators with air as the dielectric for use with an Antenna Tuning Unit. They're the kind you see in old radios, with interlocking plates separated a short distance. Apparently I can increase their capacitance further if I wish by soaking them in mineral oil. Or at least, that was what I was told.
Point is, making capacitators are really quite simple. You need to be a bit inclined for practical matters, but the device as such can be really low-tech.

The Wikipedia page on varicaps has a link to a guide for building your own caps. Check it out if you're interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_Capacitor

Re:FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that really annoyed me ... more than one person asking me for advice after those ads thought you NEEDED a P3 to use the internet. The UK advertising standards body agreed and Intel got reprimanded/fined for it.

Re:FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

The KillerNIC does actually reduce latency ... almost certainly by such a tiny amount as to make no difference, but it basically works as claimed.

Re:FUD

[Cadallin]

Jesus Christ! How do you make a solid capacitor? Never heard of Ceramic, foil, or tantalum caps have you? Do you also wonder when they're going to get the internet on computers?

Re:FUD

[sjwaste]

It's not like overclockers in general know a whole lot about electronics, though. An overclocker is just someone patient enough to tweak their BIOS settings and test for stability, rinse, repeat until best combination is reached. Hell, we don't even have to set jumpers anymore, its all done in software!

Maybe capacitor grade is impacting the max overclock and this will create a little more headroom. Then again, maybe not, but the average overclocker probably doesn't know the answer to this.

Re:FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

A buddy of mine told me the story of a time he was working on a circuit. While his back was turned to check something, he heard a loud "pop". Turning immediately to check the board, the only weird thing he could see was a lit LED. Then he remembered that the board didn't HAVE any LEDs...

finally

[Swimport]

Capacitors having the shortest lifespan of most electrical components means if this catches on there will be less electronic waste, and more reliable machines. Although I bet these cost twice as much....

Re:finally

[iminplaya]

...more reliable machines.

Don't count on it. Planned obsolescence isn't going away anytime soon. Make the machine "too reliable" and the industry will be crying about lousy sales.

Re:finally

[networkBoy]

"Although I bet these cost twice as much...."

Not really. As the capacity desired goes up 1, 2.2, 4.7uF etc the cost curve tends to get worse.
1uF ~7-10X aluminum electrolytic, 10uF? About 15x the price.
Thing is the total number of aluminum electrolytic caps in a system is fairly low so this should not impact price too much.
-nB

Re:finally

[rucs_hack]

I've only once seen popped capacitors on a board once after a power surge, and I've been around computers for years. Ok, I'm not a 'take stuff to bits' guy, I'm a coder who's adverse to opening the box lest I break something, but if capacitors were that big a problem, surely they'd be a common source of failure?

Solid state HD of huge capacity and Sata2 equivalent speeds, now *that* I'd be interested in.

Re:finally

[Gerzel]

Oh I'm sure there will be a company or twelve who will take the niche of "long-life" computer components.

Probably already out there.

Anyone know of a company that specializes in long-life electronic parts? ...other than, well, NASA.

Re:finally

[Alioth]

The only machines I've seen fail through bad capacitors failed due to the capacitor plague (a manufacturing defect). I have some very old computers with their original electrolytic capacitors that work just fine (the oldest, a 22 year old Sinclair Spectrum+)

Re:finally

[noidentity]

Yep, I've had a couple of CRT monitors that failed simply due to aging power supply capacitors. Replaced them and it was up and working again. Quite a chore to disassemble the thing, but I hate wasting an otherwise perfectly usable monitor.

Gigabyte

[phorm]

I've seen a lot of gigabyte boards with bad caps, although it seems to be that boards from various manufacturers about the 1Ghz Athlon era ago all suffered from a plague of them, I've found a rash of GB boards in general with cap issues.

I've found some pretty decent gigabyte boards, but the end results tended to have them dying of exploded capacitors. If GB has a good solution for this, and they still manage to maintain a good cost/value ratio, it might be a good reason for me to consider going back to them. I find their webpage/support is generally a little better than other brands.

How new is this??

[Freaky Spook]

I swear I saw this on Gigabyte promotional material like 6 months ago.

Re:How new is this??

[Score Whore]

No shit. I've had a 965 based Gigabyte board with these on it for several months now. What kind of news is this crap?

Re:How new is this??

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I have the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3, and it has solid capacitors. I think the board has been out for a while now as it didn't seem new when I got it a few months ago.

3 YEARS?

[vistic]

"Solid capacitors also last longer with an average lifetime of 23 years compared to only three for electrolytic capacitors, according to Gigabyte."

Motherboards may get obsolete fast, but I still would expect a longer life than just three years.

If this is true, I'm amazed so many old computers work so well. Maybe this is a bit off. In either case, it seems with such a huge difference in life span, unless there's a huge change in cost, the extra reliability offered by solid capacitors should make them standard in every motherboard. I'm not an electrical engineer though (or an economist).

Re:3 YEARS?

[Anonymous Coward]

so many old computers work so well.

Capacitors are generally used for filters and timing circuits. The motherboard I'm running right now has a capacitor at the edge of the AGP slot that I accidentally crushed (hey, I thought the new video card was just tough to push in, sue me). I only noticed it because the computer refused to boot until I cleaned the guts of the cap off the motherboard, and it runs just fine since then. Perhaps it won't deal with certain line noises anymore, or some USB port hardware runs 15 times as fast, but I'd say that I'll never notice either with this getup. My mother had a TV that was perhaps 20 years old. One day a cap (audibly) blew, and the only difference was that the scan controls no longer kept the picture entirely within the screen, sort of like a permanent 125% magnification, with the extra running off all four edges. She watched that tv another year or two before finally buying a new one.

Re:3 YEARS?

[alienw]

The little caps near the expansion slots are for power decoupling. There are usually lots of them and the loss of one will not affect anything as long as it does not short out. The bigger switching converter caps near the CPU are a critical component of the switching power supply, and losing one would definitely kill the mobo and possibly the CPU. They are also the ones most likely to explode or leak, since they do a lot more work and are exposed to much higher temperatures.

Re:3 YEARS?

[donaldm]

Any electronic component will eventually fail, however the mean time between failure can vary enormously. When designing any electronic device you need components that have tolerances that are within an "acceptable" range, so the manufacturer usually picks the cheapest component for the job.

Picking components that are only just within tolerance is asking for a reduced lifetime. This is called "planned obsolescence" or in Business speak "Product Lifetime". The trick is to not get the consumer offside with two many failed devices over the so called product lifetime. Manufacturer's do plan for this.

It must be noted that the higher the component tolerance (this means longer or more reliable life) the more expensive that component is so a 1% reduction in component costs can translate into 10's or even 100's of Millions of dollars in saving.

When mentioning exploding capacitors this normally occurs with electrolytic ones in power supplies however put too much voltage on any capacitor and it will breakdown sometimes quite spectacularly. Of course this can also apply to any electrical component.

Most tiny capacitors on computer boards are mainly ceramic or thin film (signal passing) or tantalum (dc power filtering) with electrolytic and Mylar mainly used in power supplies because they are usually larger. There are also other types of capacitors such as those with air or mica dialectics which also have their uses.

Re:3 YEARS?

[Max Romantschuk]

I'm amazed so many old computers work so well.

Actually, if a computer is old enough that helps too. I use a floppy drive from a 286 due to the fact that it's mechanically bulletproof. I went through 2 floppy drives before gutting an old external floppy enclosure for the drive. Newer hardware isn't built to last.

Also, thee years for a capacitor is probably three years of continuous usage.

Re:3 YEARS?

[Tatarize]

There is a certain amount of natural selection in such things. You never find the old computers which burnt out in a week. You only find the older systems which stood the test of time and were really solid. I like, any geek worth his salt, has half a dozen old sub-1 gig mobo/cpu combos. This isn't because computers back then were made to last, it's because I threw away all the broken ones.

Re:3 YEARS?

[noidentity]

Power supply filter capacitors are generally added in excess so that there is plenty of margin. Losing one will reduce this margin for that area of the board, kind of like overclocking where you increase the chance of error. When you crushed the capacitor, you probably also shorted its terminals together, and when you cleaned it up, you probably un-shorted them again.

Re:3 YEARS?

[elgatozorbas]

Capacitors are generally used for filters and timing circuits... ... or some USB port hardware runs 15 times as fast, but I'd say that I'll never notice either with this getup.

Capacitors can indeed be used for timing circuits, but elco's will not normally be used for anything precise. They are way unaccurate (read: +100%/-50%), have aging etc. Theis only advantage is their high (but unsure) capacitance and low price. For any precise application, ceramic or better will be used. Horowitz and Hill (a bible of electronics) call their performance "terrible", "ghastly" and "awful".

Dell

[Cherita Chen]

The three year average doesn't surprise me, Dell has had a multitude of problems with bad/bulging caps

Re:Dell

[owlstead]

Yup, my motherboard should last about 1 year (mobo replacement, with *same* freaking part). That's according to the person that fixed it, under the company warranty deal. Bulging caps all over that thing, completely gone. We have a contract with a third party company that orders with Dell. It's a shame, because it is running very quietly and reliably (and even pretty quickly) otherwise. Fortunately I got away without any data corruption.

Reverse the polarity

[dbIII]

That's when you see exploding capacitors - loud enough that everyone near you knows you've let the smoke out.

Re:Reverse the polarity

[Walt Dismal]

I expect that for security reasons TSA will ban exploding capacitors from motherboards, iPods, cell phones, shoes, and Japanese anal probes. Not that I know anything about the last category... It's only a rumor I heard. A rumor.

Re:Reverse the polarity

[dbIII]

And I thought it was embarrassing enough to admit exploding a capacitor by reversing the polarity!

Moo

[Chacham]

will allow PC enthusiasts to tweak the highest levels of performance from their system

Have enthusiasts mastered performance so well that they need to tweak them _from_ the motherboard to give them a challenge?

This is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Iwill has been using them for over one year. Just check out the DK8EW or DK8ES boards. Looks more like free advertising for Gigabyte...

Re:This is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, it's just that Iwill boards suck (DK8N user here, man I hate this POS).

Well, I guess Gigabyte boards do too so what ya gonna do?

No thanks...

[__aaclcg7560]

I'll stick to my vacuum tubes. Not only is the technology well-tested over the years, you can heat up the entire house if your computer room is in the basement.

Re:No thanks...

[calidoscope]

At least I hope you're staying away from the new-fangled 12AT7's in favor of the tried and true UX-199's.

Re:No thanks...

[fabs64]

Conveniently they're also used for a completely different purpose in electronics. :-P

Re:No thanks...

[Technician]

I'll stick to my vacuum tubes.

