From: E on

>>
>> Thanks again for your work on this. I'll have to do some more though. I
>> have a feeling though that Dell no longer has a replacement MB in stock.
>>
>>
>
> If Dell does not sell replacement XPS 600 boards any more, or even if
> they do, the price tag will likely be north of $US 300. Third-party
> parts houses extort large sums for exact replacement parts, and only
> well-heeled companies like Goldman Sachs or the US Govt (spending our
> tax dollars, are willing to pay the price... Ben Myers

I think I did see a $300 price tag somewhere for a replacement board.
Maybe in an older message board thread on the subject. That's why I
consider this option low on the list of possible solutions.
From: E on

> The XPS 600 power supply is very much a custom design, and it cannot be
> re-used in any system except another Dell XPS or similar Dell chassis.
>
> The OP needs to buy a new power supply, too, if he intends to build up a
> new system around the parts taken from the XPS 600... Ben Myers

Yes. I'm thinking of a bare bones system with now drives, video
hardware, or memory. I need to look at benchmarks between the Pentium D
930 and newer low or middle of the line CPUs.
From: E on
Paul wrote:
> E wrote:
>
>
>> >> http://www.millenniacomputers.com/images/DELL_XPS600_5.jpg
>>
>> I searched eBay last night but didn't get any results. Here is a
>> picture of the part of my user's motherboard showing blown caps and
>> what I guess is the inductor the other web poster had talked about.
>> The inductor looks completely fried to me with plenty of discoloration.
>>
>> http://members.localnet.com/~eddie180/Pics/100_2770e.jpg
>>
>> I hope the Dell PSU didn't cause this. Web board posters mentioned
>> Dell's solution as changing out both PSU and MB. This is either just a
>> hedge against the PSU being faulty or the PSU has a known issue.
>>
>
> I see at least four failed caps in your picture. The other
> burned component, is likely a side effect of the cap failure.
>
> The slight rusty discoloration on the caps in the first link,
> appears to line up with the two large caps in your picture.

Yep.

>
> I've lost a power supply here, due to bad caps, and billions
> of bad caps were shipped. Some companies got hit pretty hard.
> The motherboard company, Abit, had enough issues, that a
> class action was brought against them, because of it.

I built my first system in 2002. A socket 478 P4 1.6 Ghz with a Tyan
Trinity 510 motherboard. It has the rogue Via chipset. At the time I
didn't know much about chipsets, reference boards and what not. It is my
main computer 'till this day. It may be old and slow, but I checked caps
with a flash light last night after I read this message about failed
caps, and they all look good factory fresh. PC's in that era can still
be used for a lot of things. I stopped keeping up with hardware around
2005. Occasionally a friend or family member will ask me to fix a PC and
I'll have to study up on what's changed.

The caps thing is interesting. How easy is it to replace caps and the
little 'inductor' or whatever it is next to the caps? I wonder how much
hardware could be put back to work if we could just change the bad caps.

>
> More fun here:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
>
> Let's hope that era is gone now. There are apparently
> still cheesy caps to be had - companies still make
> disreputable products like that. But the smart motherboard
> makers, know how to dodge stuff like that now. They're at
> least aware of the need to do quality control, to reduce
> their liabilities. They'll use polymer caps in the Vcore
> circuit, and if they do use regular electrolytics for
> other filter functions, they won't buy them from the
> worst of the offenders. They've already been "named and
> shamed". Counterfeiting is still possible, but that's been
> a problem in the electronics industry for years. For
> example, some cap companies, make regular electrolytics
> in a can that looks like a polymer. Which is dangerous, if
> the pressure relief seams are not present on top. Electrolytic
> caps have seams in the top, so a dangerous explosion won't
> occur due to overpressure. They'll bulge, break, and ooze instead,
> if there is a chemistry problem. It is still possible to
> explode electrolytics - it is part of pranks engineers play
> on one another in lab courses. I'm just glad I wasn't
> sitting next to the one that went off in my class :-)
> What a mess.
>

I've read stories about caps blowing in monitors with a loud pop.


When this Dell board failed,
the owner said she heard a loud noise coming out of the case. I figured
it was a cooling fan with a bad baring. Others had reported to same
sounds in there description of what happened before it failed. Perhaps
the bad caps caused a fan somewhere to spin up, I don't know.

Eddie