I had never tried to repair electronics equipment before and thanks to this, I'm now looking at my newly repaired monitor. It had a bad Capxon caps, soldered in replacements today (first time soldering too), whole repair cost me 1 euro 15 cent. You're a hero!
I doubt it is planned obsolescence. As you can read on Wikipedia article for planned obsolescence it is a risky strategy for companies in competitive markets like LCD monitors. As consumers with a bad experience with Samsung will likely choose a competitors product. I bet the original design engineer (with pride in his design) didn't choose CapXon. But that decision was made later in the production department for the purpose to save costs. Maybe a stupid deal was made with CapXon to have them supply all the caps in certain production lines. It might be a continues conflict between management and the engineering staff for those decisions.
SE45CX It seems like the perfect choice for a company like Samsung. Samsung are the largest supplier of "Name brand" monitors in the world because they're the cheapest and have "decent quality" for the price. Dave's teardown shows exactly how well made the monitors are inside with the sole exception of the cheap caps. Someone buys a Samsung monitor, it lasts a few years and then dies, most likely, they'll buy another Samsung because they're the cheapest "known brand" like I mentioned. Another benefit to Samsung is when they sell monitors with service-contracts or warranties, if a monitor fails and it's under warranty, it's literally the work of a moment to repair it as Dave's demonstrated in the video.
SE45CX this is also what the Wikipedia article said about planned obsolescence Planned obsolescence is sometimes achieved by placing a heat-sensitive component adjacent to a component that is expected to get hot. A common example is LCD screens with heat-sensitive electrolytic capacitors placed next to power components which may be 100 °C or hotter; this heat greatly reduces the lifespan of the electrolytic capacitor.[7]
Yes I did. What I meant by that I was already quite knowledgeable in electronics before I got to formally study it. And I did so much outside of study (work and hobby), that I like to think I've learnt more useful stuff that way than through formal study.
I watched this video a couple of times while waiting for my caps to come from Digikey. Performed this very same surgery on Friday to my 10 year old Acer monitor that was boot-cycling for a minute before staying on. The power board was full of bulging CapXon's. Back in business for 7$ US and an hour of my time.
I wouldn't mind betting that Samsung said "hey, let's make a shit hot monitor that everyone will want", so they did. Then the marketing department said "hang on, we want it to look nice and perform well, but if they last, we'll won't sell any more monitors for the next 20 years", so the designers then replied with "Easy, we'll fix that! These caps will fail in 5! You can even put a 3 year warranty on the suckers and still make a killing". Management then promptly fell to the floor with shudders of joy vibrating through them. After changing their pants, they approved the product and here we are!
+RmFrZQ Using low ESR won't work if the connection to the switching transistor is too long, because you have to add the ESR of the connection. So of cause ESR capacitors need to be really close to those hot transistors and need to be rated for the unusually high temperature shown in the video.
John Doe So good design decision should be to use larger caps with more capacity? Caps will last longer than 2-3 years. I also very disappointed with pricing of authorized Samsung repair services, who charge half of the price of monitor to change 3 caps.
Having one of these same models in the basement - it would turn on but the display took 30 minutes to become visible - and needing a spare monitor, I decided to go for the fix. I've already fixed a beautiful ViewSonic monitor where a $5 capacitor change saved $800, so charged forward. Indeed, two adjacent capacitors of 820uf, 25v, were visibly bulging at the top. These were replaced along with a 330uf 25v capacitor nearby (it looked ok but was in a heat area so replaced it proactively). The failures I saw were not quite as dramatic as Dave's dumpster treasure, but left in place this would have been their fate. The monitor now works perfectly. Thanks to Dave for showing how that plastic case comes apart. Especially helpful.
Probably the best clip I've watched for several months on TH-cam. This with dodgy caps is probably common knowledge among most of your subscribers. But newsflash to me. Big thanks for passing quality knowledge on.
This is great. I've had a broken one sitting in my office for a year or two, waiting for me to properly dispose of it. Now I have a weekend project. Thanks!
I gotta tell you - you made me laugh out loud !! A highly trained and greatly experienced Electrical Engineer like yourself - with all of the amazing electronics tools that you have!! You have only 2 phillips screwdrivers ... and you lost one of those !! LOL !! Thanks for all of the great videos !!! ;)
Just like my Apple Studio Display failure, blew up in 18 months, caps blown up everywhere. As I found out the powerboard was made in Korea by a company that supplies all those 'famous' Korean brands
In 2001 or 2002, if I remember correctly there where caps manufactured which where wrongly calculated, these caps where used in cars, motherboards, etc. All these caps died within 1-3 years. For a moment there even was a shortage on caps. About 7 brands sold these caps. See "capacitor plague"
According to same reports, the actual root cause was not-pure-enough aluminium used to manufacture the capacitors. Some claimed that the reason would have been poor quality electrolyte but I think it was later pointed out that it wasn't the actual cause of the problem.
Hey Dave! A few summers ago, during an IT internship, I was given a pretty nice looking Samsung SyncMaster 226BW monitor. After watching this video, I decided to finally pop it open and take a look, and I found the exact same thing that you found. Unfortunately, I didn't have the exact same value (or even close to) caps. I just decided to then solder a few caps in series to match the capacitance on some protoboard. I got it working on the first try, and I'm enjoying it so far. Thanks for making this, and all of your other videos. Keep it up, man! (Greetings from Oklahoma)
Thanks for doing this, I did a replacement like this for a DSL modem with bad caps, but was not sure what specifically to do for the replacements. This answers a lot of questions.