Just stay away from the wet electrolyte capacitors that used to launch the metal case out the top of the cabinet.

Sort of like the DS3

[Anonymous Coward]

What, sort of like the GA-965P-DS3 that I bought 4 months ago?

Yawn.

EH?

[SinGunner]

"superior heat resistance?"

Doesn't resistance CAUSE heat?

Re:EH?

[HazE_nMe]

Electric resistance causes heat, but 'heat resistance' describes the ability to resist heat.

Re:EH?

[zippthorne]

No, as mentioned by the other poster, electrical resisance "causes" heat. Heat resistances "causes" temperature. As in, Temperature increases as heat accumulates, which will happen if resistance to its flow out is increased.

Perhaps the meant, "superior heat rejection."

Re:EH?

[Anonymous Coward]

Resistance ensuring operation, they should have just said tolerance to be clear.

Re:EH?

[Jesus_666]

Electrical resistance causes heat. Heat resistance causes electricity. Thus, if we put a whole lot of these caps right above, say, a Thunderbird, we'd just need some power to get the CPU to working temperature. Once the TB is hot most of the power needed by the system can be generated by heat resistance.

Tune in next time on How Stuff Doesn't Work when I explain how you can accelerate a car to escape velocity using nothing but a stirling engine, a lighter, some batteries and a huge stack of thermoelectric heat pumps.

On a related note...

[Skewray]

On a related note, Gigabyte will also not be using Mentos any longer in the manufacture of Intel motherboards. This will prevent explosions due to Coke spilling into the computer case, apparently also a major cause of death for these motherboards.

Um... Abit?

[sweepkick]

Anyone remember Abit's BE6-II motherboards, and their leaky capacitors? This is the single reason why I haven't bought an Abit board in the last 5 years... and will likely *not* purchase another Abit board in the next 5 years (Abit handled it very poorly.. it cost me money). Guess what? I haven't had a leaky capacitor problem for 5 years. Nor have I had a MB problem (Asus and ECS). It's expected that your hardware should just work. Don't charge me more for "capacitors that won't leak". If I can trust your hardware, and not have any problems... you get my business. If you go with cheap parts and pass your hardware off as 'teh b3st'... then fuck off. It's as simple as that.

I'm sure the ...

[SloWave]

Gold Plated Speaker wire crowd will love this.

Re:I'm sure the ...

[nightfire-unique]

Gold Plated Speaker wire crowd will love this.

Ahem. :)

Speaking as an "audio dick," I feel I should come to the defense of both "solid capacitors" and gold plated speaker wire.

Firstly, gold plated speaker wire isn't gold plated to improve the capacitance or resistance properties of the wire - it's done to prevent corrosion. If you've ever heard the crackling sound an old car stereo tends to make, it's often because of corroded copper wires. It's particularly noticeable when you live near saltwater areas or in marine applications in general.

Secondly, there is no outstanding debate in the industry on whether or not polypropylene, film, or even tantalum capacitors (what they're referring to as solid, though they're probably talking about tantalums) are of superior quality to electrolytics for audio applications. Electrolytics have changing thermal characteristics, worse tolerances, and tend to introduce a small amount of phase shift into whatever AC signal you're passing through them. Yes, these properties are measurable with the right equipment and are not generally questioned.

And yes I am an electrical engineer! :D

Re:I'm sure the ...

[Sycraft-fu]

Actually gold PLATING can be of some use. Since gold doesn't corrode easily it's a good choice for a plate for a connection that's going to be made and not messed with like most consumer gear. It's when they start messing with the material or geometry of the wire itself that you are talking BS. However gold plating (and silver for pro gear) is not useless,

Re:I'm sure the ...

[PeterBrett]

Secondly, there is no outstanding debate in the industry on whether or not polypropylene, film, or even tantalum capacitors (what they're referring to as solid, though they're probably talking about tantalums) are of superior quality to electrolytics for audio applications. Electrolytics have changing thermal characteristics, worse tolerances, and tend to introduce a small amount of phase shift into whatever AC signal you're passing through them. Yes, these properties are measurable with the right equipment and are not generally questioned.

Agreed. Tantalum capacitors have much better performance than electrolytics in most circumstances. However, there is outstanding debate about whether the use of tantalum capacitors is ethical, as tantalum is just about the rarest element that's actually used in the electronics industry and most of the deposits are in developing countries. Accusations have been levelled that electronics manufacturers are going to inordinate lengths to secure tantalum deposits, and the people who live there are the losers (especially since the by-products of processing tantalum ore are decidedly unpleasant).

I try to avoid using tantalum capacitors in my own designs as far as possible, trying to keep to NASA's guidelines for component derating when using electrolytics. Where I need precision capacitances I design the circuit so that a ceramic NP0 or similar EIA Class 1 capacitor can be used instead. I haven't had any capacitors fail yet.

Re:I'm sure the ...

[vojtech]

The capacitors in question are not tantalum, but solid polymer capacitors. A tantalum capacitor design would be possible, but would be very expensive and also rather bulky.

Compared to tantalum capacitors, these capacitors reach much higher capacities at the same physical volume, and the same or better ESL/ESR.

See for example here:

• United Chemi-Con PSA series
• Famous Sanyo OS-CON

These aluminium electrolytic capacitors, with a solid conductive polymer electrolytic find their way even on most current mainboards, most often in the CPU DC-DC convertor circuits. They're usually easily recognizable from classic electrolytics by their small size and metal casing without a plastic sleeve.

A benefit from an all-solid-polymer capacitor mainboard is dubious, since classic alimuium electrolytic capacitors work just fine in many roles they're needed for, particularly in low-ripple-current situations.

Re:I'm sure the ...

[Shaiku]

I don't know what kind of EE you are, but HELLO you're implying that other caps don't phase shift AC signals. Remember all caps and inductors have a complex component because they store energy. You're gonna get a phase shift as a result of capacitance regardless of the construction of the capacitor. Sure electrolytics suck, but phase shift isn't one of the reasons... Come on.

Re:I'm sure the ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow.. Cool...
Blood Caps!
I bet there very expensive too!

Do they shine better than real dia... ohmmm caps?

Re:I'm sure the ...

[nightfire-unique]

Agreed. Tantalum capacitors have much better performance than electrolytics in most circumstances. However, there is outstanding debate about whether the use of tantalum capacitors is ethical, as tantalum is just about the rarest element that's actually used in the electronics industry and most of the deposits are in developing countries. Accusations have been levelled that electronics manufacturers are going to inordinate lengths to secure tantalum deposits, and the people who live there are the losers (especially since the by-products of processing tantalum ore are decidedly unpleasant).

I try to avoid using tantalum capacitors in my own designs as far as possible, trying to keep to NASA's guidelines for component derating when using electrolytics. Where I need precision capacitances I design the circuit so that a ceramic NP0 or similar EIA Class 1 capacitor can be used instead. I haven't had any capacitors fail yet.

Interesting.. I've never heard that. I'll have to read up.

It sounds frustrating because the one area where tantalums are good is where neither ceramics or electrolytics are good - right around the 10uF-100uF range. Ceramics/polyproylenes are huge, electrolytics are crappy.

Re:I'm sure the ...

[residents_parking]

Well, I do live near the sea but unlike James Bond my car doesn't need to go in it, and I've never noticed crackling that wasn't down to a carbon pot or dodgy connector. In boats there are different considerations, but that hardly needs to dictate best practice for the audio industry as a whole. In regards to the electrolytic vs tantalum debate (and there is a debate, as long as one side keeps claiming to know best), the performance of both can be adequate and secondary factors often come into play. Tantalums don't go big, aren't tolerant to over-volting or reverse volting, leak less but can have have significant ESR. More significantly, tantalum is a globally scarce resource and although there are alternatives, there is no emergent winner and designers are often loath to specify a solid cap for supply reasons. Try this. Find a brand-name analog mixing desk and take the lid off. You'll find a mix of parts, carefully selected, And yes, I bet it meets the published spec including distortion. The real problem is far eastern factories that won't buy the correct low-ESR caps for SMPSU circuits, to save a few cents. In that scenario, lifetime can be of the order of months. Specifying a solid cap means the factory can't fit the wrong part, so there is some wisdom in it.

Re:I'm sure the ...

[ozbird]

If you've ever heard the crackling sound an old car stereo tends to make, it's often because of corroded copper wires.

Dry joints: yes. Dodgy volume pot contacts (especially sliders): yes. Loose wire connectors (spade, bullet): yes. Flex wiring fatigue: yes. Corroded wires? Nope. (YMMV.)

Re:I'm sure the ...

[StressedEd]

I notice there seems to be no mention of ultra/supercapacitors in the wider Slashdot discussion. The role of such devices is completely different to the role of the high frequency capacitors mentioned in the main post, but interesting nevertheless. They were a real surprise to me, then again I havn't done much electronics in earnest for years.

Have you or anyone here had experience with these things? How scary is discharging a 2600F capacitor? Any idea of their effective resistance / inductance?

Re:I'm sure the ...

[DrDitto]

Yet another NASA engineer who potentially compromises the design of a spacecraft in the name of environmentalism. You wanna know why the Space Shuttle is having all these recent foam problems that crashed the Colombia? Because they switched the formula to remove freon in order to be more environmental even though the EPA gave NASA a special waiver. The original design worked, but it used freon in the foam. Don't believe me? Here is a journal entry from NASA's website in 1997!!!: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/people/journals/space/ka tnik/sts87-12-23.html

During the STS-87 mission, there was a change made on the external tank. Because of NASA's goal to use environmentally friendly products, a new method of "foaming" the external tank had been used for this mission and the STS-86 mission. It is suspected that large amounts of foam separated from the external tank and impacted the orbiter. This caused significant damage to the protective tiles of the orbiter. Foam cause damage to a ceramic tile?! That seems unlikely, however when that foam is combined with a flight velocity between speeds of MACH two to MACH four, it becomes a projectile with incredible damage potential. The big question? At what phase of the flight did it happen and what changes need to be made to correct this for future missions? I will explain the entire process.

Yet somehow this never got mentioned by the mass media back when Colombia disintegrated over Texas.

Re:I'm sure the ...

[smoker2]

With reference to tantalum caps. I used to work for a company called AVX, which was part of the Kyocera Group. We made Tantalum caps. and believe me, you don't want a bad one in your pc. I've seen a Motorola mobile phone which had a bad cap in it, and lets just say, there wasn't much left of the phone afterwards. When Tantalum burns, it keeps going, and the only thing that can put it out is salt.

They are used in Seagate hard drives too IIRC, which always worried me, but they went over to a different process a few years back, whereby the caps are produced on a wafer then sliced up rather than being processed individually. Lot's of nasty chemicals involved, acetic acid, glycolic acid, phosphoric acid and manganese to name a few.

