Dell is in good company with defective capacitors. I remember NASA having problems during the mid 1970s in Spacelab due to tantalum capacitors that were operated under AC conditions. The polarity was periodically reversed, and this set up a reaction between the electrolyte and the solder seals, eventually destroying the seals and causing leakage. They solved the problem by specifying welded, rather than soldered tantalum packages. You can still buy this type of capacitor for $50.00 - $100 each.
I just noticed that on the box for my P5QC. Needless to say, it's been trouble free.
Jeff
To add what JP said...
Apple had a different response than Dell. Warranties were extended (3 years) and something like 25% of 1st & 2nd gen G5 iMac motherboards were replaced for free (guess by lead tech). The dealer i work part-time at was not quiet about the warranty.
Those machines are now 5+ years old. But most can be fixed by swapping 22+4 caps on gen1 and 26+4 on gen2. Some skill required. We've fixed a dozen or so, mostly for the dealer.
They make an excellent ampliance. I have a 20" gen1 as a music server/vinyl ripper.
dave
They are much more often exposed to "difficult" environs (ie banged during transit to bouncing down an escalator)
dave
This is old news. Both Dell and Apple (and probably others) got bit by the Nichicon caps 2003 - 2005. In Dell's defense it was a component problem, not a design problem though the way they dealt with it was disgraceful. Apple did a better job of dealing with the bad caps, though their history the last 5 years or so has been to rush everything to market without sufficient testing to get all the bugs out - just look at the forums and bug reports on just about every new product they have brought out lately. The early customers end up with lousy quality and Apple has a high warranty return rate. Guess that's why they have to charge so much for those toys. Somehow all the Apple fanboys and the fawning media seem to forgive all of it.
For a particularly egregious example of a coverup of a design defect, look up the story of how Sun responded to the processor cache errors on the E10000. The cache only had parity, it needed ECC, and the systems kept crashing due to the soft error rate. Sun blamed everyone - the SRAM supplier, the customer, the guy who torqued down the heatsink, when they KNEW it was because they didn't have ECC. Glad I wasn't working there.
For a particularly egregious example of a coverup of a design defect, look up the story of how Sun responded to the processor cache errors on the E10000. The cache only had parity, it needed ECC, and the systems kept crashing due to the soft error rate. Sun blamed everyone - the SRAM supplier, the customer, the guy who torqued down the heatsink, when they KNEW it was because they didn't have ECC. Glad I wasn't working there.
Last night I took my trusty wire cutters and clipped out every electrolytic cap I have in every device in the house. Ahhhhh, I feel so much better now. 
Seriously, there are still many good people within Dell that hopefully this raises enough eyebrows to put the right people in place and give the company renewed energy.
Seriously, there are still many good people within Dell that hopefully this raises enough eyebrows to put the right people in place and give the company renewed energy.
I work in the IT dept. at a large university in North Carolina (hint: it's in a small city named High Point in NC)
We've had cap problems with optiplex 270's, 280's, 745's across the board. Many of the 620 USFF's we have are dieing as well. Additionally about 50% of our 1905FP's and 1705FP's die only because of bad power supply caps. 2$ in parts takes out a 150$ monitor, or a 800$ computer. 270's and 280's have problems with both power supplies, and the regulator caps for the CPU and memory banks. The 745's have issues with the caps everywhere on the mainboards, except the 745's that are cool. If the internal case temperature is over 100F, the caps will go bad in less than a year. Only the optiplex 240's were the bulletproof boxes on campus with few failures - however they are slower than a tractor racing an F1 car, primarily due to their old age.
We also have kiosks with very cheap and anemic power supplies driving their monitors, and 745's driving the computer side of things. The monitor power supply caps go bad and take out the VGA board half of the time, a 150$ part. It was fun replacing the caps on all 50 of the boards that we have... The 745's get extremely hot, and die on a regular basis due to caps leaking and failing. They are going to be replaced by nettop's next week.
This is definitely nothing new, and now that it hit NYTimes, it's in public view and I've had a few people e-mail me about it.
In my experience, Dell doesn't care. They have their money from us, and the warranties are expiring. The computers are dieing, and we are are out of options and are not about to manually replace all of the caps ourselves. We need to buy new computers. We aren't exactly stuck with dell, but their prices are great and aside from the capacitor fiasco, their warranty/driver support is excellent. It's sort-of a win for dell for out of warranty machines..... but now that there is an article out about it, and reading that they intentionally sold machines with known faulty components, that makes me upset, and does not surprise me. Their sales team is awful, and reading about this makes me believe that their upper management behaves in a similar fashion.