First of all, just want to say thank you for all your hard work and excellent channel! I have learned a ton since subscribing awhile back, one of the best electronics channels on the web! I've made quite a few repairs directly related to videos of yours, and I can't express enough thanks for what you. Most recently, my girlfriend brought home a 19" Samsung 920BM...plugged it in, no power at all. No dis-assembly videos on the web, that I could find, so I ended up here. The monitors appeared to have very similar construction, and sure enough, they did. Was tough separating the two halves of the shell, but the insides looked to be a very similar design. Got it apart, had a look at the power board, and there was a huge scorch mark right through the PCB, right between the mains plug and the fuse. Checked continuity on the fuse, and fuse wasn't popped, strangely. So I figured if I could solder some wire directly from the mains plug right to the input side of the fuse, I might be able to get it working, as long as the scorch hole in the PCB hadn't damaged any other traces. Luckily, it appears the PCB was single layer, so I soldered in the little piece of wire from plug to input side of fuse, and sure enough, up and running perfectly, been using it since last night. Without your videos, I would never have even thought to try such a thing and probably spent $30 on a power board for the thing.
thank you for the tv good sir, found a 32 in visio tv dead on the side of the road and replaced some caps2x 10v3300uf and 1x 10v2200uf now i'm rocking a $5 tv, thank you for showing me how
You're so right. I experienced this in a company I worked for. A woman who was subsequently fired, took it upon herself to "shave" money. She (without authorization) went looking for the cheapest parts. Her purchases never went through engineering authorization. These were bearings. Total junk. Thank you again Dave, for bringing the seemingly obvious to our eyes and ears.
My friend wanted to trash his Samsung monitor because of some picture flickering and occasional refusal to turn on but luckily I managed to stop him in time. Searching YT for "how to" - few seconds. Watching EEVblog #347 - 17min37sec. Cost of few JAMICON low ESR caps - next to nothing. Dissassembly, soldering and reassembly - less than half an hour. Now I have " brand new" SyncMaster 226BW monitor - thanks a lot Dave :-)
The SyncMaster 793S 17", we're and are one of the clearest screens i've worked with. Cheap but really clear. What i liked about it and what people were saying at the time was that it lacked definition and color. But as usual as with most inexperienced users they wouldn't bother setting up the display properly. Once you do it's a beast. I still use it from time to time when i have a task that includes digital manipulation etc.
I am staring at the exact same board on a Samsung Syncmaster. Same bulging caps. Will be trying this out and see if I can bring this year old dead monitor to life.
I want to say thank you so much for these videos!!! After looking at the crapxon caps that had puked I knew I had a chance of repairing these 2 TVs. After a total of 2 hours and 6-330~25v + 2-1000~25v caps,both TVs work beautifully!! Thanks again for the inspiration and confidence!!!! BTW I used Taicon caps and the Samsung sprung to life from oblivion,the Philips was teetering on the brink with intermittent function.
I fixed a big flat panel TV for a charity fund raiser last year. It was an expensive TV taken out by a single cap in a power supply module. Those 85C rated caps will pop every time. It costs a few cents extra for 105C rated caps, but they actually do the job.
Thank You very much Dave! My brother have epilepsia and it's recommended for him to use LCD monitor. Unfortunately his 22" HYUNDAI IT N220W LCD monitor wasn't working... until yesterday :D I've replaced four 680uF 25V capacitors with two 1000uF 25V and another two 680uF 25V caps. Now mine brothers LCD works perfect, so we can afford any epilepsion attacks that can be eventually caused by CRT monitor. My repair cost me nothing, because capacitors for mine replacement were taken from an old PC motherboard, so I've also spared ~200PLN (~65USD) which I would have to pay for repair in service. I'm not good in soldering, but I've managed to solve the problem :) Thank You again and greetings from Poland!
I have a Princeton LCD monitor that a friend gave me that is having the exact same problem. I am going to drop by the electronics house on my way home from work and pick up 5 of the 470uF 25V caps to repair it. What surprised me is that those ViewSonic monitors are almost identical inside to my Princeton one. Great video!
ViewSonic was probably selling Princeton monitors with there own name. I had a Sylvania CRT which was actually a Princeton monitor without paying the Princeton price for it.
Im sad you fast forwarded the repair part, it's actually why I clicked on this video. Also, my theory is that they purposely picked those caps to shorten the life time of those monitors. The people who threw them out had to buy new ones right?
Samsung bedroom TV here has almost the same board, and the same startup problems... Did not repair it yet, but this clip woke me up. New caps are now in the mail.
Yep, I fixed five LCD monitors today at work. ALL of them works after replacing the electrolytics in the SMPS. And yes, three of them were Samsung with, you guessed it, CapXon caps. Here's a picture of them and a bag of replaced caps ;-)
I'm glad to see this video. I've been sitting on an old HP LCD monitor for years that never powered up, and I've been wanting to find one for sale with a cracked screen or something, selling for parts only, to fix it. I'll have to pop it open and see if any of the caps are blown.
Last week I found a monitor sitting out with somebody's trash and I decided to take it and find out what's wrong. With a little research, I figured out a few capacitors were blown. I ordered a replacement kit and I now have a secondary monitor that I spent a total of 20$ on to fix.
The sad part with the capacitors is that most somewhat skilled people could fix them instead of throwing a repairable device into the trash. "Built to fail" as soon the warranty is gone. Come on people, if something is already broken, there is no harm in tearing it apart and at least check how that device is made, you can't do more harm if it's already broken beyond repair and if it isn't you can give it to your local electronics technician or try to fix it yourself. Or at least scavenge some neat parts. I love this channel, every time there is something new to learn.
***** Not necessarily true. I 100% agree on what you said about increasing people's knowledge on repairing electronics. But still, you can get zapped by a power unit's capacitor pretty easily if you just randomly tear stuff down.
I've done a ton of work on LCD monitors and allways it has been bad caps that were the issue. Made hundreds of dollars on collecting bad LCD's, repairing and selling them to people in need. :) Love to repair LCD's cause it's really easy, costs are extremely low and you make a shitload of money on it. :)
Thanks to this video I was able to revive my acer x203H that I had almost thrown away! Encouraged by your can-do attitude I open up my monitor and found similarly bulged caps in almost the exact same location. After calling around I was able to find some caps that weren't low ESR and they are working until I can get the right ones in the mail. Thanks for the video! Liked, favorited, subscribed :D
Hi! Dave, this video inspired me to undertake repairing a 19" LCD monitor my brother gave me. The best part is i used Nippon Chemi-con caps from a dead XFX computer power supply he also gave me. so for a bit of my time, a 100% free monitor. Oh, three guesses what brand caps Dell used in this monitor (you only need one).