Re:I'm sure the ...

[Ancient_Hacker]

>Firstly, gold plated speaker wire isn't gold plated to improve the capacitance or resistance properties of the wire - it's done to prevent corrosion.

Wrongo, Bub. Wire strands are usually tin-plated to reduce corrosion and improve solderability.

Nobody, but nobody gold-plates wire, even for the most demanding aerospace and military applications. I've taken apart Titan missle guidance computers, Mil-spec avionics, even old satellite guts and havent found an inch of gold-plated wire.

Now connector edges and IC and transistor leads that are going into sockets are often gold-plated. And I've even seen a very few Sprague electrolytic capacitors, MIL-spec, maybe one in a million, with gold-plated leads. But not wire.

> and tend to introduce a small amount of phase shift into whatever AC signal you're passing through them.

Wrongo again Bub. As you should know, the phase shift is proportional to the capacitance, and NOTHING ELSE. So a 100uF electrolytic capacitor will have EXACTLY the same phase shift as a polypropylene capacitor of the same value. And doubly false, as electrolytics are hardly ever used anywhere in their phase-shifting frequency range-- they're almost always used at frequencies where they're nearly dead shorts to AC and near zero phase angle. Exceptioin-- old cruddy speakers used non-polarized electrolytics in their phase-shifting range, but that's about it.

>And yes I am an electrical engineer! :D

Yep, I've met way too many EE's that don't recall the basic physical facts.

Re:I'm sure the ...

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Changes in materials for whatever reason are not root causes for the destruction of spacecraft. Rush Limbaugh the drug addict might want you to think so, but it's just not so.

Changes in materials happen all the time on spacecraft, especially when they are in production or active use over a period of decades. I'm sure Soyuz has changed materials in their spacecraft over time too.

If you want a better reason to pin root causes of the space shuttle disasters on, start by reading the reports that the investigative panels put together which talk about things like budgets, testing, go-fever, and faulty logic concerning safety.

Re:I'm sure the ...

[AnalogDiehard]

Tantalum caps have one big disadvantage - they have zero tolerance for reverse polarity. They will burst under such conditions and create a short circuit. Many devices from the 1970s/80s used tantalums and often have service problems due to damaged caps. It isn't hard for a reverse polarity condition to arise in most circuits, no matter how well you design them. Most design engineers eschew tantulums these days. Electrolytics tolerate reverse polarity better, albeit for a few milliseconds.

Re:I'm sure the ...

[hamburger lady]

Yet somehow this never got mentioned by the mass media back when Colombia disintegrated over Texas.


you must not have watched the fox news coverage. there was a bit on the bottom of the screen saying "columbia disintegrates: is it the liberals' fault?".

Re:I'm sure the ...

[Sinbios]

You're thinking of connectors. Connectors are often plated with gold to avoid the nasty corrosion you see on a lot of old nickel connectors. Cable wiring are often plated in silver because when applying a teflon jacket, normal copper wire, which is plated in solder, will fuse into one solid strand when it's dipped into the teflon. Silver plating, on the other hand, has no such problems.

Re:I'm sure the ...

[Agripa]

At least with the early ones the equivalent series resistance was relatively high making them completely unsuitable for filtering applications. The newer ones are better in this respect but still do not compete with other capacitor technologies except where very high capacitance is required and the relatively large ESR can be tolerated. Keep in mind that while Energy = 1/2 CV^2, capacitor volume is proportional to CV. If you really want a scary discharge use a high voltage film or electrolytic capacitor.

Re:I'm sure the ...

[drinkypoo]

Yet another NASA engineer who potentially compromises the design of a spacecraft in the name of environmentalism.

So you're saying we should just keep using freon?

Maybe the answer is to come up with a solution that doesn't use freon, but also doesn't come off in big chunks?

There is surely such a thing, but it might involve using a wholly different formulation. Regardless, using freon is not the only answer. It might be the cheapest one, though.

Re:I'm sure the ...

[DrDitto]

I voted for Clinton, Gore, Kerry, and most other Democratic candidates. Did you not read the NASA link I posted? The fact is, foam never fell off in big chunks when the freon-based methods were used. NASA can try and cover their asses all they want. The link is obvious.

And the parent poster apparently goes to great lengths to design around electrolytic caps based on his political views where maybe his resources would be better spent elsewhere.

Re:I'm sure the ...

[Anonymous Coward]

And yes I am an electrical engineer! :D

Yes, but are you a lawyer? ;-)

Re:I'm sure the ...

[smorken]

Electrolytics ... and tend to introduce a small amount of phase shift into whatever AC signal you're passing through them Umm, ALL capacitors introduce phase shift to an AC signal, and it is related to the value of capacitance. Tantalum caps are not exempt from this, or they wouldnt be very useful. You must know this being an electrical engineer.

Re:I'm sure the ...

[Squant]

Well where i worked, one of our engineers used a pretty interesting scheme with a super capacitor and a switching converter to get better battery indurance.

The problem was that the switching converter running of batteries had a high quiscent current consumption ( a few ma, this was a few years ago around 1998 or something). We had a small micro that runs from 5V to 3V or something. We first activated the DC DC converter until 4.9V was reached, and then we shut it down. Then the Supercap discharged ( it was a 0.47F 5.5V device) slowly while the DCDC shut down and used very little current. Then when the voltage reached around 3.3V we turned the DC DC back on for a while until the 4.9V was reached and we shut it down again. We got way better usage from the batterys like that.

At home i got a few 3.3F 2.5V caps for general experimentation. Especially useful in BEAM robotics for storing energy for long term activity.

I also got a few samples from cooper bussman, 50F 2.5V Cans, I was thinking about a quickly rechargable RC car.

I was looking at a few of the higher capacity super caps, those 2600F 2.5V devices. They are mostly used as a temporary store for regenerative breaking. I saw a interesting application note with balancing series chains of those kind of capacitors, without exceeding voltage rating.

What i know from experience, the higher the capacitance of the super capacitor the smaller the ESR. Once i accidentaly shorted the leads of the 50F cap that was fully charged, they got hot pretty quickly! A 2600F capacitor being shorted, I assume this device will violently fail.

Re:I'm sure the ...

[Profane MuthaFucka]

When I read the word Ditto, I have seizures.

I did read the NASA link that you said, and it supports my point of view. The problem wasn't the change in the foam.

The problem is that way back when the change was first made, an engineer noticed, wrote about the problem publicly, and brought attention to it. Then, NOTHING was done about it. The problem wasn't an engineering change. There have been thousands of those changes. The problem is that a hazardous condition was ignored or rationalized away.

Re:I'm sure the ...

[DrDitto]

Yes, I agree, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Re:I'm sure the ...

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Did you know that the foam on Columbia's tank ramps was the old CFC foam, not the new stuff? A little digging revealed the truth.

There are a lot of conservative sites such as Fox and News Max with stories about how the wacko environmentalist foam shot the shuttle down. They seem to have the goal of blaming the disaster on environmentalists. They're just flat out lying.

The truth is that the foam responsible was the old stuff. I didn't know that before, but now I do.

The official accident report says on page 51 -
"BX-250, a polyurethane foam applied with CFC-11 chlorofluorocarbon, was used on domes, ramps, and areas where the foam is applied by hand."

http://anon.nasa-global.speedera.net/anon.nasa-glo bal/CAIB/CAIB_lowres_full.pdf

Re:I'm sure the ...

[treeves]

Silver plating has its own problems. Corrosion and migration being the top ones.

Re:I'm sure the ...

[DrDitto]

No, different foams were used. There is an entire PDF report on foam somewhere on NASA's website that I've read. I wish I had the link. Your selective reading is only for the "domes, ramps, and areas where foam is applied by hand". That is a small fraction of the tank. The other report I read a couple years ago basically says they mucked around with foam formulations multiple times in the mid-90s for environmental reasons.

I don't read FoxNews or any other conservative source. I'm pretty liberal. Pollution due to spaceflight represents a TINY portion. I just can't believe NASA engineers are mucking around with designs to be environmentally friendly. Just insane if you ask me. If there were supply issues with the original formulations, fine. But from what I've read, the decision to muck with the foam formulations was based on environmental concerns rather than supply chain issues.

Re:I'm sure the ...

[Profane MuthaFucka]

The report I cited says it's the old foam that shot down the shuttle, not the new foam. The new foam is completely irrelevant to the disaster.

3 years???

[wiredlogic]

Solid capacitors also last longer with an average lifetime of 23 years compared to only three for electrolytic capacitors, according to Gigabyte

This is complete BS. A three year service life may be the norm for bootleg Chinese knockoffs of Japanese parts but quality Aluminum electrolytics can last far longer.

Amount of waste not reduced

[jlaiho]

It would be great if the amount of waste would be reduced by this.

However, for me at least, it's quite a long since I discarded any electronic equipment because of a failure. More often, things just become obsolete in one way or another. Obsolete enough that I can't even get them sold to anyone (at any price - even 1 is too much).

I did have bad caps on one motherboard, three to four years ago, I think (at which time the board had been in use for one year). I replaced the caps, and still have the motherboard in use.

Re:Amount of waste not reduced

[freewaybear]

Obsolete enough that I can't even get them sold to anyone (at any price - even 1 is too much).

http://cgi.ebay.com/SOCKET-370-MOTHERBOARD-THAT-I- BURNT-WITH-A-BLOW-TORCH_W0QQitemZ150077956785QQihZ 005QQcategoryZ42008QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItemNothing can't get sold!

Hey! I've seen those before.

[Sargeant Slaughter]

If this is what they look like:
http://www.alibaba.com/catalog/10829963/Conductive _Polymer_Aluminum_Solid_Capacitor.html

Intel Serverboards have had solid caps for over a year...
They've been on the samples we've tested for a while. THe S5000XAL/PAL series uses 'em (among others). Btw, I don't think they use the linked manufacturer, it was just the first pic of one on google.

Move along

[dj245]

At first I thought there was a revolution in the contruction of capacitors. But no.

"While both capacitors store and discharge electricity when needed, solid capacitors contain a "solid" organic polymer as opposed to the liquid electrolyte used in electrolytic capacitors."

They changed the electrolyte. Better, but it isn't going to revolutionize the industry. As most of you know from school, capacitors are composed of two charged plates and some "stuff in between". The stuff in between can multiply the total storage capacity by 1 (air, vacuum) to somewhere around 6 (some other fancy material). They changed the stuff in between.

