Can leaking motherboard capacitors damage the computer?

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panmanthe2nd

panmanthe2nd

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Nov 17, 2012
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Hi guys, :)

I have an old PC which I use for gaming. I opened up the case the other day to put in a new soundcard and noticed that a lot of the capacitors had been leaking, or looked like they were about to leak.

I did a bit of reading online and found out that it's a fairly common issue with older PCs, and that if you know what you are doing it's easy to replace them.

I went to the only local computer repair shop and asked if they would do it. They said they would do it, for about £45 (which seemed a bit much to me, but not over the top), but they recommended that I left it as the computer was still working, and it might not work after they had replaced them.

I asked them what would happen if the capacitors stopped working completely (would it damage any other bits of the computer), but he wasn't 100% sure.

So...my question is:

If the capacitors on a motherboard stop working, will it damage any other bits of the computer, or can I just replace the capacitors after they have broken and everything else will still be fine?

Thanks!
 
Solution
N
No guarantees, but I would doubt it. A capacitor failing open would fail to smooth out fluctuations in the applied voltage: you'd probably get functional errors but no permanent damage beyond the capacitor itself. A capacitor failing shorted could overload a switching transistor or a motherboard trace, but the supply should be overcurrent-protected and supply traces should be pretty beefy so I wouldn't expect any further damage in that case either.
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smorizio

smorizio

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Jan 22, 2010
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some motherboards the vendors game extended warranties on some of there mb and some motherboards had class action lawsuits. it was because from china there was a whole lot of bad caps that got into a lot of products. I would google your mb info and also email there support see if the unit may be under warranty some motherboards have 5 year warranty. if a cap fails on the mb most time it wont post. the issue is if the person removing the caps is going to be using a soilder iron on the mb and as a tech it easy to heat damage other parts and or damage the mb or a trace.myself I would look online for a replacment mb that new or almost new. then all your going to do is swap the cpu and ram and your done. if the pc more then 5 years old your better off buying a newer one.
 
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panmanthe2nd

panmanthe2nd

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Nov 17, 2012
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Well...it's about 14 years old! It's a Windows 98SE computer. Sadly you can't buy new Window 98 computers ;) (I've tried virtual machines, but none of them do 3D graphics good enough for me).

Can faulty capacitors damage the computer?
 
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N

norsestar

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Apr 8, 2014
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No guarantees, but I would doubt it. A capacitor failing open would fail to smooth out fluctuations in the applied voltage: you'd probably get functional errors but no permanent damage beyond the capacitor itself. A capacitor failing shorted could overload a switching transistor or a motherboard trace, but the supply should be overcurrent-protected and supply traces should be pretty beefy so I wouldn't expect any further damage in that case either.
 
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panmanthe2nd

panmanthe2nd

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Nov 17, 2012
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Thanks! :)
 
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