EEVblog I had no idea about electronics. Thanks to your instructions repair on LG Flatron W2242S, during important film editing session, worked like a beauty. No dead or injured. Mission successfully accomplished. Many thanks from Germany.
I do these kinds of monitor repairs as well. It helps to wire the cap further from its original position so that it doesn't get heated by the heatsink. I also always step up the rating, using a one step higher voltage is a good choice.
Hi Viktor, don't know where you're writing from, but here in Chile, you can insert the plug in either mode: So, a two-pole mains switch has to be a must. I just think the UK's insistence on grounding is absolutely valid. I would say it has saved more lives over the years thanks to any any other single precaution. Also, UK plugs have fuses rated for the appliance fitted to the plug. I agree that most things today do not need "grounding"...but you take whatever precaution against shock & fire.??
I enjoyed the video, thanks. I've got a 37" Hannspree TV which failed to start up. It gave a really loud crack so I opened it up to discover the caps in the psu had split on the cross.I ordered some low ESR caps and job was a good un. I used to repair tv sets when I was still at school for a rental shop back in the 60's in my summer holidays. It's a shame so many electronic items are just thrown away when they go wrong. I bet you had a big grin after winning 2 monitors.
I've fixed a couple of monitors with the same problem. A month ago, I've got an LG Flatron L246WH 24" 16:10 monitor that didn't poweron. There were two 3300uF 35v caps in parallell (6600uF) that had leaked. I replaced them with a single 6800uF 50v nichicon cap. Works like a charm now. :)
(Sorry for my suck English) This morning have repaired a monitor LCD about this. My model is a sync master 203 and has find the elettrolitics caps crushed. Thanks David L. Jones for all!!! :D
That's really funny because I literally only started learning basic electronics this week and the very first broken device I opened for practice ended up having a leaking capacitor, which was almost certainly what made it die. Although I have since googled the device and found that a blown cap was the single most common point of failure (the only one I could find mention of online).
same happened to my old working place. was lucky enough to grab a lot before they got into the dumpster. replaced the faulty capacitors for like under a few bucks and voila, working like a charm.
Im inspired to find something to fix my experience has been mostly determining "why" things don't work - troubleshooting. But i havent the internal strength to fix them yet - lazy. Great vid!
I was once repairing a display module of an old CNC machine. It had intel 80-something cpu and a few other chips on it. Attaching a scope to the +5v pin gave a nice looking sawtooth waveform with peak-to-peak of about 2-3V. On the other side of the board was a closed switch mode power supply generating hv for the display. The problem was with the internal caps on the input had gone bad. It was not easy to replace them, so we just added another outside
Yea nice video. After watching this video i realized that the 50A 13.8V SMPS i have found in the dumpster might now be as useless as i thought!!!! I took it apart and saw two 450uF 400V caps were blown!!!!! I have replaced then with some Nippon Chemi-Con caps of the same ratings, and is started to work. Not bad for a power supply that stayed under rain for a week. Thanks!!!!!!!!!!! a lot!!!
got 4 dead samsung monitors in my office, and they all mine. thanks to this im going to open apart those monitors to see if its the same problem. if it is, then i'll probably have 4 of these monitors for spare to built a personal media room. thanks man this could save me lots of money.
I repaired my monitor the same way just recently. In all the monitors I've repaired, the symptoms were completely different and could be misleading. For example, my monitor only showed white screen (backlight) but other brand monitor needed 15 tries to turn on. I would say bad caps in this one are intentional. Build quality shows they know what they're doing, with crappy caps it's planned obsolescence. Lastly I'd like to suggest a subject for a follow-up video: safe discharging of caps. Thanks.
same with mine mate, dodgy caps on a Samsung SyncMaster 226bw. 6 caps were bad and as you said no need to test. Was evident they were dead. Filter cap was ok so left that in. £2 quick repair and runs perfect now. Not bad for a scrap find
Awesome video! I've repaired about 15 monitors, all from bad caps. If the manufacturers would use better caps to begin with these would last at least twice as long. I suspect they use crap caps to A) save a few cents per monitor and B) planned obsolescence so we have to buy more.
Whoops, I meant solid polymer capacitors. I'd like to see more of those in electronics! Very tired of my recent purchases having the point of failure at the cheap electrolytic ones. I'm sure they just cost pennies more. By the way, great videos! I'm gonna register at your forum. Keep up the good work!
I had exactly the same caps blown in the exact same monitor model - coincidence? I don't think so. Also, like 5 years ago, I got 4 same Acer 17" LCDs and all of them had exactly the same problem - a cold joint on one leg of a 220-something nF cap in the CCFL socket area which led to destruction of the inverter transistors. After the repair and preventive replacement of all PSU elctrolytics, they still work like a charm, being used for 8hrs+ a day at my old school.
Thanks for this! I just received a Samsung SyncMaster 223BW that "takes a long time to stop flickering, and the flickering is getting worse". I immediately thought "bad cap?", and now I'm pretty sure that's the case, and that I can fix this. :)
I have fixed quite a few LCD screens that show a common fault where they power up, give a picture and then go blank about 10ms later, or if you hold a torch up to them you can see the picture. The back-light drivers fail for the CFL, which can be simply replaced along with the caps that are paired with them which brings them back to life.
Thanks. I was trying to fix something else on my Television (not LCD) and I thougth that this could be the problem, I had one bad cap and I change it!! Didn't fix my problem, which after I solved, but solved a problem that I had for about 2 years, the screen was always a little too red (shades of red) and now the image is perfect!! So thank you very much!!
Got a Samsung, round same time but different model. Caps have also gone in exactly the same area. This is helping me fix mine. I have the replacement caps.
I have a TV-Monitor LCD SyncMaster 711MP that showed the same problem and thanks to this video I have been able to fix it the same way you did. Thanks for sharing :-D
One huge hurdle in the way of replacing capacitors is finding the correct capacitor in the first place. I was going to replace some blown caps on a motherboard but when I got the new caps from Digikey they were freaking huge and return shipping cost as much as they did to begin with! Dang, I did the best I could though.
I am so excited dave! I found a samsung TV in the trash last night. it turns on but black screen with back light. I waiting to open it up to check the caps!
Did this for my television, which died a couple years back suddenly. Worked like a charm and cost me 15 bucks to fix. Pretty good for a 2K dollar television. Works to this day.
