Carnetix p1900 + Xenarc MP-SC8 Blew up?

**miztahsparklez** · 09-13-2006, 11:58 PM

Alrighty, ive been running this setup for a few months without any problems, until recently when ive been getting turn off thump from my speakers. now these are much louder pops than before. Then yesterday, i turned my car off at the gas station. and there was that same pop, and when i tried starting the car again, i noticed that everything but my computer turned on. well i open everythign up today and notice two capacitors that are completely destroyed and one that may also be affected.

now with a DMM im able to measure 19v on one side of the capacitor. and nearby the capacitors are the labels FB68 and FB69, i wasnt sure what that meant and i thought C## was usually the label for capacitors. Does anyone know what size these are? or what size may be appropriate to replace it with? perhaps something more beefy.

Here are some pictures of the damage. theres no burn marks on the bottom. only the top has residue from the caps exploding. What should i do about this? Im not the original owner of the xenarc pc, but i am the original owner of the carnetix 1900 and the p5v.

**miztahsparklez** · 09-14-2006, 12:01 AM

last pic.. any ideas? also whats an easy way to tell which way the capacitor faces? i tried using my DMM and set it to beep if there is continuity and i grounded one lead and touched one side and it did beep, but i just want to double check that thats how you do that.

**DarquePervert** · 09-14-2006, 07:53 AM

If a cap goes, it's usually a defective caps.
About a year ago (maybe longer?) there was a flood of bad capacitors on the market that found their way onto motherboards from nearly every manufacturer. It's very likely your motherboard could be one of those affected.

It may or may not be covered under warranty. It's certainly worth a shot.
I also know there are people who can/will replace all the capacitors on a motherboard... for a fee, of course. That might be an option if the board isn't under warranty.

**miztahsparklez** · 09-14-2006, 03:17 PM

yeah, ive been reading about that, though i looked up the manufacturers of the larger caps on the board and they all seem like good brand name caps. im leaning more towards a voltage spike killing those though, just because its the first thing that would have got hit if there was something of that sort.

does anyone know what size caps i might be able to use to replace those? i was going to attempt to do it myself as it doesnt seem too hard.

**miztahsparklez** · 09-18-2006, 09:21 AM

OOP, found out they werent caps, they were ferrite beads..

from my understanding the beads are like those ferrite cores that you put over wires. so current should be passing through these. and one side should NOT be grounded! so somewhere there is a short on the board, somewhere internal or something that i cant see. I suppose my only choice is to see if xenarc will honor this as a warranty claim or not. or hopefully i can get a replacement/repair done for a reasonably low price.

i still need to check the carnetix for spikes. though i think my DMM might be too slow and try to average any spikes that might occur. an analog might work better in this case.