A good reason to buy good parts

[jteef]

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY...eb03/ncap.html

Leaking Capacitors Muck up Motherboards

Finger-pointing and fury as manufacturers try to dodge blame

It has all the elements of a good thriller: a stolen secret formula, bungled corporate espionage, untraceable goods, and lone wolves saving the little guy from the misdeeds of multinational corporations. In this case, a mistake in the stolen formulation of the electrolyte in a capacitor has wrecked hundreds of PCs and may wreck still more in what is an industrywide problem.

Almost directly related to our hobby.

Thoughts?

jt

[EchoWars]

Whatta know Ozark...KC here.

My thoughts are...I stacked up on a pile of replacement electrolytics for the customer boards that came in with blown caps (f&@% you, Abit!). Not cheap. Some boards were gone beyond help.

Yes, it pays to invest in quality parts...

[Sch3mat1c]

ISTR hearing this sorta thing on rec.crafts.metalworking... basically, every so often a whole batch of the product (some circuit board, not necessarily mobos, though I think that started the tread askew in that direction) would come out, this one capacitor would blow after almost exactly 3 months. Well it turned out someone marked it wrong and it had the wrong polarity! So they tell the workers to put 'em in reverse because blah blah blah... then a new worker comes in and out goes another truckload of boards that go phut...and so on.

Guess it goes to show you how good some aluminum 'lytics are...they withstand all that, probably reforming to full voltage after those 3 months, but clearly there must still be some leakage since something had to blow it.

This reminds me. That guy who wanted a teeny 100uF bipolar in the other forum, with less than a volt difference any spare 'lytic will hold that no problem, whatever the polarity.

Tim

[EchoWars]

This reminds me. That guy who wanted a teeny 100uF bipolar in the other forum, with less than a volt difference any spare 'lytic will hold that no problem, whatever the polarity.

That was me, BTW. I specificially need a bipolar for some technical reasons...being driven by a opamp and feeding into another stage which is also capacitor coupled, the input of the cap swings +/- 15V or so for a few seconds after power is applied while the cap charges. And 100uf is not teeny when it is on the output of an opamp.

Trust me in this one...I need a good bipolar.