My 2005 Syncmaster 931MP recently stops working once every other year for 3 days, then works again. When I threatende to buy a new one she brought me here, to point me to her coming defect. She wants to say thank you. Her exceptional design is not found anymore.
Nice video, Dave. I've myself revived many screens bought for nothing or simply got for free by replacing some caps. It's especially interesting for screens that have reputably good panels (it's the case for some SyncMaster series, regardless of the electronics that drive it) or formats that are barely supported by manufacturers today (like 16/10 screens. Even today you'd be hard-pressed to find better than those 24" 16/10 Iiyama displays).
In the US, Mouser, Digi-key, Allied, and Newark all come to mind. Be prepared for a steep learning curve when searching, though, as they carry millions of parts, and hundreds of thousands that are fairly similar. It can be overwhelming at first.
Great presentation! I like the comment at the start when you open the case " what a bastard!". Yes time to fix those dead monitors i have around the house in my to do list.
I have an 18" 4:3 Hitachi monitor that alive for over 10 years now. Hitachi says in the user manual to replace the power supply after three years and yet its still working like a charm. So where I'm going with this is this. In the race to produce competitively priced monitors I would guess that sometimes manufacturers have to accept a supplier who probably wouldn't have been their first choice simply because their offerings are cheaper yet meet their requirements.
I've lost count of the number of these I've fixed like this over the years. I guess the bean-counters will be happy as long as the cheap caps last longer than the warranty, particularly if it means the customer then goes out and buys a new monitor.
Believe it or not, I watched this video onto a street-found 20-inch Samsung Syncmaster that had bad caps... I repaired it in less than 15 minutes, I didn't even bother purchasing caps, I just dropped in whatever salvaged close value caps I had available in my odds and bits drawer.
I think it's because the way the electrolytic caps seem to fail is by going open circuit rather then shorting, especially so when the electrolyte in them dries out. A lot of Samsung made flat screens had a habit of using caps that were of too low of a voltage rating, as well as using a cheap brand of cap.
I had exactly the same prob with my Samsung Syncmaster 226BW. Almost the same caps as far as I see. My Display-Caps wear out after 7000 hours of useage (service menu). Mine also had the CapXcon inside. I replaced them all with "better" caps (a bit higher nominal voltage from Nichicon). As you said, if a TFT doesn't work anymore, in 95% of cases it will be the electrolytic caps of the power supply. I think they chose caps with lower quality and/or drive them to close to the nominal voltage.
It is soldered to the board - the connector just has both PCB pins and wire hooks. I don't know why it has both, but if you look a bit latter in the video you can see the back side of the board where the IEC connector is attached and there is clearly a big ground plane with a big connector pin sticking out.
@10:15 check the back side, the connector has the ground soldered directly to the board. That one you point at is extra ground connector, not used on this board.
In this case the warning signs were for the backlight drivers, which put out high voltage while running. The only dangerous cap here (after the monitor being unplugged) is the large 450V type near the AC input. You can discharge it by connecting a resistor in the order of 10k accross it's legs. If the board is unplugged, touching a single wire should be safe. Without ground reference there's no path for a current to flow.
When you short circuit the terminals of a capacitor with a screwdriver, you're trying to reduce its voltage to 0 instantly, which would require a very large electric current, thus generating a lot of heat. To discharge it slowly, you can just connect a resistor to the terminals and monitor it with a voltmeter. In fact, the voltmeter itself can be used for that purpose (if it's analog), but it would take really long to discharge, as they have a really high resistance.
I'm just starting to learn basic electronics and already just a few days in I've noticed that low quality caps blowing is one of the most common causes of failure, going by a bunch of videos and forum posts. In fact I've already encountered it myself because I chose to mess around with a broken old HD DVD drive I had in order to practice soldering/desoldering, and I quickly noticed that a cap was blown (which is likely what caused the drive to fail). When I think of the number of things I've thrown out over the years that might have been easily fixed it annoys me, especially when it might even be a premeditated decision on the part of the manufacturers. Not gonna be doing that anymore, there's more than enough e-waste already and I don't want my nerdy hobbies contributing loads towards it. This nerdy hobby is gonna reduce it.
I usually put in smaller caps in parallel with ugly bodge wires, so I can fix pretty much all monitors with a supply of 470uF 35V caps. The result seems to survive the ripple current better and fits easily in the case, unlike trying to shoe-horn in higher-quality ones (with better ripple current handling) of the original rating which are always bigger than the ones that failed (no free lunch)
I had never tried to repair electronics equipment before and thanks to this, I'm now looking at my newly repaired monitor. It had a bad Capxon caps, soldered in replacements today (first time soldering too), whole repair cost me 1 euro 15 cent. You're a hero!
Dodgy caps is the perfect choice for planned obsolescense.
CapXon. Being the base of crappy electronic products since 1990
Company's hate people who replace caps
I doubt it is planned obsolescence. As you can read on Wikipedia article for planned obsolescence it is a risky strategy for companies in competitive markets like LCD monitors. As consumers with a bad experience with Samsung will likely choose a competitors product. I bet the original design engineer (with pride in his design) didn't choose CapXon. But that decision was made later in the production department for the purpose to save costs. Maybe a stupid deal was made with CapXon to have them supply all the caps in certain production lines. It might be a continues conflict between management and the engineering staff for those decisions.
SE45CX It seems like the perfect choice for a company like Samsung. Samsung are the largest supplier of "Name brand" monitors in the world because they're the cheapest and have "decent quality" for the price. Dave's teardown shows exactly how well made the monitors are inside with the sole exception of the cheap caps.
Someone buys a Samsung monitor, it lasts a few years and then dies, most likely, they'll buy another Samsung because they're the cheapest "known brand" like I mentioned.
Another benefit to Samsung is when they sell monitors with service-contracts or warranties, if a monitor fails and it's under warranty, it's literally the work of a moment to repair it as Dave's demonstrated in the video.
