Hi All, Kind of a small mistake.....I was screwing a Zalman cnps9700 onto its bracket (socket 775), and accidentally screwed into one of the capacitors on my Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L. Expensive smell, but it kept running long enough for me to pull the plug on it. I haven't tried it since, as i'd like to repair it. I've found the right capacitors, located in the US. I can't wait long enough for the caps to get here. Would using normal electrolytic capacitors work? Its an 820uF, 2.5V cap. Due to the cheap cost of the board, i'd be willing to experiment. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance. Neal
you may have fun with soldering it, as motherboards are multi-layered PCB's so you have to get the solder into the socket to get a good connection.
I would agree, it could be very difficult to solder a new capacitor on, it may be easier if possible to leave the two legs off the original capacitor attached and then solder a new capacitor onto them instead of directly onto the motherboard.
Why order from the USA? Just make sure to solder it in, observing the correct polarity. I wouldn't worry too much about that - the vias should be tinned pretty well since through hole components were most likely soldered by wave soldering (so the joints need to be accessible from the bottom of the board). As long as you don't solder a cold or dry joint, you'll be fine.
Thanks for the replies guys. The tip of my soldering iron wasn't small enough, so i pulled the cap off, leaving only the wire from the inside of it. I started up the pc, and its working absolutely fine. I'll still buy new capacitors (see point 2.), but i''ve installed windows, and even OC'd a little bit to mess around. Its been running solid for the last 5 hours. Point 2. The cap on the board is an aluminium electrolytic with a purple segment on top, not the standard electrolytic you'd pick up at maplin. Do i have to replace it with the exact same type? Neal
Unless it says NP on it (and lacks the negative stripe down the side), it's just a different manufacturer's branding so don't worry about it. bear in mind you can replace it with a capacitor rated at a higher voltage. Also, if the board runs fine under load even without the replacement, you could replace it with a less exotic value such as 1000uF or 680uF.
