Capacitor blew out, is it the wrong type?

[halleffector]

I'm repairing an ATX PSU with some bad caps just for fun.

One of the caps was a 3300 uF 16 volt capacitor. I got another one, but noticed it was only around half of the height of the original.

I found this a bit puzzling, but saw they were both 3300 uF, 16 V, +105C. So I just soldered it in and turned it on, but it blew out after maybe 5-10 seconds of operation.

Did I do some silly mistake here? Why is the original twice as high as the replacement? Are they different types? What is the difference?

Or did I just get unlucky that there was something wrong with the replacement?

 

[JimB]

Could you have connected it the wrong way round?
ie reversed the polarity.

JimB

 

[halleffector]

There was a shaded half circle on the PCB, I oriented the striped side of the capacitor to point to the shaded half circle.

 

[halleffector]

Tried it again, and the fuse for the mains went out this time, instantly, the capacitor seems to be unscathed.

 

[dr pepper]

It sounds like the replacement is a standard cap, a smps on the output side typically has low Esr caps (which are taller), this is due to high currents & frequencies, 'standard' cap esr being higher will dissipate more energy within the cap, and it can be bad enough to blow it up.
If the fuse goes on power up check the switching devices, sounds like they've shorted, possibly due to the caps exploding previously.
When switchers fail, in my experience they like to fail bigtime, taking out a few components and often vaporizing them.

 

[kinarfi]

is it possible that the extra tall cap was that way for cooling purposes?
What is the voltage on the cap when running?