SE45CX this is also what the Wikipedia article said about planned obsolescence Planned obsolescence is sometimes achieved by placing a heat-sensitive component adjacent to a component that is expected to get hot. A common example is LCD screens with heat-sensitive electrolytic capacitors placed next to power components which may be 100 °C or hotter; this heat greatly reduces the lifespan of the electrolytic capacitor.[7]
Yes I did. What I meant by that I was already quite knowledgeable in electronics before I got to formally study it. And I did so much outside of study (work and hobby), that I like to think I've learnt more useful stuff that way than through formal study.
I watched this video a couple of times while waiting for my caps to come from Digikey. Performed this very same surgery on Friday to my 10 year old Acer monitor that was boot-cycling for a minute before staying on. The power board was full of bulging CapXon's. Back in business for 7$ US and an hour of my time.
I wouldn't mind betting that Samsung said "hey, let's make a shit hot monitor that everyone will want", so they did. Then the marketing department said "hang on, we want it to look nice and perform well, but if they last, we'll won't sell any more monitors for the next 20 years", so the designers then replied with "Easy, we'll fix that! These caps will fail in 5! You can even put a 3 year warranty on the suckers and still make a killing". Management then promptly fell to the floor with shudders of joy vibrating through them. After changing their pants, they approved the product and here we are!
+Thomas Fowler That's what a lot of manufacturers do nowadays, sadly.
+Thomas Fowler I know! They place capacitors very close to hot transistors on purpose!
+RmFrZQ Using low ESR won't work if the connection to the switching transistor is too long, because you have to add the ESR of the connection. So of cause ESR capacitors need to be really close to those hot transistors and need to be rated for the unusually high temperature shown in the video.
John Doe
So good design decision should be to use larger caps with more capacity? Caps will last longer than 2-3 years. I also very disappointed with pricing of authorized Samsung repair services, who charge half of the price of monitor to change 3 caps.
Today, I just spent $2 for replaced caps and labor and yes my syncmaster is now back online. Truly your video is worth watching. Ty Sir
Having one of these same models in the basement - it would turn on but the display took 30 minutes to become visible - and needing a spare monitor, I decided to go for the fix. I've already fixed a beautiful ViewSonic monitor where a $5 capacitor change saved $800, so charged forward.
Indeed, two adjacent capacitors of 820uf, 25v, were visibly bulging at the top. These were replaced along with a 330uf 25v capacitor nearby (it looked ok but was in a heat area so replaced it proactively). The failures I saw were not quite as dramatic as Dave's dumpster treasure, but left in place this would have been their fate.
The monitor now works perfectly.
Thanks to Dave for showing how that plastic case comes apart. Especially helpful.
Probably the best clip I've watched for several months on TH-cam. This with dodgy caps is probably common knowledge among most of your subscribers. But newsflash to me. Big thanks for passing quality knowledge on.
This is great. I've had a broken one sitting in my office for a year or two, waiting for me to properly dispose of it. Now I have a weekend project. Thanks!
I gotta tell you - you made me laugh out loud !! A highly trained and greatly experienced Electrical Engineer like yourself - with all of the amazing electronics tools that you have!! You have only 2 phillips screwdrivers ... and you lost one of those !! LOL !! Thanks for all of the great videos !!! ;)
Just like my Apple Studio Display failure, blew up in 18 months, caps blown up everywhere. As I found out the powerboard was made in Korea by a company that supplies all those 'famous' Korean brands
In 2001 or 2002, if I remember correctly there where caps manufactured which where wrongly calculated, these caps where used in cars, motherboards, etc. All these caps died within 1-3 years. For a moment there even was a shortage on caps. About 7 brands sold these caps. See "capacitor plague"
According to same reports, the actual root cause was not-pure-enough aluminium used to manufacture the capacitors. Some claimed that the reason would have been poor quality electrolyte but I think it was later pointed out that it wasn't the actual cause of the problem.
Hey Dave! A few summers ago, during an IT internship, I was given a pretty nice looking Samsung SyncMaster 226BW monitor. After watching this video, I decided to finally pop it open and take a look, and I found the exact same thing that you found. Unfortunately, I didn't have the exact same value (or even close to) caps. I just decided to then solder a few caps in series to match the capacitance on some protoboard. I got it working on the first try, and I'm enjoying it so far. Thanks for making this, and all of your other videos. Keep it up, man! (Greetings from Oklahoma)
Thanks for doing this, I did a replacement like this for a DSL modem with bad caps, but was not sure what specifically to do for the replacements. This answers a lot of questions.
First of all, just want to say thank you for all your hard work and excellent channel! I have learned a ton since subscribing awhile back, one of the best electronics channels on the web! I've made quite a few repairs directly related to videos of yours, and I can't express enough thanks for what you. Most recently, my girlfriend brought home a 19" Samsung 920BM...plugged it in, no power at all. No dis-assembly videos on the web, that I could find, so I ended up here. The monitors appeared to have very similar construction, and sure enough, they did. Was tough separating the two halves of the shell, but the insides looked to be a very similar design. Got it apart, had a look at the power board, and there was a huge scorch mark right through the PCB, right between the mains plug and the fuse. Checked continuity on the fuse, and fuse wasn't popped, strangely. So I figured if I could solder some wire directly from the mains plug right to the input side of the fuse, I might be able to get it working, as long as the scorch hole in the PCB hadn't damaged any other traces. Luckily, it appears the PCB was single layer, so I soldered in the little piece of wire from plug to input side of fuse, and sure enough, up and running perfectly, been using it since last night. Without your videos, I would never have even thought to try such a thing and probably spent $30 on a power board for the thing.
IT'S ALIVE......Thank you. My Daughter (16) made her first electronic repair!
thank you for the tv good sir, found a 32 in visio tv dead on the side of the road and replaced some caps2x 10v3300uf and 1x 10v2200uf now i'm rocking a $5 tv, thank you for showing me how
You're so right. I experienced this in a company I worked for. A woman who was subsequently fired, took it upon herself to "shave" money. She (without authorization) went looking for the cheapest parts. Her purchases never went through engineering authorization. These were bearings. Total junk. Thank you again Dave, for bringing the seemingly obvious to our eyes and ears.