Engineer General Warning
With your increased reliability of this new product you may find higher cost, vendor lock-in, and unpredictability as the long-term effects of this electrolyte are probably not known

ABIT has solid state capacitors as well

[gethoht]

Most of the new ABIT boards have solid state capacitors in them as well. Just an FYI -gethoht

DS3

[Blankhorizons]

I may be wrong, but the major selling point of the 965 DS3 line is that it has solid state caps. The cheaper S3 line does not but is otherwise identical. These boards have been out for over 6 months. It may be new that they're introducing them to the 945 chipset line, but who's buying 945 anyway?

Re:DS3

[Mr_Q_Oz]

Yep, and my GA-965P-DQ6 also has solid caps and has been available for over six months. TFA is simply announcing that Gigabyte is now including solid caps on its more mundane motherboards. Not the most exiting news. :)

Re:DS3

[neersign]

They probably should've written a story about how they fixed their memory problems and with Rev. 2 of the 965p-DS3, higher FSB's can be reached. But I guess that's not news to some people.

Dell GX270's

[Gates82]

Dell should start using these for their GX-270 line. I (1 out of 5 at the site I worked) have replaced a good 30 270 Motherbo--- (sorry per dell, system boards) that have video problems. All stem from bulgin and leaky capacitors. Most of these systems where between 1-2 years old (none over three).

--
so who is hotter? Ali or Ali's sister.

Re:Dell GX270's

[Curien]

It was a known manufacturing error. Dell issued a recall, and they repaired ours for free.

Re:Dell GX270's

[parasonic]

Dell should start using these for their GX-270 line. I (1 out of 5 at the site I worked) have replaced a good 30 270 Motherbo--- (sorry per dell, system boards) that have video problems. All stem from bulgin and leaky capacitors. Most of these systems where between 1-2 years old (none over three).

On the GX270's, there is now a lifetime replacement warranty on the motherboards. Capacitors blow on these things, whether that is six months down the road, or four years. We got a bunch of 270's around 2003 and still have several dozen of them here at the company where I work. A few months ago, we called Dell, and they sent two boxes complete with new motherboards and return labels for the old ones.
 
As a CmpE (currently working in I.T.), I will tell you that electrolytics are absolutely fine. I have electronics from the 60's and 70's with electrolytics that hold up. If the manufacturing process is botched, something may go wrong. But you can end up with a mess also if you manfacture tants, micas, polypropylene, even ceramic disc capacitors incorrectly. "Solid" capacitors are more of a sure-fire thing, but they can fail, too.

Mod parent up.

[sokoban]

Mod parent up, informative.

I do a lot of DIY speaker building and there definitely is a difference between Film/Foil caps and electrolytics. A speaker crossover made with Electrolytic caps sounds like crap compared to one made with even the cheapest of film/foil caps.

Re:Mod parent up.

[PeterBrett]

I do a lot of DIY speaker building and there definitely is a difference between Film/Foil caps and electrolytics. A speaker crossover made with Electrolytic caps sounds like crap compared to one made with even the cheapest of film/foil caps.

Firstly, WTF are film/foil capacitors? As far as I am aware, the only major types of capacitors used are:

• Aluminium electrolytic capacitors (aluminium foil, tightly would in a dielectric fluid)
• Ceramic capacitors (single- or multi-layer, using EIA Class 1 or Class 2 dielectric ceramics)
• Tantalum- and niobium-based capacitors (chip or electrolytic styles)

Are you thinking of resistors? I use thin-film SMT resistors all the time...

Which part of the crossover are we talking about? Which design do you use? Do you have inductors in there? Quite a few performance issues when using electrolytic capacitors are due to an inappropriate choice of inductors, IMHO.

Also, I've got a friend who does psycho-acoustics research, and he did an interesting series of experiments a couple of years ago that indicated that systems that performed technically very well (almost perfect filter characteristics, no harmonic errors) actually were rated worse than a system that had all sorts of junk spewing out of it, when the audiophiles participating weren't told which system they were listening to...

Re:Mod parent up.

[nightfire-unique]

Also, I've got a friend who does psycho-acoustics research, and he did an interesting series of experiments a couple of years ago that indicated that systems that performed technically very well (almost perfect filter characteristics, no harmonic errors) actually were rated worse than a system that had all sorts of junk spewing out of it, when the audiophiles participating weren't told which system they were listening to...

Yes I've heard of this mythical study myself. *shrug*. There are plenty of people with tin ears and they're not hard to find. Some people prefer the sound of greater distortion, so long as it's primarily low-order. Think valve based guitar amplifiers, vs. bipolar transistors. It doesn't mean they picked the one with the lowest distortion or most accurate presentation, it means the picked the one which was most pleasing to their ear.

Re:Mod parent up.

[msormune]

Film caps are usually the name for polyester film capacitors, made off plastic basically. I have experience about building guitar pedals and polyester film caps are great for that purpose: Small, cheap, durable and resistant to heat when soldering. I don't really know if they sound better than ceramic or electrolytic caps though... I think foil caps means paper capacitors.

Re:Mod parent up.

[Pharmboy]

As a someone who has played guitar for over 35 years, and has both transistor guitar amps and tube (and prefers tube) the distortion is not always the 'desirable' effect. Tubes are warmer sounding, sounding richer, and fuller. A very good tube amp can be set to JUST AT distortion so you play soft/medium and it is clean sounding, then crunching a few chords breaks it into just distorting, giving character and emotion to the sound.

Transistors are cleaner, but they fail in producing the more "emotional" sounds because they are too perfect, which makes them perfect for PA and most other applications. The same can be said of rectifiers: A tube amp with solid state rectifier doesn't have the same "boom" or natural compression that an analog (tube) rectifier does.

For many musicians, it doesn't matter. It is about the distortion and effects, which is fine for them. For those of us that play blues, jazz, rock-a-billy or other genres that are a bit more soulfull than Metalica or Britney Spears, it matters greatly. The low level 60hz hum and higher overall harmonic distortion are the price we pay for the richer, fuller, expressive tone with infinite adjustability.

Re:Mod parent up.

[Sinbios]

There are MANY more types of capacitors used than the three you listed. Film/foil caps use a plastic film or a sheet of nonconductive foil (paper, etc) as the dielectric instead of aluminum oxide as in electrolytic caps or tantalum oxide in tantalum caps. They are generally larger in size compared to other caps for a given capacitance, but electrically superior. See here for a detailed list of various kinds of caps.

Re:Mod parent up.

[Agripa]

Firstly, WTF are film/foil capacitors?

Film capacitors use either a metal foil separated by a film dielectric or a deposited metal film on the film dielectric itself which yields higher volumetric efficiency at the expense of series resistance. The plastic films that can be used include polycarbonate, polyester/mylar, polystyrene, polypropylene, and teflon depending on the application. Polyester are the most common but has a poor temperature coefficient and poor dielectric absorption compared to the others. Polystyrene probably has the best price to performance but can not be exposed to temperatures above about 85C because the polystyrene will undergo a phase change.

Very large film capacitors are now available as aluminum electrolytic replacements in motor start and audio applications.

Re:Mod parent up.

[sokoban]

Are you thinking of resistors? I use thin-film SMT resistors all the time...

Nope, capacitors. I use Mills or Dayton non-inductive resistors. For capacitors I generally use Dayton Film/Foils. They're a metallized polypropylene film, and sound great. Kinda pricey compared to some others, but for a decent film/foil cap they are about as cheap as you can go. Some people like audiocap thetas a lot, but I can't really tell much of a difference and they are outrageously expensive.

Which part of the crossover are we talking about?

I use them all throughout.

Which design do you use?

I use designs from Jon Marsh at htguide.com. He makes these kinda funky Cauer-elliptical crossovers and has been designing crossovers for like 30 years. I can't claim to understand his designs really (they're almost totally different from anything else I've seen) but they sure do work well. Check out the Modula MT or Natalie P for some really clever design work, or the Modula MTM to see his standard c-e filters.

Do you have inductors in there?

Oh yeah. 14 ga perfect layer or North Creek air core, but North Creek recently stopped doing much as far as DIY sales.

Quite a few performance issues when using electrolytic capacitors are due to an inappropriate choice of inductors, IMHO.

Hey, if they work for you, great.

Also, I've got a friend who does psycho-acoustics research, and he did an interesting series of experiments a couple of years ago that indicated that systems that performed technically very well (almost perfect filter characteristics, no harmonic errors) actually were rated worse than a system that had all sorts of junk spewing out of it, when the audiophiles participating weren't told which system they were listening to...

I'd believe it. Many people prefer a BBC dip, or are used to music sounding a certain way because of their system, and if you play the same track back on a system that is more neutral, it sounds weird to them. What would be interesting to see is if the audiophiles on whom he did the experiment all thought the reference system he set up sounded strange to them in the same way. I would expect that they would judge the reference system compared to their own and all have different opinions with the people with similar systems having more similar opinions.

Re:Mod parent up.

[PeterBrett]

Nope, capacitors. I use Mills or Dayton non-inductive resistors. For capacitors I generally use Dayton Film/Foils. They're a metallized polypropylene film, and sound great. Kinda pricey compared to some others, but for a decent film/foil cap they are about as cheap as you can go. Some people like audiocap thetas a lot, but I can't really tell much of a difference and they are outrageously expensive.

My bad. I mostly do high-frequency, surface mount stuff, and couldn't really care less about what goes down at the low hertz to kilohertz end of things -- I guess that's why I hadn't come across film/foil caps. Anything with any significant ESR tends to be a problem.

Thanks for the info & references -- looks like I need to do some reading!

WEED and Lead-free...

[Anonymous Coward]

But exploding caps are FUN!!!

Okay, kidding aside, all this will do is increase costs. As long as the original electrolyte wasn't selected really close to needed voltage and temperature, there should've been no long term problems anyway. I've noticed that manufacturers in China often cut it really close on the voltage, at least on hi-fi stuff. For example, a particular cap may be a 16V cap, when the voltage they need there is around 14 or 15V. It would be better (but add maybe 2 or 3 cents to cost) to use a 25V cap instead. Most of the time, this is what causes failures, as I'd assume most caps are 105C (and not 85C) anyway. As a side benefit, electrolytics are easy to change out with non-expensive equipment. Surface mount caps are NOT fun to change out.

Their use of "solid" caps is probably due to the ease in using robots to put on surface mount components. The costs must be relatively cheap now. Add to that, the WEeD directive and lead-free initiatives, probably makes the solid caps slightly more cost effective than they used to be. But they should still be more expensive than electrolytics...

Since I've not RTFA, I'm assuming electrolytics are still used in the power supply and and power-related circuits...

About time!

