Motherboard Recapping Service

Introduction

Do you have an older computer that you cant bear to part with, was once reliable but now seems to be doing strange things but don't have the budget for a new computer, does your computer do any of the following like:

• intermittent restarts
• turns off for no reason
• crashes
• freezing
• inconsistency
• BSOD's (blue screen of doom)
• erratic behavior
• slower than normal
• unreliable

It is unfortunately quite common for older systems to start experiencing capacitor failure which leads to problems mentioned above, but not all is lost with XaserTech's recapping service we may be able to help you with a complete replacement of all faulty capacitors. In 80% of cases the computer will again function like the day you purchased it.

What is a Capacitor

A capacitor is an electrical/electronic device that can store energy in the electric field between a pair of conductors (called "plates"). The process of storing energy in the capacitor is known as "charging", and involves electric charges of equal magnitude, but opposite polarity, building up on each plate.

Capacitors are often used in electric and electronic circuits as energy-storage devices. They can also be used to differentiate between high-frequency and low-frequency signals. This property makes them useful in electronic filters.

Capacitors are occasionally referred to as condensers. This is considered an antiquated term in English, but most other languages use an equivalent, like "Kondensator" in German, "Condensador" in Spanish, or "Kondensa" in Japanese.

So what goes wrong?

Well apart from a really bad batch of capacitors from about 2002 to 2004 but that's another story, things do wear out because of the nature of the capacitors make up, they won't last forever. Capacitors have a liquid within them called an electrolyte which over time dries out or breaks down resulting the the poor performance of your computer.

When these capacitors start to break down they can start to build up a gas and pressurize and eventually "pop" or may just leak which either way its not good.

So how does this effect your computer you ask, well, inside your computer there quite a few "power lines" so to speak and across these power lines you will find capacitors for one reason or another. They are often used as filters on the CPU load lines to keep the power supply nice and clean which CPU's depend heavily on, but when a capacitor fails to do its job, sometimes so does the CPU. Hence the reason your computer is playing tricks with you.

Looking inside your computer

If your the type of person who dares to look inside your computer, and suspect faulty capacitors here's and few photo's for what to look out for, I've put these photo's together from my own workshop recap jobs that I am doing at the time of writing this.

A Good Cap	An unhealthy bulger	What appears to be a good one on the left, the right is not so good.

From the left we have what is visually a perfect specimen, then a unhealthy bulger, the pair of twins we have a good and one with a splitting headache. You might notice the brown dot on top of the end capacitor, well that's dried up electrolyte I described earlier.

So there you have it a few things to look out for, oh and before I forget sometimes you will see dark stains around the immediate area under the capacitor this just means that instead off blowing its top it's failed at the base.