blown capacitors

What role do these capacitors serve that would allow them to blow up and the motherboard still function?



Closer look at the top two:

Those caps appear to be used to smooth signals and/or power. Apparently they didn't matter enough to knock things out of tolerance

On a revision 1.1 and up of a mainboard you can often see silkscreened spots where a capacitor was supposed to go, those are then not installed because they weren't necessary and cut to save costs.

Elledan said:

Those caps appear to be used to smooth signals and/or power. Apparently they didn't matter enough to knock things out of tolerance

On a revision 1.1 and up of a mainboard you can often see silkscreened spots where a capacitor was supposed to go, those are then not installed because they weren't necessary and cut to save costs.

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But to have every single one of them blown and still have a functional motherboard?

ryan_975 said:

But to have every single one of them blown and still have a functional motherboard?

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I have seen it before. As you can see most capacitors on the board are still intact, especially those part of the power circuitry (next to the coils and three-pin voltage regulators). Most of the other capacitors just deal with interference and such, helping to keep things within tolerance.

Many mainboards I have seen with blown caps would still work, but would be unstable.

Elledan said:

I have seen it before. As you can see most capacitors on the board are still intact, especially those part of the power circuitry (next to the coils and three-pin voltage regulators). Most of the other capacitors just deal with interference and such, helping to keep things within tolerance.

Many mainboards I have seen with blown caps would still work, but would be unstable.

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The only thing wrong with this board (functionaly) is that the onboard ethernet fried. It was used daily by the previous owner for homwork, playing WoW, and general male college student activities.

It's no big deal though, I'm just going to replace the board and toss it. I can't sell a computer when I can't trust how long the damn thing might last. Was just curious about how the damn thing could take such a hit and still keep ticking.

usually any circuit that is grounded has a cap on the ground leg. these could be blown and the board still be ok. but from placement it looks like they have to do with dimm slot power reg and cpu power.