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."

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[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.

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.