My friend wanted to trash his Samsung monitor because of some picture flickering and occasional refusal to turn on but luckily I managed to stop him in time. Searching YT for "how to" - few seconds. Watching EEVblog #347 - 17min37sec. Cost of few JAMICON low ESR caps - next to nothing. Dissassembly, soldering and reassembly - less than half an hour. Now I have " brand new" SyncMaster 226BW monitor - thanks a lot Dave :-)
The SyncMaster 793S 17", we're and are one of the clearest screens i've worked with. Cheap but really clear. What i liked about it and what people were saying at the time was that it lacked definition and color. But as usual as with most inexperienced users they wouldn't bother setting up the display properly. Once you do it's a beast. I still use it from time to time when i have a task that includes digital manipulation etc.
I am staring at the exact same board on a Samsung Syncmaster. Same
bulging caps. Will be trying this out and see if I can bring this year
old dead monitor to life.
Yep, it's working now. Thanks for the tip.
I want to say thank you so much for these videos!!! After looking at the crapxon caps that had puked I knew I had a chance of repairing these 2 TVs. After a total of 2 hours and 6-330~25v + 2-1000~25v caps,both TVs work beautifully!! Thanks again for the inspiration and confidence!!!! BTW I used Taicon caps and the Samsung sprung to life from oblivion,the Philips was teetering on the brink with intermittent function.
I fixed a big flat panel TV for a charity fund raiser last year. It was an expensive TV taken out by a single cap in a power supply module. Those 85C rated caps will pop every time. It costs a few cents extra for 105C rated caps, but they actually do the job.
Thank You very much Dave! My brother have epilepsia and it's recommended for him to use LCD monitor. Unfortunately his 22" HYUNDAI IT N220W LCD monitor wasn't working... until yesterday :D I've replaced four 680uF 25V capacitors with two 1000uF 25V and another two 680uF 25V caps. Now mine brothers LCD works perfect, so we can afford any epilepsion attacks that can be eventually caused by CRT monitor. My repair cost me nothing, because capacitors for mine replacement were taken from an old PC motherboard, so I've also spared ~200PLN (~65USD) which I would have to pay for repair in service. I'm not good in soldering, but I've managed to solve the problem :) Thank You again and greetings from Poland!
Being from the US it was fun to just listen to the accent while following along. Thanks for this.
I have a Princeton LCD monitor that a friend gave me that is having the exact same problem. I am going to drop by the electronics house on my way home from work and pick up 5 of the 470uF 25V caps to repair it. What surprised me is that those ViewSonic monitors are almost identical inside to my Princeton one. Great video!
ViewSonic was probably selling Princeton monitors with there own name. I had a Sylvania CRT which was actually a Princeton monitor without paying the Princeton price for it.
Did this with my monitor not long back. Found the right caps on another PCB too, cost me nothing to fix it and saved me some money.
Thanks Dave, I fixed myself 2 new monitors at uni today after seeing this blog!
Hi Dave, I have these monitors at work. When they go pop from now on I'll open 'em up and check this out - thanks!
Im sad you fast forwarded the repair part, it's actually why I clicked on this video.
Also, my theory is that they purposely picked those caps to shorten the life time of those monitors. The people who threw them out had to buy new ones right?
Samsung bedroom TV here has almost the same board, and the same startup problems... Did not repair it yet, but this clip woke me up. New caps are now in the mail.
Yep, I fixed five LCD monitors today at work. ALL of them works after replacing the electrolytics in the SMPS. And yes, three of them were Samsung with, you guessed it, CapXon caps. Here's a picture of them and a bag of replaced caps ;-)
I'm glad to see this video. I've been sitting on an old HP LCD monitor for years that never powered up, and I've been wanting to find one for sale with a cracked screen or something, selling for parts only, to fix it. I'll have to pop it open and see if any of the caps are blown.
Great work, Dave. Glad to see you save good stuff from the dump.
Last week I found a monitor sitting out with somebody's trash and I decided to take it and find out what's wrong. With a little research, I figured out a few capacitors were blown. I ordered a replacement kit and I now have a secondary monitor that I spent a total of 20$ on to fix.
The sad part with the capacitors is that most somewhat skilled people could fix them instead of throwing a repairable device into the trash. "Built to fail" as soon the warranty is gone.
Come on people, if something is already broken, there is no harm in tearing it apart and at least check how that device is made, you can't do more harm if it's already broken beyond repair and if it isn't you can give it to your local electronics technician or try to fix it yourself. Or at least scavenge some neat parts.
I love this channel, every time there is something new to learn.
***** Not necessarily true. I 100% agree on what you said about increasing people's knowledge on repairing electronics. But still, you can get zapped by a power unit's capacitor pretty easily if you just randomly tear stuff down.
I've done a ton of work on LCD monitors and allways it has been bad caps that were the issue. Made hundreds of dollars on collecting bad LCD's, repairing and selling them to people in need. :)
Love to repair LCD's cause it's really easy, costs are extremely low and you make a shitload of money on it. :)
Yes, they don't get stressed nearly as much.
Thanks to this video I was able to revive my acer x203H that I had almost thrown away! Encouraged by your can-do attitude I open up my monitor and found similarly bulged caps in almost the exact same location. After calling around I was able to find some caps that weren't low ESR and they are working until I can get the right ones in the mail. Thanks for the video! Liked, favorited, subscribed :D
You are the BEST, Dave! I love your voice, and how you explore and explain so much. Your expertise is inspiring! Thank you for your work!!!
Internal heating due to the ESR, and external heating from the heatsinks.
Hi! Dave, this video inspired me to undertake repairing a 19" LCD monitor my brother gave me. The best part is i used Nippon Chemi-con caps from a dead XFX computer power supply he also gave me. so for a bit of my time, a 100% free monitor. Oh, three guesses what brand caps Dell used in this monitor (you only need one).
Skwisgar2322 Nice work!
EEVblog lol you should have said built like a brick shit house
EEVblog I had no idea about electronics. Thanks to your instructions repair on LG Flatron W2242S, during important film editing session, worked like a beauty.
No dead or injured. Mission successfully accomplished.
Many thanks from Germany.
The Kaiser Oh dear I have the W2243S, mine keeps squealing on booting - could this be capacitors too?
Magic Look at them and if some of them are bulgy, replace them.
