Duct tape fix for a blown capacitor saved my Saturday

I had this old Dell Optiplex in my shop that kept randomly shutting down... tried swapping the PSU and even the RAM, nothing worked. Then I noticed a tiny bulge on one capacitor near the CPU socket, so I figure why not, I pulled out my soldering iron. Found a replacement cap in a dead motherboard I had sitting in the junk pile, swapped it in about 10 minutes, and the thing fired right up. Has anyone else gotten lucky with component-level repairs like that, or do you just toss the board?

3 comments

3 Comments

willow_morgan1mo ago

Hell yeah, that's awesome! I found a cracked solder joint on an old monitor once, hit it with a soldering iron, and it worked for another two years.

tyler621d ago

Didn't I read somewhere that those old Dells have a known issue with certain capacitors near the CPU? It's almost like they planned for them to fail after a few years. Keeps us scrappy fixers in business, I guess.

stella_murray1mo ago

Hold on, is it really worth all that hassle for an old Optiplex though? I get the satisfaction of fixing something, but time is money and those things are dirt cheap used.