BSOD & Bulging Capacitors

[BlackRedGold]

Hi everyone. So I've been getting all sorts of BSOD (0x116, 0x7E, and 0x4E)on my Dell Dimension 9200 in the past week. I brought a technician over to have a look at it and he said the problem is the capacitors on the motherboard. When you look at it, you can clearly see that most of the capacitors are bulging and about to explode. He said he'll charge $80 to change the capacitors. I looked online and I found that my whole motherboard is $80. So I was thinking of buying that and just have him replace the whole motherboard instead of just the capacitors. Do you guys think this will fix my problem? Thank you all in advance

Sorry if this is in the wrong section. I'm new on this site so I'm not too familiar. If it's in the wrong section, could you please move it?

 

[manofchalk]

If the capacitors are the issue, then just getting a new mobo should fix the problem.
However it can bring other issues such as invalidating Windows (I believe if you ring up Microsoft customer support you can get a new key since its a dead mobo and not a new system).

Its also possible if the capacitors have truly died, that your CPU has been damaged. Ask the guy if he has any systems of the same socket you can drop the chip in to see if it still works.

 

[BlackRedGold]

Thank you for your reply! So if he doesn't have a system for me to drop the CPU in, is there any other way to check and see if they work? I downloaded CPUID HwMonitor and my CPU's tempreture started from 37C and went up to 41C when I had 3 games running in the background. This may be a newbie question but if my CPU or CPU fan wasn't working properly, wouldn't I have temperature problems?

 

[manofchalk]

So the computer still works and can boot?
In that case the CPU should be fine (ish). I was thinking that the VRM's have basically failed, which would mean that a straight 12v would have been going through the chip, frying it.

40°C is fine temperature wise, if I'm reading online reviews correctly you have a Core 2 Duo E6700, which is fine to go up to 95°C before you will have any issues (though you wouldn't want it above 70°C in reality).
If your CPU fan has stopped spinning, then yes you should have temperature problems. If that 40°C result is from a fan not spinning, its possible that the processor just hadn't heated up the heatsink from ambient temperature before you shut it down.

 

[BlackRedGold]

Yeah my windows boots up if I don't get the BSOD when I try booting windows normally, but if I boot it in safe mode then almost every time my windows boots up and works fine. So I assume my CPU isn't shot just yet. For right now I'm gonna have the mother board replaced and hopefully that'll fix the BSOD problem. Then I'll run various temperature tests including stress test to check and see if my CPU fan is doing it's job and keeping the CPU cold. Thank you for your help! If you can keep this thread open, once I get it fixed I can update it and hopefully help another person that has the same problem.

 

[manofchalk]

Sure, just take note of the threads URL, otherwise it will be lost under newer threads in the intervening time.
Hope it all works out for you

 

[BlackRedGold]

Will do. I'm going to save the link right now and again thank you for your help. Appreciate it