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Took me 45 minutes to find a bad capacitor that looked fine
Had a Dell Optiplex 7010 that kept crashing under load. I checked everything - PSU, RAM, GPU - but missed a bulging capacitor near the CPU socket because it was hidden under the heatsink. Found it by accident when i pulled the board out and shined a light at the right angle. Anyone else have a hidden hardware fault that wasted way too much time?
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victorhernandez4mo ago
Read somewhere that bad caps can sometimes look totally fine on the outside but have a tiny hairline crack on the bottom. Checked a monitor once that would flicker on and off, took me two days to notice a cap that was slightly lifted off the board on one side. Ended up replacing all the caps on that power board just to be sure, and it worked. Learned to always check the bottom of capacitors first now, saves a lot of headache.
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xenam844mo ago
@victorhernandez nailed it with the bottom check trick. I had a TV that would randomly shut off and all the caps looked perfect from the top, but when I pulled the board I found two with hairline cracks right on the bottom edge. Replaced just those two and the thing has been running fine for three years now. Definitely saves hours of guessing when you make that the first thing to check.
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abby_fisher4mo ago
Yeah that "look totally fine" bit really hit home... I used to just glance at the tops and if they weren't bulging I assumed they were good. Had a stereo receiver that was acting up for months, swapped out every obvious bad cap and nothing changed. Finally got frustrated and pulled the board and sure enough, two caps on the bottom had those tiny cracks you're talking about. Replaced them and it's been working perfect since. Definitely changed how I approach troubleshooting now.
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