The capacitor plague thing keeps coming up at my bench, are old caps really that simple?

I see guys on here blaming every dead power supply on bad caps from the 2000s, but my own bench says half the time it's a blown FET or a cracked solder joint hiding underneath. Am I being too generous to the old capacitors, or are we just skipping the deeper diagnostics?

2 comments

2 Comments

daniel5931mo ago

Spent hours chasing a dead rail once, turned out to be a cold joint on a resistor leg.

perez.willow1mo ago

Man that sounds frustrating... cold joints are the worst, always hiding in plain sight. @daniel593 I started hitting suspect joints with a plastic stick while the board's running like a chopstick or something, vibrations make the bad ones show themselves. Saves a ton of time versus staring at schematics for an hour.