[Orphaze]

As someone who has painstakingly replaced all the capacitors on two separate motherboards, I can definitely see why this is a good idea. The most recent was my Epox 8kra2+ board (with an Athlon XP 2600+, not over clocked.) I noticed the caps beginning to bulge slightly on top and develop some crusty electrolyte "dandruff" on the heads after 2 years of use, but I decided to hold off on major surgery until I began to notice any problems.

About a year later the system began to lock up mysteriously, and after ruling everything else out (this was my main system after all) I grabbed my soldering iron and began an hour or so of some rather nerve wrecking soldering. Every single 1000F and 1500F cap on the board needed replacement, so an old PIII board became the donor.

I measured the bad caps after removing them and most of them were off by about 300-700F, way outside of tolerance. After I finished I booted the system up, ran memtest for a few hours successfully, and never had a lockup since.

Re:About time!

[The Master Control P]

What is it on your motherboard that requires Maxwell Lab's supercapacitors? :)

Re:About time!

[unitron]

Every single 1000F and 1500F cap on the board needed replacement, so an old PIII board became the donor.

Of course, it was around the time of the PII/PIII BX chipset boards that all those capacitor disease capacitors were being used by mobo manufacturers, so if you got good ones off of your board you rolled the dice and got lucky. Better just to order new ones from digi-key or somebody.

Re:About time!

[Anonymous Coward]

1000F! 1500F!

How big is this fucking motherboard and how do you lift it??

Re:About time!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd assume he meant uF and the mu got lost either from forgetfulness or else he actually managed to remember the code for the Greek letter mu and Slashdot stripped it :-) A 0.001 F cap sounds a LOT more reasonable for a motherboard.

Re:About time!

[Orphaze]

I copy and pasted the microfarad symbol from Wikipedia which worked fine in the form but didn't survive the preview or post, I swear!

Re:About time!

[Orphaze]

Good guess - I copy and pasted the microfarad symbol from Wikipedia and then slashcode stripped it.

Doesn't really do any good for a computer though

[Sycraft-fu]

I see VERY few computers failed due to a cap problem before they are retired on account of being too old to be useful anymore. The most common component I see fail is the HD, which is no surprise given that it's mechanical. This could be useful for devices that are good for 25 years, but comptuers tend to get thrown out after 5.

23 years?

[ScaryMonkey]

Solid capacitors also last longer with an average lifetime of 23 years compared to only three for electrolytic capacitors, according to Gigabyte

I guess a longer lifespan is good, but do I really need a motherboard to last for 23 years? I just might get around to upgrading the processor in that time frame...

Re:23 years?

[gbobeck]

I guess a longer lifespan is good, but do I really need a motherboard to last for 23 years?

Actually, the intended buyer of this motherboard happens to be Gentoo users. The idea is to sell them a motherboard which will run after everything compiles on their system.

Note: I am a happy Gentoo user, above was only a joke.

Re:Um... Abit?

[gethoht]

That's interesting...

Up until about 6 years ago I used ASUS for all my builds, then I found that ASUS boards were giving me alot of issues and I switched to abit. While abit isn't 100% bulletproof(no hardware is), I found them to be by far the most reliable boards that I have experienced. And now that ABIT is using solid state capacitors in a majority of their new boards (AW9D-Max, IN9-Max, etc...) I have all the more reason to keep using them.
-gethoht

Why is this news?

[Angelwrath]

I've had a Gigabyte board with solid-state capacitors for more than 3 months now, it's based on the 965 chipset, so I was a bit confused why this article made it sound like this was a new innovation.

Re:Why is this news?

[DutchGeek]

ASUS have had a board with solid-state capacitors as well for a couple of months now (ASUS P5B-E Plus). It wasn't released in the USA for some reason though.

Re:Why is this news?

[TubeSteak]

I've had a Gigabyte board with solid-state capacitors for more than 3 months now, it's based on the 965 chipset, so I was a bit confused why this article made it sound like this was a new innovation.

I can't believe you got modded Informative.
The answer to your question is at the beginning of TFA:

Earlier this week, Gigabyte launched a full range of its 945 series all-solid capacitor motherboards, extending its product line of solid capacitor motherboards from the 945 through to the 965 chipset.
... The move marks the first time that Gigabyte has opted to include these solid capacitors in its Intel 945 series, a much more mainstream chipset than the 965.

So, congratulations on your 965 chipset.
Gigabyte is including these caps in their 945 chipset.
Hopefully bringing it within reach of the unwashed masses.

Re:Why is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had a Gigabyte board with solid-state capacitors for more than 3 months now

There's no such thing as a solid-state capacitor. That would be a capacitor made out of some semiconductor (most likely silicon).

Re:Why is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Errr, solid-state means solid state, the state of being a solid. As opposed to liquid, or gaseous, or plasma, or vacuum. It has *nothing* to do with semiconductors, other than that semiconductors happen to be solid state. This "solid state = semiconductors" notion is borderline retarded.

I love the idea!

[paulius_g]

I'm going to tell you guys, I really love this idea.

I thought that in this crazy world where almost every computer component is manufactured in China, that I could never find something reliable, fast and at good value. This motherboard has just made my day and I hope that more manufacturers will take a similar approach.

This also looks like it would be a great server motherboard. And the Core 2 Duo is an extremely fast chip aswell. I think that we're seeing a nice marriage of great technologies.

I've always respected Gigabyte, and I hope that I'll respect them more in the future.

Re:But

[nmos]

the question on everyones mind is whether these even-more-overclocked PCs will be able to run Windows Vista?

Well maybe not "run" but it should at least "walk" now.

even better than solid caps is NO caps

[Anonymous Coward]

even better than solid caps is NO caps with Digital VRM

Not vacuum tubes...

[Kadin2048]

I'll stick to my vacuum tubes. Not only is the technology well-tested over the years, you can heat up the entire house if your computer room is in the basement.

What you really want are Leyden Jars.

Re:Not vacuum tubes...

[goarilla]

strange how the english always transform non-english words
it's "de leidense fles" ... it would be more correct if it would be called ... "the flask from leiden"

Re:Doesn't really do any good for a computer thoug

[timmarhy]

no, in 15 years as a computer tech i've seen as many pc's m/b's die from bad caps as i have bad hd's. this is a good thing.

liquid motherboards?

[aleator]

Solid Capacitor Motherboards Introduced better solid capacitors than liquiid motherboards

Instead add neon lite to PC for better performance

[viking80]

The recipe for the electrolyte in capacitors is kept as a big secret similar to the secret ingredients in the sauce at a restaurant.

Chinese industrial spies stole a fake formula from a Japanese company, and started making capacitors, and the rest is history.

A combination of a smaller solid cap with good HF performance together with a cheap and large electrolyte further away, but with better LF performance will beat the solution in the article.

I use the power supply from a 25 old HP HDD as a lab supply. It has huge electrolytes that still deliver great performance.

You will probably get more performance improvement by adding neon lights to your case.

Article in ieee.org members only
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/6/26410/01176509.p df?arnumber=1176509

http://www.burtonsys.com/bad_BP6/story1.html

But can it...

[Anonymous Coward]

But can it burn Dual Layer DVDs?

Re:Um... Abit?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's trivial to replace those caps, so I don't see the problem. At least it's something you can goddamnit fix with cheap tools, not like if part of the chipset had to be replaced calling for a BGA rework station (some $k) and an X-ray inspection (figures). Dropping a brand due to well understood transient manufacturing issue at the cap plant is plain stupid. Abit didn't choose those caps because they were cheaper, at least I don't think so. Most likely they just were available -- when you purchase quantities to support motherboard production, quite often it's less than trivial to secure a supply of a particular component, even as "trivial" as a cap. I would absolve most MB makers from having anything to do with that. It was the cap maker which was at fault. They screwed up, they should have made it right. Cheers, Kuba

Capacitors are a big problem

[coder111]

Agreed that hard drivers fail more often, but over last 3-4 years, we had to replace/repair a lot motherboards because of busted capacitors. For office work, computers are useful for ~5 years now, and a lot of capacitors do fail during that time. A lot of motherboard manufacturers are using cheaper, lower-spec capacitors these days, and they don't last long.

--Coder

Re:Doesn't really do any good for a computer thoug

[repvik]

I've seen a lot. Of those, a lot were caused by this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

Know your stuff before you comment

[viking2000]

Speaker wire is gold plated to fool uneducated people to throw away money, not to improve performance.

The *connector* on the other hand is gold plated to reduce resistance.

So buy speaker wire with no gold, but make sure the connectors are gold plated. Even look for thicker plating if you plan to insert them over 100 times.

And secondly, an electrolyte is much better than polypropylene, film, or even tantalum capacitors for one use: Large capacity for the money. In an audio amp, you use film or other to handle the signal, since you need well defined parameters, but to deliver the power, you use electrolytes. The comparison is what do you want to buy when you are *really8 thirsty: 1) A bottle of exactly 10ml of pure water, or a gallon, give or take a little, of drinking water?

The problems with electrolytes are just with a few companies using the wrong recipe for the sauce. ieee.org has had a few articles about this.

Re:Know your stuff before you comment

[Anonymous Coward]

The resistance of the copper wire (or steel or nickel in a banana plug) is X.

Now, add another layer (gold) to the copper wire (or steel or nickel in the banana plug) through which the current also has to flow to get to the terminal.

Now, which wire has the lower resistance?

Re:Know your stuff before you comment

[mollymoo]

The resistance of the copper wire (or steel or nickel in a banana plug) is X.

Now, add another layer (gold) to the copper wire (or steel or nickel in the banana plug) through which the current also has to flow to get to the terminal.

Now, which wire has the lower resistance?

The one without a layer of copper oxide?

You're an EE?

[Anonymous Coward]

"..If you've ever heard the crackling sound an old car stereo tends to make, it's often because of corroded copper wires.."

Corrosion on the outside surface of a wire has negligible effects on the signals being carried by that wire at audio frequencies (20 - 20 KHz). If you are refering to corrosion at the connecting ends, then in a car stereo setting, the connecting ends of the wires are usually soldered to either the speaker posts or soldered to a connector... so again even in that situation, corrosion on the outside surface of the wire metal has no effect.

In your second statement about electrolytics.. Electrolytic caps are used for decoupling power leads to ground mostly and they have to have a DC bias maintained on them to work.. they can only pass AC if the signal does not reverse bias the capacitor. They are almost never used in audio filtering circuits for passing audio signals.

Somehow I don't believe that you really are an electrical engineer.

Re:You're an EE?

[nightfire-unique]

Corrosion on the outside surface of a wire has negligible effects on the signals being carried by that wire at audio frequencies (20 - 20 KHz). If you are refering to corrosion at the connecting ends, then in a car stereo setting, the connecting ends of the wires are usually soldered to either the speaker posts or soldered to a connector... so again even in that situation, corrosion on the outside surface of the wire metal has no effect.