I do these kinds of monitor repairs as well. It helps to wire the cap further from its original position so that it doesn't get heated by the heatsink. I also always step up the rating, using a one step higher voltage is a good choice.
Hi Viktor, don't know where you're writing from, but here in Chile, you can insert the plug in either mode: So, a two-pole mains switch has to be a must. I just think the UK's insistence on grounding is absolutely valid. I would say it has saved more lives over the years thanks to any any other single precaution. Also, UK plugs have fuses rated for the appliance fitted to the plug. I agree that most things today do not need "grounding"...but you take whatever precaution against shock & fire.??
I enjoyed the video, thanks. I've got a 37" Hannspree TV which failed to start up. It gave a really loud crack so I opened it up to discover the caps in the psu had split on the cross.I ordered some low ESR caps and job was a good un. I used to repair tv sets when I was still at school for a rental shop back in the 60's in my summer holidays. It's a shame so many electronic items are just thrown away when they go wrong. I bet you had a big grin after winning 2 monitors.
I've fixed a couple of monitors with the same problem. A month ago, I've got an LG Flatron L246WH 24" 16:10 monitor that didn't poweron. There were two 3300uF 35v caps in parallell (6600uF) that had leaked. I replaced them with a single 6800uF 50v nichicon cap. Works like a charm now. :)
How does Dave not have an assortment of all the necessary caps from reliable brands on hand already?
(Sorry for my suck English) This morning have repaired a monitor LCD about this. My model is a sync master 203 and has find the elettrolitics caps crushed. Thanks David L. Jones for all!!! :D
In all the broiken electronics I have opened, I never seen a bulging cap nor a leaking. That is my unicorn.
That's really funny because I literally only started learning basic electronics this week and the very first broken device I opened for practice ended up having a leaking capacitor, which was almost certainly what made it die. Although I have since googled the device and found that a blown cap was the single most common point of failure (the only one I could find mention of online).
same happened to my old working place. was lucky enough to grab a lot before they got into the dumpster. replaced the faulty capacitors for like under a few bucks and voila, working like a charm.
Im inspired to find something to fix my experience has been mostly determining "why" things don't work - troubleshooting. But i havent the internal strength to fix them yet - lazy. Great vid!
I was once repairing a display module of an old CNC machine. It had intel 80-something cpu and a few other chips on it. Attaching a scope to the +5v pin gave a nice looking sawtooth waveform with peak-to-peak of about 2-3V. On the other side of the board was a closed switch mode power supply generating hv for the display. The problem was with the internal caps on the input had gone bad. It was not easy to replace them, so we just added another outside
Yea nice video. After watching this video i realized that the 50A 13.8V SMPS i have found in the dumpster might now be as useless as i thought!!!!
I took it apart and saw two 450uF 400V caps were blown!!!!! I have replaced then with some Nippon Chemi-Con caps of the same ratings, and is started to work. Not bad for a power supply that stayed under rain for a week. Thanks!!!!!!!!!!! a lot!!!
got 4 dead samsung monitors in my office, and they all mine. thanks to this im going to open apart those monitors to see if its the same problem. if it is, then i'll probably have 4 of these monitors for spare to built a personal media room. thanks man this could save me lots of money.
I repaired my monitor the same way just recently. In all the monitors I've repaired, the symptoms were completely different and could be misleading. For example, my monitor only showed white screen (backlight) but other brand monitor needed 15 tries to turn on.
I would say bad caps in this one are intentional. Build quality shows they know what they're doing, with crappy caps it's planned obsolescence.
Lastly I'd like to suggest a subject for a follow-up video: safe discharging of caps.
Thanks.
same with mine mate, dodgy caps on a Samsung SyncMaster 226bw. 6 caps were bad and as you said no need to test. Was evident they were dead. Filter cap was ok so left that in. £2 quick repair and runs perfect now. Not bad for a scrap find
Awesome video! I've repaired about 15 monitors, all from bad caps. If the manufacturers would use better caps to begin with these would last at least twice as long. I suspect they use crap caps to A) save a few cents per monitor and B) planned obsolescence so we have to buy more.
Whoops, I meant solid polymer capacitors. I'd like to see more of those in electronics! Very tired of my recent purchases having the point of failure at the cheap electrolytic ones. I'm sure they just cost pennies more.
By the way, great videos! I'm gonna register at your forum. Keep up the good work!
There is a service menu showing hours used?
I had exactly the same caps blown in the exact same monitor model - coincidence? I don't think so. Also, like 5 years ago, I got 4 same Acer 17" LCDs and all of them had exactly the same problem - a cold joint on one leg of a 220-something nF cap in the CCFL socket area which led to destruction of the inverter transistors. After the repair and preventive replacement of all PSU elctrolytics, they still work like a charm, being used for 8hrs+ a day at my old school.
Content starts at 04:01
Great video, full of valuable insights. Thank you!
I didn't have a choice. I need these monitors working for the Electronex show on Tues.
Thanks for this!
I just received a Samsung SyncMaster 223BW that "takes a long time to stop flickering, and the flickering is getting worse". I immediately thought "bad cap?", and now I'm pretty sure that's the case, and that I can fix this. :)
I have fixed quite a few LCD screens that show a common fault where they power up, give a picture and then go blank about 10ms later, or if you hold a torch up to them you can see the picture. The back-light drivers fail for the CFL, which can be simply replaced along with the caps that are paired with them which brings them back to life.
Thanks.
I was trying to fix something else on my Television (not LCD) and I thougth that this could be the problem, I had one bad cap and I change it!! Didn't fix my problem, which after I solved, but solved a problem that I had for about 2 years, the screen was always a little too red (shades of red) and now the image is perfect!!
So thank you very much!!
LOL!, catching up on some of your old videos.... Ironically I replaced the caps in my Samsung SyncMaster 204Ts a few years ago.
had the same model for 10 years. had to replace the caps 5 times. i find thay last longer if you leave the metal sheild off.
Got a Samsung, round same time but different model. Caps have also gone in exactly the same area. This is helping me fix mine. I have the replacement caps.
I have a TV-Monitor LCD SyncMaster 711MP that showed the same problem and thanks to this video I have been able to fix it the same way you did. Thanks for sharing :-D
You are the coolest person that exists, I learned much about the caps.
