Gigabyte 7N400 Pro2: Replacing capacitors
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ต.ค. 2024
- Due to its age and excessive usage, retro hardware may develop some component failure sooner or later. With more power hungry CPUs, many motherboards around the time of the Athlon XP and Pentium 4 suffered from the capacitor plague! The Gigabyte 7N400 Pro2 in this video is no exception. Let's try to revive this board so I can use it in future videos!
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3:20 This motherboard was produced in the beginning of the "capacitor plague" when large batches of poor quality Taiwanese capacitors entered the market, and led to the high reputation of Japanese capacitors you still see today.
That too.... although KZG caps had that issue well late into the production life as well.
Did buy this board when buying my first computer with my first paychecks along with a 2500+ and push it to 3200+. Good system at the time!
Yeah, I remember this situation back from early 2000s, capacitors on some graphic cards or mother boards just bulged or exploded only after sever years of use. It's only because the manufacturers wanted to reduce the cost, so they picked cheaper capacitors instead. When such case occurred more and more often, those manufacturers took notice of it, and decide to switch to capacitors with aluminum casings, significantly reduce the risk.
Such a good feeling to save old hardware
Just use hair dryer on maximum air flow on board. It speed up drying process like by 500%. It also get hot to about 50-70 degrees Celsius by it. Helps drying.
I've turned on board after 2 hours from the point it was washed, and it worked.
2003 is when this board was first available its called the capacitor plague they would burst for no reason
Great video!
Small tip, if you don't mind: find the capacitor legs before soldering. That way it won't move
You mean to bend the legs?
I know what you mean. I try to keep them as straight as possible. That makes it easier in the future in case I have to take them out again. But yes, you are right, it would make the process much easier.
Hmm. I also have a Gigabyte 7N400 Pro 2 (Rev 2) sitting around. Maybe I should check the capacitors for any bulging/leaks.
Last time I used it it was working fine but that was a few years ago now.
I have an Athlon XP 2600+ (Thoroughbred) paired with my 7N400. Nice to see this hardware still in use!
It wouldn't hurt to check!
2:26
My way is to wash dusty boards is using dishsoap + any car snow brush then drying with leaf blower.
You can shave car brush to desirable length. I tried to use toothbrush, but everything on pcb is higher and i ended up just bumping all elements with plastic. And i can't reach board between slots.
Then i put board on towel and use leaf blower to blow off water.
PS. Five years ago, I replacing the capacitors on the ASUS AM2+ motherboard, at the very last moment I remembered that ASUS has the reverse marking of capacitors on the board. I would have received a grandiose fireworks when turned on if I had not remembered this.
Thanks for the tip for the brush!
Oh, I was not aware about the ASUS issue! I'll check it!
I had one of these on 04 05. With a 2500 Barton core, 1gig ram 98pro.
Good times
Great board, I’ve got one 👍🏻
Seems good for Linux, you may run Force PAE command if not enabled in the BIOS by default at hidden settings
I love tech from that era but I don't own any at this time due to it being during the capacitor plague years of the 2000s. So many boards from around then died due to low quality or even straight up counterfeit capacitors. I had a total of 4 motherboards of my own from that era die from the plague. 3 of those boards couldn't even be fixed due to failures that caused the boards to literally go up in smoke.
Guess I was very lucky then that this board somehow made it that far!
@@bitsundbolts no, I've bought about 40 motherboards from that era. Some of them even untested. Even those with buldged capacitors worked fine. Nothing exploded. Tested all of them about 30 minutes, some of them even longer.
Just don't be affraid, capacitors plague is not so bad. In most cases, board is only less stable, and after you use it long term , the capacitor that is buldged eventualy starts leaking and can go on PCB and damage something.
It's not something like luck, when socket A board work. Just opposite. I was suprised, how could some boards work even in such bad conditions (dusted, and bulged capacitors, loose sockets, scratches on PCI slots ... expected them to not work)
so you are not lucky, I can know it from my statistic, how many untested boards I took, nothing exploded yet (old tantalum capacitors exploding much more likely).
At 99%, you could turn on board even before capacitor change, and it would work to BIOS at least, nothing would explode.
it wasn't the capacitor but the electrolyte chemistry that was improperly stolen and used by almost all manufacturer at that era (see wikipedia: capacitor plague)
I have GA-8PENXP mobo that does not post. Capasitors are leaked much like in the board in the video. Could you please tell me what is that lubricant you used before cleaning the holes from the alloy?
Hi, this is solder flux. It helps the solder flow to make nice solder joints or to remove solder using a copper wick.
didnt order all values present on this board. you didt order all of them on the board right?
is there a sketch for the capacitors. parts -list?
Ah yes, the Socket A family, where having the thing power on without a heatsink for 5 seconds is enough to give you that wonderful burning electronics smell and fry the CPU forever.
pulling the capacitor is fine if you are sure you won't pull out the via with it, but i have tested one faster and probably safer method
make 2 big blobs of fresh solder on both legs and try to make both molten and capacitor will fall out by itself without any resistance,. cleanup is basically the same afterwards but it doesn't stress the top layer that suffered the most from the electrolite
Amazing job! I have the Gigabyte GA-7NNXP with the VRM Module that I bought at broken. It doesn't turn on, but it needs for caps and maybe some VRM components.
I believe I have this exact board with Athlon XP 3200+ back in Germany. I even have the working VRM module. Great board! Are you planning to fix it (if possible)?
@@bitsundbolts Oh nice, probably the best looking motherboard for the Socket 462.
I plan to fix it, but it needs to be someone with knowledge (I don't have enough knowledge to repair it). I have so many motherboards with problems! 🤣 This weekend I did retest my Gigabyte GA-5AX, but it have some kind of short circuit in low dropout regulator area.
I have a very similar version of this board - a P4 i865 chipset board. I want to repair it in the same way one day...
You have to wonder how the edges of the CPU die got in such a state; the CPU has the black pads in each corner to stop the heatsink causing such damage, so how did it happen?
😮
better using the spatula/card to flatten the thermal compound- google. then remove remains before mounting. add compound at one side and use card to flatten. only very thin layer.
Wie hat das nur überlebt...
2009-2018 still halve working. some functions dead. PSU had to be standby since cmos-settings could be backup up anymore after full shut down. one cardslot dead so one ram-slot. many MBs available switched a lot. hadnt deep repair knowleadge. wanted to replace all of them. have long monologue in sysopt mid june 2018. europanorama =me. PSU.. Capacitor Plague(added recently. took me 3 weeks to revive also asroch AliveDual esta 2. the latter died later could repair but stayed with working winxp pc til i got some months later Acer Ultrabook Spin 1-111. celeron 4/64 and much later swift 7 16/1tb win10. and the drama continued. other dramas. bad screen on swift 5 and maybe sabotage by acer using shock sensor to shut down keyboard. discussion on acer forum. engl. and german/deutsch. both had a drop heaver spin1-111 survived 4 heavy ones from 80cm swift 5 one light drop from 45cm and with delay screen dead . spin1 with heavy rotation damages. could repair halfway.
on sysopt-see other message i have sources for best capacitors.this mainboard not work repairing. maybe asrock. rather not only if needed.
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All the Durons I touched new suffered this problem. Even moreso if the CPU didn't have the little foam pads. AMD cheaped out too much. Single use CPU.
My first PC had a similar Motherboard with an Nvidia chipset, I wish I didn't threw it out ...
Use polymer capacitors!