You've clearly never worked on a boat. Yes - in general you're right. The lifespan most consumers expect from their gear is exceeded by the time pure copper cables will last in most environments. In harsh environments, plating cables does extend their life and transmission quality over time. Terminal blocks and crimped cables are common enough.

In your second statement about electrolytics.. Electrolytic caps are used for decoupling power leads to ground mostly and they have to have a DC bias maintained on them to work.. they can only pass AC if the signal does not reverse bias the capacitor. They are almost never used in audio filtering circuits for passing audio signals.

Uh.. speaker level crossovers? There are many applications where the signal will not reverse-bias the capacitor. In cases where they do, people will often use bipolar electrolytics.

Somehow I don't believe that you really are an electrical engineer.

Fair enough.

Re:You're an EE?

[unitron]

In your second statement about electrolytics.. Electrolytic caps are used for decoupling power leads to ground mostly and they have to have a DC bias maintained on them to work.. they can only pass AC if the signal does not reverse bias the capacitor. They are almost never used in audio filtering circuits for passing audio signals.

They are, however, often used to pass audio (or other AC) while blocking DC. For example, in virtually any phantom power application. The alternative is a bigger, heavier, and much more costly transformer for the same level of audio quality.

Somehow I don't believe that you really are an electrical engineer. While not all EEs are experts on electronics, s/he seems to know what s/he is talking about.

If I were feeling particularly snarky just now I would observe that somehow I do believe that you're an anonymous coward.

Um, right

[coder111]

When was the last time motherboard manufacturers used quality Japanese parts instead of bootleg Chinese knockoffs? And Gigabyte is guilty of doing this as much as every other motherboard maker.

--Coder

Re:Doesn't really do any good for a computer thoug

[Anonymous Coward]

How many of those hard drives failed due to unreliable power?

Mod parent from Elbonia down

[Anonymous Coward]

He must be a graduate from Elbonia

YAWN! Capacitor FUD

[EmbeddedJanitor]

You basically get three major types of caps on motherboards, each of which have different properties:

Ceramics. Small and fast. Typically used for decoupling (small charge storage).

Electrolytic: Larger and slower. They are slower because they are highly inductive. They don't like working at very high frequencies which can make them fail.

Tantalum: Medium/large and fast. They are less inductive than electrolytics. They can dump current far faster than electolytic which can cause undesirable current rushes.

Of course I have not RTFA because that's not the point of /., but I suspect they're swapping tantalums in to replace electrolytics. With proper usage electrolytics will not typically fail, so this is perhaps FUD. Particularly the "overclocker" bit. It sounds like FUD to try generate a new "feature" to sell their motherboards.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Five Years is not Enough.

[twitter]

... computers tend to get thrown out after 5.

Sooner, rather than later, the upgrade train is going end. There's no other "durable" good that gets trashed as often as computers do. Automobiles, appliances, TV's, stereos and other items that cost less than a PC are all expected to last much longer than five years. There's been way too much turnover and there will be much less of it as people realize that their hardware does what they want it to.

The PC churn is wasteful, environmentally harmful and mostly intentional. Going from Win3.1 to 95 and then 95 to 98, and then from 98 to XP and now from XP to Vista put a lot of computers in the trash. Outside the Windoze world, the same computers remained useful much longer. Last year I retired the Debian GNU/Linux, 486, fileserver that originally came with Windows 3.1. It was 13 years old, still running and stands ready as a backup. The laptop I'm writing this on is from 1998. It came with Windoze 95 but now runs Etch like a champ. I've got better machines, of course, because the trash is full of 1 GHz corporate cast offs. While I'm happy to have the hardware for myself and my family, I know that I pay for it everytime I buy something from any company still in the Windoze world. A select few at telco and software companies can get rich this way but the rest of us are being being poisoned.

Re:Five Years is not Enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

twitter, please read this carefully. Following this advice will make Slashdot a better place for everyone, including yourself.

• As a representative of the Linux community, participate in mailing list and newsgroup discussions in a professional manner. Refrain from name-calling and use of vulgar language. Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer. Your words will either enhance or degrade the image the reader has of the Linux community.
• Avoid hyperbole and unsubstantiated claims at all costs. It's unprofessional and will result in unproductive discussions.
• A thoughtful, well-reasoned response to a posting will not only provide insight for your readers, but will also increase their respect for your knowledge and abilities.
• Always remember that if you insult or are disrespectful to someone, their negative experience may be shared with many others. If you do offend someone, please try to make amends.
• Focus on what Linux has to offer. There is no need to bash the competition. Linux is a good, solid product that stands on its own.
• Respect the use of other operating systems. While Linux is a wonderful platform, it does not meet everyone's needs.
• Refer to another product by its proper name. There's nothing to be gained by attempting to ridicule a company or its products by using "creative spelling". If we expect respect for Linux, we must respect other products.
• Give credit where credit is due. Linux is just the kernel. Without the efforts of people involved with the GNU project , MIT, Berkeley and others too numerous to mention, the Linux kernel would not be very useful to most people.
• Don't insist that Linux is the only answer for a particular application. Just as the Linux community cherishes the freedom that Linux provides them, Linux only solutions would deprive others of their freedom.
• There will be cases where Linux is not the answer. Be the first to recognize this and offer another solution.

From http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/Advoca cy

Re:But

[Anonymous Coward]

Well maybe not "run" but it should at least "walk" now.

You all scoffed when Microsoft said they were focusing on safety... It's a documented fact that walking is safer than running.

And this is new how?

[tlhf]

Yeah, you know, because that's *the* biggest complaint you see on enthusiast/overclocker message boards.

I guess the common complaint about this article is that... I've already got a Gigabyte motherboard with solid state capacitors!

Link, note point 7.

Re:And this is new how?

[pdbaby]

Me too -- I made liberal use of the oldnews tag for this article. Gigabyte have been selling them since (at least) July 2006 when the Core 2 Duo was released

Everyobody

[twitter]

Bad capacitors got everybody, not just Dell. While Dell and other large computer vendors do sell some of the worst components and suffer some of the highest breakdown rates, the capacitor problem got everyone a few years back and still do. badcaps.net has the dirty details and the issue has been covered by Slashdot numerous times:

• 2005
• 2005
• 2002

Solid sounds good to me.

Re:YAWN! Capacitor FUD

[splutty]

Funny, you sort of go completely past the point of the *actual* difference between ceramic condensators and electrolytic condensators, which is that one's polarized and the other isn't. They're not interchangable.

In Soviet South Central

[srussia]

Mofo pops cap in YOU!

Gigabyte has other problems

[DigitAl56K]

I just bought a Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 board. It was not even possible for me to install the Intel chipset drivers on it without it locking up Windows. I found others online reporting exactly the same symptoms with no solution, *five* BIOS revisions previously.

Needless to say it's going back to Newegg, and that this will be the last Gigabyte board I buy in a while. Good job Gigabyte for progressing the technology, but how about making your boards' basic features work to begin with?

Re:Gigabyte has other problems

[Anonymous Coward]

i'd rather blame intel for your pebkac problem

Re:YAWN! Capacitor FUD

[deevnil]

No, the real difference is the amount of capacitance. I wonder what a 100uf ceramic disc cap would look like, a frisbee?

Re:Doesn't really do any good for a computer thoug

[Barny]

I see about 2-4 a week, mainly jetway, but increasingly asus, gigabyte and other big brands. From what I can tell bad power and bad power supplies (read cheap and light, as in weight that is) increase the speed at which these things fall apart, about 1 in 20 has no visible sign that the caps are damaged, and only un-soldering and testing can prove the problem.

As an interesting extra, asus now has 2 mobos that use no caps on the power regulator, their "Republic of gaming" boards use solid state dc-dc converters.

http://www.asus.com.tw/products4.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l 3=307&model=1480&modelmenu=1

http://www.asus.com.tw/products4.aspx?l1=3&l2=101& l3=300&model=1283&modelmenu=1

From the link...

The 8-phase cap-less Power design demonstrates two hardcore commitments of ROG products: ultimate overclocking capability, and ultimate reliability. The 8-phase power design yields unparalleled superiority in the overclocking arena, while the EL cap-less design removes any worries of capacitor problems once and for all.

Old is new again

[Anonymous Coward]

We have had these type of capacitors for 100 years or more. They were used in tube gear becuase they were the only thing that would take the heat. I've been complaining that nobody made orange dips in low voltages for a long time, looks like some engineer pulled his head out of his ass finally! NOw here is the big question... why did it take them so long to re-use 100 year old technology?

It is FUD

[laplace_man]

Like someone already mentioned they are probably switching standard capacitors with tantalum capacitors...AND THAT'S IT. The only difference here is that usually motherboards with standard Electrolytic capacitors as mentioned before can and will dry up in the future on every motherboard. Especially cheap motherboards tend to do that very often. Capacity of this kind of capacitor gets lower and resistance (how quickly capacitor is taking and releasing current gets higher). Capacitor is overheating. Capacitor is usually put in the circuit to dump the voltage drops providing necessary energy on the spot that needs +- constant voltage. CPU and BUS controllers are one of those things that really need large amounts of energy right away...(maybe some other stuff that I don't know about) So THOSE (and only those) capacitors on RIGHT PLACE in the circuit are the one that should be different - Tantalum for over clocking...RIGHT ?? But when you are overclocking you could probably need much bigger capacitors on those places not only different kind of capacitors.Sometimes just because electroly. cap. are so slow we use combination of capacitors (cheaper but sufficient). So if I make a proper conclusion over this subject...Solid capacitors don't dry up thus providing much longer life to the motherboard (servers and such - PROBABLY) but electrolyte capacitors are good enough if they are good quality (and sometimes even more reliable).So this post is a FUD. I wonder if their color will be purple maybe they will use green I don't know...Maybe they will use polyester capacitors making them even bigger ...but when those no life wannabe geek sees this motherboard will buy one of those cause they have a special feature. And that is SAD. My advice ??? Well buy something that is thoroughly tested and company has a good reputation. THAT'S IT

roll your own

[deevnil]

I've never heard of a vacuum cap before, must be one of those 'ideal' capacitors they learn you about in physics. The closest thing I could think of are the electromechanical radio tuners, they have pretty low capacitance for their size. You have a problem with ideal capacitors because they become very delicate as the plates become close enough for practical energy storage.

Once you determine the surface area (have to cipher up some squiggles, I forget which ones) you can make your own by cutting a piece of foil ribbon for each plate and sandwich paper soaked in mineral spirits (take care which recipe you use) between them, then you roll it up real tight like and seal it in a canister so it doesn't dry out. I don't understand how this makes them so particular about the polarity though... ?