I should say, this video inspired me today.
Amazing! Made a tutorial for this not too long ago and just further verifies that I did it right attention to ESR! Great stuff mate!
One huge hurdle in the way of replacing capacitors is finding the correct capacitor in the first place. I was going to replace some blown caps on a motherboard but when I got the new caps from Digikey they were freaking huge and return shipping cost as much as they did to begin with! Dang, I did the best I could though.
Thank you, Dave. New set of Panasonic ESD caps on order; I'll see if I can get my wife's Hannspree going again.
I am so excited dave! I found a samsung TV in the trash last night. it turns on but black screen with back light. I waiting to open it up to check the caps!
Did this for my television, which died a couple years back suddenly. Worked like a charm and cost me 15 bucks to fix. Pretty good for a 2K dollar television. Works to this day.
My 2005 Syncmaster 931MP recently stops working once every other year for 3 days, then works again. When I threatende to buy a new one she brought me here, to point me to her coming defect. She wants to say thank you. Her exceptional design is not found anymore.
Did the same with a 214T, but I just scrounged some caps from a dead (physically abused) stereo. Total cost to me = nada :) Still working 4 months on.
Nice video, Dave. I've myself revived many screens bought for nothing or simply got for free by replacing some caps. It's especially interesting for screens that have reputably good panels (it's the case for some SyncMaster series, regardless of the electronics that drive it) or formats that are barely supported by manufacturers today (like 16/10 screens. Even today you'd be hard-pressed to find better than those 24" 16/10 Iiyama displays).
In the US, Mouser, Digi-key, Allied, and Newark all come to mind. Be prepared for a steep learning curve when searching, though, as they carry millions of parts, and hundreds of thousands that are fairly similar. It can be overwhelming at first.
An oldie but goodie! I'm going to work on one next week. Thanks!
Panasonic, Nichicon, Rubycon, United Chemi, Epcos, Cornell Dublier to name a few. SamXon are supposed to be ok (note the spelling difference)
Followed your video, replaced the caps. Monitor works great now. Thanks!
Great stuff well done. Fender do the same thing with their guitar amplifiers. Cheap IC caps.
Great presentation! I like the comment at the start when you open the case " what a bastard!". Yes time to fix those dead monitors i have around the house in my to do list.
I have an 18" 4:3 Hitachi monitor that alive for over 10 years now. Hitachi says in the user manual to replace the power supply after three years and yet its still working like a charm. So where I'm going with this is this. In the race to produce competitively priced monitors I would guess that sometimes manufacturers have to accept a supplier who probably wouldn't have been their first choice simply because their offerings are cheaper yet meet their requirements.
Dave, you are a genius. If you were a venter, Jeff would have a run for his money.
I've lost count of the number of these I've fixed like this over the years. I guess the bean-counters will be happy as long as the cheap caps last longer than the warranty, particularly if it means the customer then goes out and buys a new monitor.
Believe it or not, I watched this video onto a street-found 20-inch Samsung Syncmaster that had bad caps... I repaired it in less than 15 minutes, I didn't even bother purchasing caps, I just dropped in whatever salvaged close value caps I had available in my odds and bits drawer.
Now we have too many monitors so we plan on giving some to friends. Dave, Keep making these interesting videos
Love jaycar for the "get it done now!" aspect!
I think it's because the way the electrolytic caps seem to fail is by going open circuit rather then shorting, especially so when the electrolyte in them dries out. A lot of Samsung made flat screens had a habit of using caps that were of too low of a voltage rating, as well as using a cheap brand of cap.
I had exactly the same prob with my Samsung Syncmaster 226BW. Almost the same caps as far as I see. My Display-Caps wear out after 7000 hours of useage (service menu). Mine also had the CapXcon inside. I replaced them all with "better" caps (a bit higher nominal voltage from Nichicon). As you said, if a TFT doesn't work anymore, in 95% of cases it will be the electrolytic caps of the power supply.
I think they chose caps with lower quality and/or drive them to close to the nominal voltage.
It is soldered to the board - the connector just has both PCB pins and wire hooks. I don't know why it has both, but if you look a bit latter in the video you can see the back side of the board where the IEC connector is attached and there is clearly a big ground plane with a big connector pin sticking out.
@10:15 check the back side, the connector has the ground soldered directly to the board. That one you point at is extra ground connector, not used on this board.
In this case the warning signs were for the backlight drivers, which put out high voltage while running. The only dangerous cap here (after the monitor being unplugged) is the large 450V type near the AC input. You can discharge it by connecting a resistor in the order of 10k accross it's legs. If the board is unplugged, touching a single wire should be safe. Without ground reference there's no path for a current to flow.
When you short circuit the terminals of a capacitor with a screwdriver, you're trying to reduce its voltage to 0 instantly, which would require a very large electric current, thus generating a lot of heat. To discharge it slowly, you can just connect a resistor to the terminals and monitor it with a voltmeter. In fact, the voltmeter itself can be used for that purpose (if it's analog), but it would take really long to discharge, as they have a really high resistance.
I'm just starting to learn basic electronics and already just a few days in I've noticed that low quality caps blowing is one of the most common causes of failure, going by a bunch of videos and forum posts.
In fact I've already encountered it myself because I chose to mess around with a broken old HD DVD drive I had in order to practice soldering/desoldering, and I quickly noticed that a cap was blown (which is likely what caused the drive to fail).
When I think of the number of things I've thrown out over the years that might have been easily fixed it annoys me, especially when it might even be a premeditated decision on the part of the manufacturers. Not gonna be doing that anymore, there's more than enough e-waste already and I don't want my nerdy hobbies contributing loads towards it. This nerdy hobby is gonna reduce it.
I usually put in smaller caps in parallel with ugly bodge wires, so I can fix pretty much all monitors with a supply of 470uF 35V caps. The result seems to survive the ripple current better and fits easily in the case, unlike trying to shoe-horn in higher-quality ones (with better ripple current handling) of the original rating which are always bigger than the ones that failed (no free lunch)
Had exactly the same problem with my old syncmaster, also the same ratings for the caps.
I replaced them and it's still running :)