At the outset, I must say that some of what I report here is heresay. The technical parts are what I have added, and I've got a 40 year technical background, including three patents, that I hope will satisfy you that I'm qualified to talk about this. It's the chronological events that I can't guarantee. Much of the info here has been corroborated by more than one manufacturer or other source. I wouldn't be including anything if it didn't make sense and fit together with everything else I've picked up together with what I do know to be fact. If you know something more, or have a correction you're certain of, I would appreciate hearing from you.

The first signs of a problem surfaced in our shop almost three years ago. Motherboards that were well within their one year warrranty were being returned at an alarming rate, all for the same reason: frequent reboots, lock-ups, accompanied by the physical symptoms of swollen, leaking electrolytic capacitors. In one instance an electrolytic capacitor actually exploded and filled the area around the motherboard with tiny shreds of plastic. Multiple manufacturers were seeing/hearing the same scenario. I was told that Abit, at one point, had a 40% return rate and it just about killed them. I also heard that Acer had a significant return rate due to this problem. I'm sure there were many, many manufacturers that were victimized in the same way.

Technical background:

Motherboards use a lot of electrolytic capacitors to filter out noise on the power-supply lines, i.e. the +12, -12, +5, -5, +5VSB, and +3.3V lines. Motherboards also have on-board switching regulators to provide the additional lower voltages used by CPUs. The on-board regulators need the highest quality capacitors because the current variation for their voltages is very high and the CPUs require the tightest regulation.

So, these electrolytic capacitors, so important to reliable operation, are used all over the motherboard. These are the things that look like tiny aluminum beer cans, in various sizes, standing up. The biggest, most critical ones are clustered near the CPU.

Aluninum electrolytic capacitors are made with two layers of metal physically separated by a dielectric layer of material that is bathed in a liquid electrolyte. The surface area of the two metal layers is so great that the thickness of the metal the separator are microscopically thin. The electrical properties of the electrolyte facilitate the small size while still getting useful capacity values. None of the materials are particulary exotic, rare or expensive. The metal is aluminum. It's the manufacturing process that is most amazing by being able to make these tiny things so precicely and at such low cost.

The Scam:
The story I heard was that two guys in Taiwan, who were working for a chemical company that made the electrolyte for sale to capacitor manufacturers, decided to start their own company. The took the recipe from their former employer and set up shop. They sold at lower prices and were able to capture business from multiple capacitor manufacturers, three that I was specifically told about, by name, by a motherboard manufacturer. The three brands of capacitors were being bought and used by many, many motherboard manufacturers. And not just on motherboards, also in lots of other consumer electronics products. But motherboards are somewhat unique in the demands that they place on capacitors, and this story is about motherboards.

After about six months of use, the capacitors start failing, as I described before. They work fine initially. There's no clue to the impending failure mode that any testing engineer can detect. It takes months for the mode to develop, and with the computer industry racing new generations of technology to market for a lifespan of three months, no-one is willing to test their product for six months to watch for new failure modes. NASA can wait this long. The military can wait. Communication Satellite manufacturers can. Not Consumer electronics!

With motherboards dropping like flies, the engineers now start researching the failure mode. It turns out that the guys who stole the electrolyte recipe DIDN'T GET THE WHOLE RECIPE. One or two things were left out that acted like a preservative in food acts. So the electrolyte, with the "preservative" missing, starts going bad after just a few months instead of years. With the electrolyte going bad, those capacitors that have to work the hardest develop excessive internal resistance and internal heating. The heat causes the electrolyte to swell, and leak out, and go bad even faster. So the process accelerates over time until, in worst-case scenarios, the capacitor literally explodes. Usually, though, the capacitor harmlessly vents the pressure, as it is designed to do. But also typically the electrical characteristics of the capacitor, its filtering ability, deteriorates first and allows noise to grow on the supply lines until the motherboard locks-up and reboots and prompts the owner to replace the motherboard at the time that the capacitor swelling is just beginning.

By the time the problems began manifesting themselves, these motherboards were all over the world. The motherboard manufacturers start seeing very heavy RMA returns. The solution, replacement of the defective capacitors with good ones, is labor intensive. The manufacturers usually give a one-year warranty with the motherboards, but as you know most distributors won't help after the first 30 days. So the customer, or VAR must send the board direct to the manufacturer and wait weeks or months for a repaired or replaced board.

