so im building a desktop for my gf. and my dad is a computer junkie so im scraping something together out of old parts. he had an old emachines case that he was gonna throw out so i took it. initial inspection showed all i needed was a power supply, HDD, and some ram, and monitor of course. everything else was there. she doesnt need anything elaborate, she just wants a nice desktop.
so i started taking it apart and i thought everything looked fine. then my dad told me to check out all the capacitors and make sure none of them are bulging at the top. so i took a second look and sure enough there were 6 caps bulging and oozing out the top.
so i proceeded to desolder them. either my soldering iron sucks or the solder has a higher melting point. they just wouldnt come off. so i ended up wiggling them back and forth til they snapped off so i could push the remaining pins through the board with the soldering iron. this still was a pain, but i eventually got them all out.
now when youre doing this make sure you get capacitors that have the exact same rating to be sure you dont mess anything up with how the MB functions. you probably can go with a higher voltage rating, but i stayed safe and got exact replacements. also make sure you dont mix up the polarity. the loger pin is usually the (+) pin. and the short pin side of the cap has a marking with a (-) symbol. if you look at the first and final pics you can see that they are oriented on the board in the same configuration. also the physical size difference shouldnt matter since they are the same rating.
so then i just popped in the new caps and soldered them in.
and i saved myself about 70-75 bucks. i bought the caps from ebay, 20 for 7 bucks. buying a new MB would have been easier but this was more fun
so i started taking it apart and i thought everything looked fine. then my dad told me to check out all the capacitors and make sure none of them are bulging at the top. so i took a second look and sure enough there were 6 caps bulging and oozing out the top.
so i proceeded to desolder them. either my soldering iron sucks or the solder has a higher melting point. they just wouldnt come off. so i ended up wiggling them back and forth til they snapped off so i could push the remaining pins through the board with the soldering iron. this still was a pain, but i eventually got them all out.
now when youre doing this make sure you get capacitors that have the exact same rating to be sure you dont mess anything up with how the MB functions. you probably can go with a higher voltage rating, but i stayed safe and got exact replacements. also make sure you dont mix up the polarity. the loger pin is usually the (+) pin. and the short pin side of the cap has a marking with a (-) symbol. if you look at the first and final pics you can see that they are oriented on the board in the same configuration. also the physical size difference shouldnt matter since they are the same rating.
so then i just popped in the new caps and soldered them in.
and i saved myself about 70-75 bucks. i bought the caps from ebay, 20 for 7 bucks. buying a new MB would have been easier but this was more fun
