dell xps 600 motherboard capacitor problem - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: Tidwell420
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2013, 07:35:17 am
content: a friend of mine owns a dell xps 600 computer. this computer was not well kept it was however sitting in one spot for quite some time. my friend calls me up asking a few questions about his computer as it would not power up correctly so next day he had his computer tower over at my house where it still is for now. the first thing i did was opened the case and right away i spotted twp things first was about eight years of dust the second was a pair of capacitors that had started to leak which were located next to the ramso first thing i did was to clean the tower so i did that what a mess that madethen i decided to replace those two caps which i didthen i continued to then power this beast of a computer on and got a code which is not listed in any manual for this towera solid amber power light and diagnostic light 4 solid greenso after some research i discovered that these codes match a dell forum which had no recent posts on it unless you count 2011what i learned is this the capacitors on this system has failed at least the ones on the motherboard possibly the power supply as wellwhat i am looking for help with is being able to test the capacitors in this system on the cheap as i nor my friend want to spend $150 on test equipment to do this and to make things worse my desoldering skills arent the best so i was looking around for an auto vacuum desoldering iron which seems to cost just as much as the capacitor tester i would needwell anyway i look at it i need a couple hundred dollars to get this computer to work againthe test equipment would be helpfull as i could find the problem capacitors and continue with the recap or even having proper desoldering tools would make this easier sadly both options cost as much as a replacement motherboard for this towerhowever a new set of caps should get this computer up and running again since i believe a total cost for caps would only be about twenty bucks which is ten times less than a new boardso is there a way to test caps on the cheap???

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2013, 08:37:30 am
content: For an ugly DIY hack you can sometimes gently rock the electrolytic capacitors back and forward (in the same axis as it's two pins)The goal is to pull the capacitor off the pcb while leaving its legs behind on the motherboard.You then have two metal legs sticking up about 10mm which you can solder a new capacitor onto.This way you don't have to unsolder anything.Another option, if there is room, is to solder the new capacitors onto the back of the motherboard in parallel with the dead one. Electrolytic capacitors fail to an open circuit state so there isn't a problem leaving the dead one there.Just make sure you get the polarity correct and use low esr caps.Quickly soldering capacitors on the back of the PCB is something i do temporarily to confirm a bad cap fault.If the product starts working again i then solder the cap in properly.It just saves time in case the board has other problems, otherwise you can spend hours replacing all the cap for a totally dead board.