Solid capacitors

[time]

I notice that Gigabyte is flogging "solid capacitor" i945/i965 boards, but no AMD equivalents. Anyone know what this is all about, and more importantly, if the products are any good?

 

[Bozo]

Could have something to do with this:
http://news.com.com/PCs+plagued+by+bad+capacitors/2100-1041_3-5942647.html

Bozo :joker:

 

[Handruin]

I got a hand-me-down compaq from my aunt and it won't even post. A quick look at the motherboard and it's toast...the tops of many of the capacitors are black and bulged...cheap bastards.

 

[time]

I know all about leaky capacitors. My question was rather if anyone knew how successful solid capacitors are at eliminating the problem?

Gigabyte claims that at 65C, "solid" capacitors last six times longer than (conventional) electrolytic capacitors.

I read this as Gigabytye saying they just can't buy electrolytic capacitors that won't fail prematurely. That should ring alarm bells for anyone buying or selling motherboards. It pushes me towards using Intel CPUs because that's the extent of Gigabyte's support.

 

[LiamC]

The following posts my be of interest:

By Stele (about half way down)
http://www.anandtech.com/talkarticle.aspx?frmResourceID=2770&frmWhere=2

and

Per Hansson, though you may want to go up that thread to the start by Operandi and read some of the other comments
http://www.anandtech.com/talkarticle.aspx?frmResourceID=2783&frmWhere=2

From reading this and others:
The type of capacitor is only part of the problem
There are good capacitors other than "solid" (a misnomer) ones.
Intel boards are suffering bad capacitor problems

Have you seen this site?

http://www.badcaps.net/forum/index.php?

 

[time]

Thanks, Bill. They mostly seem to affirm what Gigabyte is claiming, i.e. solid capacitors are the way to go. Except for your first link, where Stele appears to be talking through his ass/arse: Solids are not necessarily better than 'wet' electros at high temperatures - the improvement comes as temperatures fall, but is good enough at 65C to be considered a major advantage.

To be more precise, life expectancy of conventional electrolytics doubles for every 10C drop in temperature, but it more or less trebles with 'solid' capacitors.

I'm also curious how he figures the solid polymer can still leak - from what I can glean, there are no visible indications when a capacitor has failed ...