This way they can take some physical abuse without shorting the plates while maintaining a consistent gap between the plates.

Re:roll your own

[jcgf]

Vacuum caps are not ideal capacitors they actually exist. I used to use a big one (forget the value) in a loop antenna for 20m. Check out this site: http://www.lbagroup.com/technology/vacuum.php

Re:roll your own

[BillyBlaze]

The reason they're particular about the polarity is that the wet paper is not the dielectric, it's an electrode. An aluminum oxide coating on one of the sheets of foil is the dielectric. This is very thin, which is why it works so well. When the current flows the right way, the electrolyte maintains the coating, but when current flows the other way, it eats it away.

Re:YAWN! Capacitor FUD

[Alioth]

I don't know the relative costs of each type in bulk - but I wonder if they just figured that it would be cheaper to manufacture the boards with SMT tantalum capacitors rather than pin-through-hole electrolytics, and are putting a spin on it?

Re:Doesn't really do any good for a computer thoug

[Aladrin]

I think it has a LOT to do with how you use the computer. I never had any hard drive problems until I got usenet. Then, the constant (and I do mean constantly) downloading, checking, unpacking, deleting that went on killed a few of my WD Caviar drives after about a year and a half. They happily replaced them and I don't treat them like that any more, and none have failed since. The only other hard drive I've had die was when I was really young and stupid and kicked a computer. The heads hit the platters at high speed and that was that.

On the other hand, I've never had a motherboard die. (My mother has, but that's a different story.) Intense processing isn't something I do often, so my chips don't heat up as much as they could. I'm also fanatical about having breathing room and fans on the computer.

1.21 gigabytes?!?!?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Call me when there's a motherboard with flux capacitors on them...

Re:YAWN! Capacitor FUD

[AaronLawrence]

That's true but often irrelevant. The difference in size (electroytic gets much more capacitance per size, so after about 1uF they are usually used) and RF behaviour (ie. inductance) of the two is much more important in most cases.

Popped caps, but still functioning?

[fiendy]

Amusingly enough, the computer I'm using right now has a popped cap. (bulged out top, with rust coloured material visible), and the machine is still running fine (my everyday machine). I'm not replacing the mobo until it dies as its a Socket A. I'd love to upgrade, and have the cash, just can't justify it when my Athlon 1800+ still does the job just fine.

Anyone else have experience with popped caps not causing a motherboard to fail?

Re:Popped caps, but still functioning?

[multipartmixed]

Yes. I have a pair of IBM Netvista P3 533s with a dozen or so popped caps each on the mobo. They work fine.

Re:Popped caps, but still functioning?

[petermgreen]

not all caps are vital, most of them are just there to improve the smoothing on the power rails.

also just because the cap is damaged to some degree doesn't mean it has completely failed.

so no this does not entirely surprise me.

Re:Popped caps, but still functioning?

[coder111]

Sorry for late reply,

My old home PC mobo (Soltek for a 1 GHz Athlon) was working for ~1 year with bulged caps before I replaced it. It got less and less stable over time, until i got fed up with it. I got a replacement mobo for ~25 USD from a wholesale supplier. It was used, borked, and had caps resoldered in at the supplier, and came with a 1 year warranty. I'm still using that system, it is fast enough for me.

My GF had a similar system, also with bulged caps, also had problems with stability. They also got fixed when mobo and power supply was replaced.

Anyway, it is not too difficult/expensive to replace caps yourself if you have a soldering iron and some free time. I think they should cost 0.5-1 USD each, and for that price you will probably get good ones that won't go bust in a couple of years.

--Coder

mincing words

[v1]

It appears the english language lacks a word for what the capacitors do. Saying they "explode" seems to take things a little too far, I get an image of a charred black spot on the board around two stumps of wire, and the outer can of the capacitor embedded in the ceiling, with the bottom cork and electrolyte scattered around the room like confetti. (I have seen that happen, twice) Thats more my idea of "exploded". (makes one heck of loud pop too!) What we see with the caps as of lately are more like they swell and break the vent at the top and sometimes ooze out crusty brown crap. Far less exciting than an explosion, and usually occurs over a long stretch of time. (several days at least) So what should we really call it? I've had the pleasure of replacing about half a gross of motherboards that had bad caps, and I would not describe a single one as having "exploded capacitors". Saying you have oozing or bulging capacitors sounds so much less exciting though don't you think?

Re:mincing words

[BillyBlaze]

"burst"

Mod PARENT INFORMATIVE

[Anonymous Coward]

I build amplifiers & use solid and paste caps all day. Couldnt agree more.

btw.. my 'not a script' word is 'vibrator'. coincidence?

Dell uses cheap parts!

[Anonymous Coward]

They're in it to maximize profits. 'Nuff said.

Old News?

[Knifa]

Havn't these boards been out for like 4 months now?

Apperently the 965P-DS3 is solid-state and I've had it since September.

Wait until next year

[ruqkus]

When a Doc Brown finalizes his Flux Capacitor... which makes... time travel... possible!

mod parent DOWN, true but misleading

[petermgreen]

actually you can get non-polarised electrolytics too, they are often used in loudspeaker crossover circuits, i think they are basically two ordinary electrolytics in inverse series.

but anyway in most cases (especially in digital equipment like computers) capacitors are used in a way that keeps them biased the same way all the time so it doesn't really matter if they are polarised or not.

i agree with the gp that the important characteristics of electrolytics are big and slow (high ESR) while the important ones of ceramic are small and fast (low ESR).

tantalums are fairly big and fairly fast, they also have much better lifetime characteristics than electrolytics. The downside is that they are expensive and when they do go bang (tantalums are polarised) they tend to fragment into a shower of tiny hot high velocity shrapnel.

Its unclear from TFA if the "solid capacitors" gigabyte are reffering to are tantalums or some new technology.

Re:Doesn't really do any good for a computer thoug

[petermgreen]

but comptuers tend to get thrown out after 5
some do but some stick arround for much longer, particularlly ones acting as say servers for some strange buisness app.

also just because a PC has been finished with by its first user does not mean that it will get scrapped immediately. Some do but others get taken home, given to charity, demoted within the organisation etc.

also at least in home use one of the main reasons PCs get thrown out afaict is malware infestation, hopefully XP SP2 and vista will go some way towards reducing that.

but i also think that caps are generally far better than TFA makes out (with the obvious exception of the known bad batch that went though a couple of years ago)

it's not about the science, it's about advertising

[RMH101]

Surely this is just the manufacturer coming up with a good FUD-based advertising campaign? People have a vague memory that there were some issues with lots of dodgy Chinese capacitors a while back. Advertising that your product uses some new technique is just going to make people think "ooh, well these are definitely different to those iffy ones that no-one really owned up to. That manufacturer probably won't suffer from any problems". They could just keep the same manufacturing technique but give it a different name and it'd work just as well... Ric

Re:YAWN! Capacitor FUD

[adam.dorsey]

I'd buy them.

I've had to replace the electrolytic caps on motherboards many times now due to explosion, leaking, etc. If this'll keep me from having to do that again, I'll do it.

Apologies to fellow slashdotters

[theskipper]

My electrolytes are low this morning so I currently don't have the energy or capacity post a reactive response to your highly charged and (possibly) polarizing comments.

The summary looks tantalizing though.

Average-Formulas want to be free.

[Anonymous Coward]

"This is due to their stealing the formula from a Japanese company who became aware of the attempted theft and fed the women a recipe from the early 60's (and well known to hold up for only a year)."

Note to audiance. You can't "steal" ideas. Just "borrow" them. In this case formulas want to be free.

Re:Average-Formulas want to be free.

[Neo_piper]

True enough but you can steal the research or the product of that research rather than licensing the product or doing it yourself.

This isn't a case of patents but one of industrial espionage.

Re:Average-Formulas want to be free.

[Anonymous Coward]

In this case formulas want to be free.

Really, they told you this?

Sorry folks, but neither formulas nor information wants to be free, because it isn't alive.

You may want it to be free, but that is different. Just because you want it to be free doesn't necessarily mean it has to be.

Please stop anthropomorphizing as justification for accessing information that belongs to others.

Re:Doesn't really do any good for a computer thoug

[goarilla]

how does one know if the caps are bad?

is there something like captest86 or something
because if i try to find out bad hardware i first download the mainboard's manual
and see if the problems are apm/acpi related, since a lot of old mb's are incompatible and/or have issues with power management

although they tend to advertise themselfs as 100% compatible.
After that i use memtest86 for like 15 mins, because that would
find +90% of the memory problems and running it longer just seems a waste of time
Then i would go to the next step, utilizing the process of elimination to find out if the problem is related to another device like pci/agp cards ....
if i can't find the problem after that
i suspect it's the mainboard but how can one know if it's a capacitator, resistor, transistor, the PSU, ...

can someone enlighten me ...
and can a hobbyist perform these tests and or add replacements
i have soldering experience, i can attach a new C, ...
if the affected area is not too small for a merely man's accuracy offcorse

Mod Parent Up

[Anonymous Coward]

This is very old news, Ive also owned a gigabyte GA series board for nearly 5 months with this feature.

Re:YAWN! Capacitor FUD

[TeknoHog]

As others have already pointed out, you're missing the point. Besides, in many cases they are interchangeable, if you imagine you could find them in the same capacity.

It's true that electrolytics are polarized and ceramics are not, but it's not a useful design feature. For example, you cannot use an elca as a rectifier, since it's destroyed by reverse voltage. So the polarity is a kind of flaw, but it's taken into consideration in circuit design. If you can find a big enough ceramic, you can use it to replace an elca, but not necessarily the other way around.

Re:But

[greylion3]

the question on everyones mind is whether these even-more-overclocked PCs will be able to run Windows Vista?

Well maybe not "run" but it should at least "walk" now.

.. or most likely some other variation of walking, as seen in Monty Pythons 'Ministry of Silly Walks'.

Re:Doesn't really do any good for a computer thoug

[Shelled]

You're either lucky or running old boards. I've seen plenty of motherboards fail with visibly swollen electrolytics around high temp components like the CPU.

Intel 945's?

[theJML]

Maybe this story is supposed to be pointing out their intro into 945 based mobos... because Gigabyte and many others have been using solid caps in their 965s for around a year now. Even Tyan is starting to catch on to this idea. I've been looking into getting a Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 for like 7 months now (saving up for the rest of the components) and it's already in Rev 2.0. I'm sure we've already all argued if solid caps are worth it... seems good to me, I had two caps blow in the past (though one didn't make jack of difference it seemed. Didn't even know it was leaking until I went to install a new card and saw a stream of dried cap juice down the board.)

