Cheers, I think I really need to be sure of what the original cap is rated at, I don't want to guess for the very reason you mention.
I would send Farnell an email, they can probably identify it. Also remember that electrolytic capacitors have a positive and negative terminal, so solder it the right way round by looking at your photo of the card. Have you still got the cap that fell off? I would try soldering some longer pins to the existing one, if the legs have not come off.
Do the legs go through the card? As I have a semenar about PCB's last Friday and it helped alot. It may have been spot soldered on, so the holes wouldn't go through the PCB. Also a couple of pics of the item in question could help as my electronics knowlege is expanding rapidly, or failing that I could ask my electronics tutor to have a look tomorrow
It appears to me that the legs go through the PCB. They are still attached as the legs came out from inside the capacitor when I pulled it off (I still can't believe I did that...). I still have the cap I pulled off. I went to Maplins yesterday but their system was down so weren't able to help me, or so they said... I am still waiting for a response from the GPU manufacturers (HIS) but I am not hopeful. All I need is it correctly identified as sourcing one is the easy part. I'll post some pics on the damage tonight if I get a chance.
Okay, here is the card and the offending capacitor... Can anyone help identify the specification of the capacitor?
not sure but something like this would probably work fine- measure the voltage across those points carefully.. should be 12v.. any 16v or higher should do the trick- think these are surface mount though- but you get the point http://www.amazon.com/Rubycon-Elect..._2?s=industrial&ie=UTF8&qid=1289090671&sr=1-2
Okay, it looks like those fantastic dudes at badcaps.net have identified the capacitor... <snip> That cap is likely Lelon OCRZ series, which is a polymer capacitor: http://www.lelon.com.tw/down.php?f=%...pdf&n=OCRZ.pdf I see a lot of them on HIS cards. 16V 100uF is 6.3 x 8 mm. 10 mOhm ESR, 4500 mA rated ripple current. For a replacement, you want the same or less ESR, and the same or more ripple. This may be a tricky cap to locate a replacement for. OCRZ has very good specs for its size. That said...I see through-holes for a larger size cap. If you use the holes with the larger spacing and move up to 8mm diameter, an appropriate replacement is much easier to find. One possibility: http://search.digikey.com/scripts/Dk...me=493-3716-ND I see you are in the UK. I tried the Farnell site, but didn't find anything there that would work as a replacement for OCRZ. <snip> Just how do these guys know this stuff? Anyway, I can't find what I am looking for @ Farnells, can anyone point me in the direction of a UK supplier that might have one? I don't fancy paying USD $1 for the cap and GBP £12-£15 for delivery.
Already emailed them, waiting for a reply. The price in the US is 0.64c but has a minimum delivery charge to the UK of $30.
Many thanks but I would need the same spec (100uF), your is 270uF. I did browse the site but they don't have anything that I can see of the same spec. I may email them though. I have had a response from RS Components, they are unable to supply.