We've had cap problems with optiplex 270's, 280's, 745's across the board. Many of the 620 USFF's we have are dieing as well. Additionally about 50% of our 1905FP's and 1705FP's die only because of bad power supply caps. 2$ in parts takes out a 150$ monitor, or a 800$ computer. 270's and 280's have problems with both power supplies, and the regulator caps for the CPU and memory banks. The 745's have issues with the caps everywhere on the mainboards, except the 745's that are cool. If the internal case temperature is over 100F, the caps will go bad in less than a year. Only the optiplex 240's were the bulletproof boxes on campus with few failures - however they are slower than a tractor racing an F1 car, primarily due to their old age.
We also have kiosks with very cheap and anemic power supplies driving their monitors, and 745's driving the computer side of things. The monitor power supply caps go bad and take out the VGA board half of the time, a 150$ part. It was fun replacing the caps on all 50 of the boards that we have... The 745's get extremely hot, and die on a regular basis due to caps leaking and failing. They are going to be replaced by nettop's next week.
This is definitely nothing new, and now that it hit NYTimes, it's in public view and I've had a few people e-mail me about it.
In my experience, Dell doesn't care. They have their money from us, and the warranties are expiring. The computers are dieing, and we are are out of options and are not about to manually replace all of the caps ourselves. We need to buy new computers. We aren't exactly stuck with dell, but their prices are great and aside from the capacitor fiasco, their warranty/driver support is excellent. It's sort-of a win for dell for out of warranty machines..... but now that there is an article out about it, and reading that they intentionally sold machines with known faulty components, that makes me upset, and does not surprise me. Their sales team is awful, and reading about this makes me believe that their upper management behaves in a similar fashion.
My buddy, who if he were still at Dell, would have been actively involved in this issue. He calculates the problem would have been known for a year, then a plan quickly drawn up to implement the fixes, and another year to repair/replace boards in the field. So he figures about 2 years to completely eliminate the problem.
Dell thought they had a nice big rug to sweep it under.
Dell thought they had a nice big rug to sweep it under.
The two obviously vented caps on my MSI motherboard measure about a fourth of their rated capacitance and an ESR in the ~1 ohm range--obviously defective. A third cap removed for control testing seems perfectly normal with an ESR in the low milliohm range. Since these parts were a pain to remove (I still can't get the solder out of the positive lead holes), I'm going to avoid removing any more. My kingdom for a robust desoldering station! I think they're United Chemicon KZG parts.
I doubt my MB's caps are part of the 'plague', but rather the expected fallout of parts that are worked hot and hard, and possibly a bit underspecified for the duty. This application well outside what I'm used to considering for audio electronics; I hardly ever look at the ripple current ratings.
I doubt my MB's caps are part of the 'plague', but rather the expected fallout of parts that are worked hot and hard, and possibly a bit underspecified for the duty. This application well outside what I'm used to considering for audio electronics; I hardly ever look at the ripple current ratings.
A Metcal with an STTC126 tip could clear it. The 126 tip has a 30° bend at the end that can fit INTO the hole. You back it out a hair and use a solder sucker to clear it. I've done it many times. Clean off any residues and pop in a new cap and solder it in. The new double power Metcals would probably be better yet but I haven't had the chance yet.
G²
cheap electrolytic caps
Interesting Dell got hit with the lawsuit, not a company whose US corporate operations include a PC and a copy machine. Not only Dell uses bad caps. I buy PC clones, the power supplies last about 9 months before cap or semi shorting, the same company is never for sale the next time I buy. If you run a clone PC 24 hours a day the power supply will short out in a month. Change your name and run away, is the successful business philosophy these days. I hate buying things made in the center of sharp business practice, but there is no alternative for a PC. You can buy a decent electrolytic cap, Nichicon makes some, but you have to pay for them. I have Nichicon caps used in motor drives in industrial ovens, nasty hot location with really high starting torque and high inertia (high current stress). Average life of caps 15 years. We had another brand motor drive, a little black oriental brand drive used to drive chip conveyors in the air conditioned packaging end of the factory. Caps leak slime in about three years, followed by no-start on a cold Monday morning. 95% of these drives were replaced in 4 year. You can't get that brand anymore, the conveyor manufacturer has found a replacement brand that lasts more than five years. I'm with Jean-Paul on debugging MS operating systems continually, I migrated from Win**** X* when MS required payment for service pack 3 to eliminate the conflictor virus, and I couldn't find my box number. I moved to Ubuntu flavor of Linix. MS has successfully fought back. I am banned from the organforum until I submit my PC to a MS website for vetting and hard disk inspection and modification. After **** freezes over, is my opinion.
