Dell Desktop - Counterfeit Nichicons? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: SgtRock
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 17, 2014, 10:22:19 pm
content: Greetings EEVBees:--Did Dell use counterfeit Nichicon capacitors in their #210882 Mother Board? A friend of mine had a Dell desktop custom built about 8 years ago, which he gave me. It was used lightly for 4 years and has been sitting in an air conditioned environment for 4 years, so I figured it would be a good candidate to dust off and give to another friend of mine to use as a simple eBay and email machine, to be used a few times per week. When I looked inside I found (see picture below) that many of the Nichicon (for the most part the physically largest ones on the board) caps were obviously preggers, while all of the smaller Nichicons, Rubicons and sundry no name caps appear normal. Needless to say, this seems very strange, unless the Nichicons are counterfeit. I cannot at present measure caps above 500 uF, so I will just give a few ESR measurments of a few of the NIchicons and others using the Bob Parker, Antek, Blue ESR Meter.Nichicon 3300 uF 6.3V 105C (swollen) with an ESR of 2.3, completly fubar.SWE 33 uF 25V 85C (normal) with an ESR of 2.9, borderline acceptable.Nichicon 2200 uF 6.3V 105C (swollen) with an ESR of 8.3, fubar.Nichicon 2200 uF 6.3V 105C (normal) with an ESR of 0.0, and also fubar.LXZ 3300 uF 10V 105C (normal) with an ESR of 0.02, good.Nichicon 1200 uF 16V 105C (normal) with an ESR of 0.02, good.Rubicon 1000 uF 10V 105C (normal) with an ESR of 0.01, good.Nichicon 220 uF 6.3V 105C (normal) with an ESR of 0.06, good.--In short all of the Nichicon 2200 uF and 3300uF are definitely bad, but none of the other Nichicons, Rubicons or No Names show definitely bad. Are counterfeits a possibility or, is there another explanation? Your comments are humbly soliceted.--I scrapped out the Dell custom desktop, with its useless propietary power supply, and case, saving only a 500GB SATA, and an HDMI video card. I will try to sell (on Craigslist for $20 to $30) the Dell 1704FPT monitor which swivels between vertical and horizontal. Wish me luck."No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking."François-Marie Arouet - Voltaire1694 - 1778Best RegardsClear Ether

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 17, 2014, 10:31:12 pm
content: They are not fake. Nichicon had problems with HN and HM series in the past.

author: SgtRock
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 17, 2014, 10:44:27 pm
content: Dear Wraper:--Thanks for the prompt response and the information, indeed the caps in question are Nichicon HMs. Good luck keeping Vlad the Invader out of your wonderful country."Evabody gotta be someplace"Yacov Moshe Maza - Jackie Mason1931 -Best RegardsClear Ether

author: PedroDaGr8
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 17, 2014, 11:17:20 pm
content: Quote from: SgtRock on April 17, 2014, 10:44:27 pmFor a bit more info, Nichicon/UCC had an issue where the caps were overfilled with electrolyte. This caused the failures you are seeing. Very common failure mode with Dell mobo's from that time period. Replaced a number in some Dell SFF pcs back in grad school. We had around 30 of them and would lose on average 2-3 a semester. Same failure, refused to post, bad HN caps. Dell would send out a tech to replace the board the next day (after the first 10 you would think they would just replace all rather than send the tech out again and again).

author: Stonent
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 19, 2014, 03:48:47 pm
content: All dell and HP from that time period had the issue.specifically the ones that I know in the dell optiplex gx and sx series260270 (very bad)280 (about as bad)620745Oddly enough the GX520 is the same motherboard as the GX620 but with no PCI express slot and only 2 dimm slots instead of 4. I've never seen one with a bad cap but almost all 620 computers are bad.

author: GreyWoolfe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 19, 2014, 08:05:05 pm
content: The GX-270s weren't bad Nichicons, they were bad Capxon (Crapxon) caps. We swapped over 2000 boards deployed in the field. What a cluster. Dell paid us to swap them, shipped the company boards by the pallets and gave us an additional year of warranty. After that fiasco was over, we found the same Crapxon caps in Dell 15" LCD monitors to a much lesser extent but did the repairs in house as the monitors were out of warranty by then. We only repaired a couple of hundred of them though that was due to outright failure. I'm sure there were monitors still working with bad caps since we found plenty of the computers working fine with the bad caps. There was more than enough failures, however, that the company was more than justified going after Dell to fix the issue.

author: PedroDaGr8
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 20, 2014, 04:39:17 pm
content: Quote from: Stonent on April 19, 2014, 03:48:47 pmWe had the SX270. You aren't kidding about that. Sometimes they'd fail right in the middle of a student's lab assignment. Very very frustrating.