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A few of the large capacitors near my MB's power supply input have began to bulge - the system as a whole still works perfectly fine, except for some marginal undervoltage. I'm intending to replace the motherboard as soon as possible, but I want some opinions on how long the current board might last and if it is likely to fail in a catastrophic manner? (e.g. take all the rest of the expansion boards, RAM, CPU etc. with it?)

Catastrophic failure is unlikely but your motherboard is not long for this world.

That wouldn't be a three to five year old IBM board by any chance would it?

Had a problem at one of the previous IBM shops I worked for, where the capacitors on multiple IBM systems started bulging and rupturing, due to using an incorrect formula (It was stolen, actually, by a third party who provided the caps for IBM, in a backfiring piece of industrial espionage.) for the capacitor. Damndest thing.

Just asking, because if it is you can call Big Blue and get a free replacement.

In any event, phongn speaks the truth. Prepare to wave bye bye to the MB, and while it's unlikely that it'll take anything with it, you can never be too sure.

It's a ~3 year old MSI KT4V - considering its age and origin, it might very likely be one of those affected boards with the crap capacitors...

Thanks for the replies, I'm already looking around for a replacement board, probably something with an nforce2 chipset, VIA's been nothing but trouble for me. That said, it scares the shit out of me that the boards actually bend with the amount of force i need to excert to mount the old Athlon XP heatsinks...why they didn't go for simple latches like P4's is beyond me.

This is actually a very common problem from just about all manufacturers from 3-4 years ago. As mentioned, has to do with a bit of screwed up industrial espionage.

Your motherboard with either croak soon, or last for many years to come (I have a mb with a couple of blown out capacitors from this issue that still work fine even after rupturing).

Stiil, it'd be best to replace your board.

Miles Teg

Quick question: A slightly bended MB Capacitor in a Gigabyte K8I-something-GL board between the RAM slots, probebly? The RAM can fit in fine.

Ace Pace wrote:Quick question: A slightly bended MB Capacitor in a Gigabyte K8I-something-GL board between the RAM slots, probebly? The RAM can fit in fine.

That's fine.

Miles Teg wrote:This is actually a very common problem from just about all manufacturers from 3-4 years ago. As mentioned, has to do with a bit of screwed up industrial espionage.

Your motherboard with either croak soon, or last for many years to come (I have a mb with a couple of blown out capacitors from this issue that still work fine even after rupturing).

That's not something one should bet on. Those capacitors provide signal and voltage filtering. Without them, some vital components are being exposed to a lot more noise on their inputs or on Vcc/Vdd than they were designed for. Generally speaking, electronic components really don't like when you do that.

Stiil, it'd be best to replace your board.

That would be the safe thing to bet on.

AniThyng wrote:It's a ~3 year old MSI KT4V - considering its age and origin, it might very likely be one of those affected boards with the crap capacitors...

Thanks for the replies, I'm already looking around for a replacement board, probably something with an nforce2 chipset, VIA's been nothing but trouble for me. That said, it scares the shit out of me that the boards actually bend with the amount of force i need to excert to mount the old Athlon XP heatsinks...why they didn't go for simple latches like P4's is beyond me.

Yes, the old XP heatsinks were a godawful pain in the ass.

If/when you get around to upgrading, the A64s have much nicer heatsink latches.

AniThyng wrote:A few of the large capacitors near my MB's power supply input have began to bulge - the system as a whole still works perfectly fine, except for some marginal undervoltage.

Large capacitors near power supply. When they go, you're looking at collateral damage. Best case, you end up cleaning capacitor guts off the inside of your computer. Worst case, you get unfiltered over-voltage dumped into the system when they go, frying the entire computer and all expansion cards. Likely case, they blow and take the more sensitive parts with them, like the CPU, RAM and possibly the graphics card.

Get a new board ASAP. Or if you're handy with a soldering iron, order in some capacitors and replace them yourself.