Electrolytic caps in PCs

[WebCowboy]

Anyone else have experience with popped caps not causing a motherboard to fail?

I have had two of five motherboards reach the end of their useful life due to capacitor failure. On both occasions the computers were still usable but were not reliable. The symptoms were intermittent/inconsistent software crashes that gradually increased in frequency. My old Win2K machine would get BSODs every once in awhile, and it gradually got worse (I suspect as more of the capacitors burst). It wasn't until several failed that I got fed up and took it apart and noticed. What was actually bad Chinese capacitors I had been blaming on crappy Windows! I still think Windows is crappy though--it is a magnet for crackers and too high-maintenance for my tastes, and I switched to Linux on the desktop out of frustration when I replaced the motherboard and Win2k wouldn't boot (even into safe mode or with the recovery floppies) without major OS surgery.

The other capacitor failure was on a PC being used as a Linux server. It would kernel panic and/or spontaneously shut down on random occasions. The noisy CPU fan tricked me into thinking that its cooling ability had degraded and that it was shutting down due to overheating. I replaced it and the problem persisted. When I opened it back up I noticed three burst caps---HIDING UNDER THE HEAT SINK--lying on their sides adjacent to the CPU socket! What a horrible place to put such a component! I also took the opportunity to upgrade there as well. Unlike with Windows, Linux allowed me to swap motherboards and still boot into the OS to reconfigure drivers and the process was much less of a hassle.

Anyways, I think it is highly unlikely that the failure of a single electrolytic capacitor will be immediately noticeable. Firstly, a failed cap (puffed up and/or leaky) usually still has capacitance and might even be good enough to do the job. Second, these giant capacitors are most often are used on voltage supply lines for isolation (to keep the DC signal smooth and free of spikes and dropouts). The exact value of these caps is not critical as long as it is large enough to do the job. Often for simplicity's sake (to reduce the number of different caps needed) the manufacturer will use a much larger cap than required just because there are (for example) three others that need to be that size anyways--the reduction in number of different parts reduces manufacturing costs.

As I said neither machine became completely non-functional, and I suspect from their physical appearance that one or two caps failed long before the others in both cases. It depends on what the capacitor was doing, and how badly it failed. When a capacitor fails that is involved in power conditioning the result could be spikes and dropouts in the power supply connections to your CPU or other critical components. The result, I can attest, is maddening: Kernel panics, what look like memory errors cropping up and memory tests still passing and so on. As such, I applaud any motherboard manufacturer for making systems more reliable by reducing or eliminating less efficient components like electrolytic capacitors. The marketing of it is pretty dubious though--the replacements are "faster"? I didn't know that DC power rails had to be fast, or even COULD be fast! Fast-switching digital circuits are supposed to have the SMALLEST capacitance possible aren't they? I think the point is that solid capacitors are better for over-clockers because of their temperature resistance and better reliability at higher voltages, not because they're "faster".

Re:YAWN! Capacitor FUD

[element-o.p.]

With proper usage electrolytics will not typically fail

Perhaps this application wasn't properly designed, but as a lot of owners of DSM cars (Mitsubishi Eclipse, Eagle Talon, Plymouth Laser) know, the electrolytic caps in the Engine Control Unit will last ~7 years before they start leaking (Ref: http://www.tmo.com/howto/ecu1g/caps.htm). I had a '92 Talon, and discovered the problem about two years ago. I pulled the ECU from my car, popped it open, and sure enough, two of the three caps had started leaking. One of them had leaked bad enough to corrode the copper trace on the printed circuit board to the point where I had to wire wrap the leg of the cap and solder the wire further up the trace :(

I now own a '97 Talon TSi and I intend to check the ECU on it, when I get the time.

Re:YAWN! Capacitor FUD

[ChrisMaple]

You should have read the article, which is short and has almost no facts. It does use the word "polymer", which implies a plastic such as polyester. A good plastic cap should "never" fail.

By the way, tantalums are a variety of electrolytic, often used in military applications. My recollection is that they have a high initial failure rate but a long reliable life after that.

Re:Doesn't really do any good for a computer thoug

[evilviper]

I see VERY few computers failed due to a cap problem before they are retired on account of being too old to be useful anymore.

Anecdote != Evidence

There were so many failing motherboards due to bad capacitors, that there were class action lawsuits against the major motherboard manufacturers, including Gigabyte and MSI.

The most common component I see fail is the HD,

I see power supplies and motherboards failing more often than HDDs.

Tempurature stresses on solid-state components is just as risky as it is on mechanical components...

In other words, if you have a heavy-duty fan cooling your CPU (and RAM, and northbridge, and...), but nothing pointed at your hard drive, it's no surprise the HDD fails first.

Exploding Tantalum Capacitors

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember a few years back the company I worked, for purchased a bulk of 150uF tantalum capacitors. Great cost break on the parts but they had one nasty habit, they tended to explode, sending flaming pieces of molten metal across the room. After a white hot projectile embedded itself in one my fellow tech's shoulders we started testing boards with plastic scatter shields, and after a few days recalled and reworked the whole production run of boards. The design of the circuit was well within the stated specifications of the capacitors.

Re:Doesn't really do any good for a computer thoug

[flink]

how does one know if the caps are bad?

If it is an electrolytic capacitor, you just have to look at it. Electrolytic caps are typically the little can-like components with two legs. If it's swollen, the top is split, or there is brown crud on or around it, then it has probably been venting electrolyte.

If you are interested in an empirical test, you need to measure the cap's equivalent series resistance (ESR) and capacitance and see if it matches specs. If you have a nice multimeter it will be able to measure capacitance, but you'll probably need a separate ESR meter. A good cap will have a pretty low ESR (usually under 1 ohm) and a capacitance within 50% of it's rated value.

http://www.badcaps.net/ has way more details.

Re:Doesn't really do any good for a computer thoug

[Tmack]

how does one know if the caps are bad?
..snip..

Bad ones tend to either go *BANG* or bulge and possibly ooze their electrolyte out the vents in their tops, which looks like a crusty brown/black mess, almost like someone caked mud on your board. Tends to make the board extremely unstable (my friend's used to boot only after 3 or 4 attempts to power on) if they work at all.

See here for more info/pics/replacements + instructions: http://www.badcaps.net/

Tm

Re:YAWN! Capacitor FUD

[Bassman59]

Let's be pedantic here.

You basically get three major types of caps on motherboards, each of which have different properties:

Ceramics. Small and fast. Typically used for decoupling (small charge storage).

Also used in filtering applications ...

Electrolytic: Larger and slower. They are slower because they are highly inductive. They don't like working at very high frequencies which can make them fail. I suppose you mean Aluminum Electrolytic. The failure modes are not high frequency, but mainly heat (either because of the environment or because its ESR is relatively high, which means it's self heating). They also don't like reverse biases, the results of which can be very exciting. They're not "slower" because they're "inductive," they're "slower" because their values are typically much larger than ceramic types.

Tantalum: Medium/large and fast. They are less inductive than electrolytics. They can dump current far faster than electolytic which can cause undesirable current rushes.

Tantalums are also electrolytics. The electrolyte allows for larger capacitance in a given area. You REALLY don't want them to be reverse biased, and they have a bad tendency to explode if inrush current is too high. You don't want to use a tantalum as a DC block in audio circuits.

You also forgot some other capacitor types: polystyrene, mica, etc. These guys tend to be physically larger than a ceramic for a given capacitance, but they're a lot more stable. (And more expensive.) You'll find them in filter and integrator circuits, in high-frequency stuff, anywhere where stability is required.

Re:Doesn't really do any good for a computer thoug

[goarilla]

If it is an electrolytic capacitor, you just have to look at it. Electrolytic caps are typically the little can-like components with two legs

we used to call those "ELCO's"

Re:Doesn't really do any good for a computer thoug

[crabpeople]

You obviously don't work with foxxconn motherboards or shitty $30 PSU's. Yes hdds fail alot, but leaking capacitors cause all sorts of weird problems, whereas if a hdd fails, it usually just fails or gives delayed write errors. Ive been able to install windows and have it working at 90% reliability with visably swolen or bubbiling caps. This is why alot of people don't notice them. The machine might still work, sortof. HDD problems are a bit more obvious if you dont actually look at all the caps.

What are electrolytes? Do ya even know?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're what plants crave!

Fans actually

[flyingfsck]

are the worst component in a PC and when the fan goes, something else also goes after a while.

Wow, 230+ posts on capacitors!

[5pp000]

This seems geeky even for Slashdot...

Coltan Anyone?

[benrico]

I'm suprised nobody has brought up the ethical issue about the use of Coltan. I guess I will. Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coltan/ Apparently the is a "blood diamond" situation going on in the Congo with the mining of tantalum ore. Also miners are cutting down trees in "protected" gorrila habitats. The ore is now supposedly certified as conflic free, but that is probably just bs like the diamonds. More info # "Millions have died for our cell phones" from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting: http://www.pulitzercenter.org/openitem.cfm?id=276 # UN Coltan Explainer: http://www.un.int/drcongo/war/coltan.htm

Re:Doesn't really do any good for a computer thoug

[ShakaUVM]

Out of the last 8 non-laptop PCs (counting by motherboards) I've owned since 1996, 2 of them failed to caps blowing, 2 died due to CPU death, one had a hard drive die, one successfully retired in its old age, and two still operating. One CPU death was due to overclocking (Celeron 300A->450, natch), one CPU death to a power surge (the light bulbs in my house exploded at the same time and melted my computer through the decent surge protector). The hard drive death was also expected (was the original '95 hard drive, migrated to machine after machine). The cap deaths were much earlier than expected based on the age of the computer, and were positively annoying due to the fact that Windows 2000 would blue screen if you swapped motherboards on it.

I wouldn't say caps blowing is as rare as you say, and unlike other failure types, are pretty damn annoying.

Re:YAWN! Capacitor FUD

[mollymoo]

Of course I have not RTFA because that's not the point of /., but I suspect they're swapping tantalums in to replace electrolytics. With

Tantalum was my first thought, and I did read the article, but it's non-specific. However, a quick Google shows they are actually using Conductive Polymer Aluminum Solid Capacitors. Similar to 'wet' electrolytics, but with a solid electrolyte.

Re:LCD monitors failing after short time

[electronspiraltoroid]

Hi. So far this year (2006) I've repaired no less than six LCD monitors with this fault. I also had to repair my Sony laptop. In all the (Dell) cases the capacitors had bulged and/or split, causing the monitor to fail switch-on or display gibberish. In one case it blew the circuit protector as a cap went dead short. If you have an LCD monitor with random problems its well worth checking the capacitors by replacement- its a simple fix and might get another 2 years or so out of the monitor before the backlights fade. -A