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Capacitor replacement tutorial

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ElectroMaster

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Capacitor replacement tutorial

Description

You may have heard about infamous capacitor plague problem, where crappily manufactured capacitors died prematurely on people's motherboards. Even if the capacitor was properly made, they still only have a finite lifespan, typically 10,000-100,000 hours. After this, you need to replace the caps or replace the whole board. This video shows you what to do! Some people also like to buy old audio amplifiers and are able to repair them simply by replacing the old, leaky capacitors with new ones. The same principles apply.


By Afrotechmods.
 
Last edited:
Great tutorial! It had explosions, cats, and a Ninja!

But it could have used a passing mention on the issue of ESR. I think some of this capacitor plague we are seeing these days has to do with using general-purpose electrolytics in place of low-ESR caps. More and more power supplies use ever higher frequency switching regulators. The old aluminum electrolytics that were just fine at 60 Hz will get hot and cook themselves to death at 100,000 Hz. If it's a switching regulator, look for a replacement that says "low impedance", "low ESR" or "high ripple" in the spec sheet, otherwise you may be replacing it again soon.
 
Funny, I thought capacitors were more-reliable these days.

Switches, Relays and Connectors could do with some improvement, though.
 
The only thing he forgot was ripple.
The replacement capacitor should be about the same size as the original. If it is much smaller it will heat up and fail prematurely.
 
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