Interesting Dell got hit with the lawsuit, not a company whose US corporate operations include a PC and a copy machine. Not only Dell uses bad caps. I buy PC clones, the power supplies last about 9 months before cap or semi shorting, the same company is never for sale the next time I buy. If you run a clone PC 24 hours a day the power supply will short out in a month. Change your name and run away, is the successful business philosophy these days. I hate buying things made in the center of sharp business practice, but there is no alternative for a PC. You can buy a decent electrolytic cap, Nichicon makes some, but you have to pay for them. I have Nichicon caps used in motor drives in industrial ovens, nasty hot location with really high starting torque and high inertia (high current stress). Average life of caps 15 years. We had another brand motor drive, a little black oriental brand drive used to drive chip conveyors in the air conditioned packaging end of the factory. Caps leak slime in about three years, followed by no-start on a cold Monday morning. 95% of these drives were replaced in 4 year. You can't get that brand anymore, the conveyor manufacturer has found a replacement brand that lasts more than five years. I'm with Jean-Paul on debugging MS operating systems continually, I migrated from Win**** X* when MS required payment for service pack 3 to eliminate the conflictor virus, and I couldn't find my box number. I moved to Ubuntu flavor of Linix. MS has successfully fought back. I am banned from the organforum until I submit my PC to a MS website for vetting and hard disk inspection and modification. After **** freezes over, is my opinion.
Dell is not the only PC mfr having issues with bad capacitors. Another mfr with a two letter abbreviation for a name has had a rash of bad motherboards for the last several years. I know because I have replaced several myself. Reason? Bad caps. They are recycled as scrap when they are replaced.
I've made good money fixing this EXACT issue. I recapped a lot of boxes....but most were the following Dell models: Optiplex GX2xx and Dimension 8xxx.
Don't worry about your Nichicon caps in audio gear...the issue was isolated to a certain date range of HM and HN series ultra low ESR caps. Date codes after 2005 haven't shown issues.
Nippon Chemi-Con had a problem with their KZG and to a limited extent, KZJ low ESR caps as well. KZG hates heat....of course since its a 105C cap, this shouldn't be the case.
As for Chinese caps....all bets are off. Most are junk. Samxon is OK, except for their green colored GF series, its garbage.
Rubycon, Hitachi, Sanyo, Fujitsu and Panasonic have been trouble free in my experience.
CDE hasn't given problems but CDE is seldom found in PCs due to the cost of CDE/Mallory products. (Made in USA...$$$)
Don't worry about your Nichicon caps in audio gear...the issue was isolated to a certain date range of HM and HN series ultra low ESR caps. Date codes after 2005 haven't shown issues.
Nippon Chemi-Con had a problem with their KZG and to a limited extent, KZJ low ESR caps as well. KZG hates heat....of course since its a 105C cap, this shouldn't be the case.
As for Chinese caps....all bets are off. Most are junk. Samxon is OK, except for their green colored GF series, its garbage.
Rubycon, Hitachi, Sanyo, Fujitsu and Panasonic have been trouble free in my experience.
CDE hasn't given problems but CDE is seldom found in PCs due to the cost of CDE/Mallory products. (Made in USA...$$$)
A good suggestion Pocoyo but maybe "Super-E" is a better idea. They would need enough caps to start up production of Black Gate again
I have never ever seen CDE in computer products so even if they would fail 100 % that would be quite invisible as nobody uses them. The other brands that are mentioned (except Fujitsu/Hitachi that I have never seen, didn't know they make caps too) are indeed trouble free and some of them produce top notch products that fail even less than the published numbers.
I have never ever seen CDE in computer products so even if they would fail 100 % that would be quite invisible as nobody uses them. The other brands that are mentioned (except Fujitsu/Hitachi that I have never seen, didn't know they make caps too) are indeed trouble free and some of them produce top notch products that fail even less than the published numbers.
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Replaced the bad caps on my MSI K7N2-Delta 2 motherboard with Rubycon MBZ parts, and it's once again alive. Even overclocks a bit, which it wouldn't do before. Bonus! There were places for four caps but only three were populated; I added a fourth in sockets which I'll pull once in a while to attempt to observe any change in ESR. My Dick Smith ESR meter only reads to .01 ohms, which is what the new caps measure so it may take some considerable time before any degradation becomes measurable.
The two obviously bad caps were mounted directly alongside the CPU heatsink, so it's likely that heat was the villain rather than poor quality construction.
The two obviously bad caps were mounted directly alongside the CPU heatsink, so it's likely that heat was the villain rather than poor quality construction.
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