For a VAR who sold dozens or hundreds of these boards to a client this is a disaster. The labor and logistics of removing and replacing each board is horrendous. No client wants to be told he has to stop using his computer for six weeks while the motherboard gets repaired free under warranty. The client is mad and doesn't trust the VAR anymore. So the VAR loses the client(s.) The VAR is mad at the distributor and motherboard manufacturer and vows never to buy that brand ever again. The motherboard manufacturers are staggering under the financial drain of replacing millions of defective capacitors at the same time new sales revenue is plummeting. It was at this stage that I heard Abit almost went bankrupt.

Manufacturers typically fullfilled their one-year warranty obligation and that was it. Distributors usually wouldn't lift a finger to help. The VAR had to tough it out with the manufacturer and their clients. Some VARs had to buy new replacement motherboards, and because Pentium-3's were long gone they also had to buy new CPUs and RAM for their clients.

Dash's experience was much better than typical. One of our motherboard manufacturers, Jetway, got bit by the bad electrolyte on two Pentium-3 motherboards. We sold a lot of them. Jetway's warranty is two years. We started getting boards back from our VARs at about six months and the volume was such that we asked for and got a stock of boards for advance replacement. At two years we were still getting returns with bad capacitors. We asked Jetway if they would continue replacing capacitors beyond the warranty period AND THEY AGREED! The manager of the US branch is very service-oriented and it is he who deserves the credit for this great treatment, unheard of in this industry. At almost three years, we are still advance-replacing a trickle of motherboards for our VARs.

There's cruel irony in this. Jetway treated us and our VARS far better than any other motherboard manufacturer I've ever heard of. Yet most of our VARs now refuse to consider buying a new Jetway motherboard, despite the reality that Jetway was the best company to have in a situation like this.

And Jetway was scammed. Jetway tries to use better-rated capacitors than most motherboard manufacturers. Jetway was using capacitors rated to 105degC when most manufacturers, including Intel, use 85degC capacitors. The higher rated caps normally have less internal heating and therefore last longer. Jetway was paying a little more for higher rated caps that should have made their motherboard last longer than average. They were trying to make a better product. They were victimized, as we all were.

One question I keep wondering is: Did Dell get scammed too? I can't think of a better company to have this happen to, but I haven't heard any reports involving Dell.

Now, finally we heard that Dell, too, had this problem in a big way. CRN ran a story in November 2005 saying that Dell took a $300,000,000 charge to their bottom line related to this capacitor problem. Apparently they kept it quiet for over two years but it finally outgrew their public-relations resources.

There's some useful, practical knowledge that you should take from all this: When you buy electrolytic capacitors you're buying time. You get what you pay for. The more expensive higher rated caps last longer. And for a motherboard, the caps usually limit its lifespan. In the early days of the Pentium the power levels were so low that the caps loafed and tended to last almost forever. Last week a VAR told me his client was finally forced to replace the P-III computers he got from us 6 years ago. The computers were working perfectly, like new, but a new version of his client's application software required faster computers. We hear this kind of story multiple times per month. The reason our motherboards lasted so long was that the capacitors were good quality and they weren't working very hard.

Pentium-IV changed all that. They are power hogs that work the electrolytic capacitors very hard. Since, as I said before, when you buy electrolytic capacitors you're buying time, you should turn your computer off as much as possible to avoid using up the limited number of hours you paid for. If you're buying servers, that run 24/7, you should look for only the best quality capacitors on the motherboards and in the power-supplies. Do you know the MTBF of your power-supply? We know ours. Our server supplies are always rated over 90,000hrs MTBF. And the limiting factor in them is the fans, not the capacitors!

The cheapest motherboards will use the cheapest capacitors. As this story should have illustrated, there's more to choosing a motherboard, and motherboard supplier, than getting the cheapest price.

Our preferred manufacturer, Jetway, is now offering its motherboards with a special type of capacitor that uses solid electrolyte instead of liquid. These parts are a little more expensive, but they last longer than the best liquid-electrolyte types because there is nothing to dry out. These capacitors are sold under the trade-names of OC-CON and OS-CON, depending on the capacitor manufacturer. As far as I know, only Jetway offers boards with this technology, and they've switched most of their product over.