Our 'family' PC (Dell Dimension 8300) at home has beeen slowly getting more and more unreliable over the last month. Frequent random shutoffs with 'thermal event' being sighted as the problem. There's no thermal problem - it's free of dust, nothing's been moved internally since it was bought. Then the onboard NIC started to drop the connection every 5 mins.
All very odd. After a bit of googling, it appears dell (and other manufacturers) used a capacitor supplier that was making very substandard caps between April 2003 and February 2004. This PC was shipped in September 2003. These capacitors were likely to break sooner than expected, probably 3 years rather than 7.
Guess what. The board's three years old and, as per the articles i've read, the caps next to the CPU have bulged and some have leaked electrolyte. So it's new motherboard time. Dell Non-Warranty parts, being the rip off they are, want £155+VAT. Which is extortion for a fairly average 3 year old i875 motherboard.
I can't see it's worth throwing the best part of £200 at a 3 year old machine, can you? Spend approximately 3x that, and we could have a brand new machine capable of running Vista perfectly when it's out next year.
The other option is get a standard motherboard from another manufacturer... but then because of Dell's infinite wisdome in case design, I'd need a new case, PSU and heatsink - which would probably be no cheaper.
So - hands up for new PC, hands up for scavenge parts for me to use in another project another day and get a new one.
All very odd. After a bit of googling, it appears dell (and other manufacturers) used a capacitor supplier that was making very substandard caps between April 2003 and February 2004. This PC was shipped in September 2003. These capacitors were likely to break sooner than expected, probably 3 years rather than 7.
Guess what. The board's three years old and, as per the articles i've read, the caps next to the CPU have bulged and some have leaked electrolyte. So it's new motherboard time. Dell Non-Warranty parts, being the rip off they are, want £155+VAT. Which is extortion for a fairly average 3 year old i875 motherboard.
I can't see it's worth throwing the best part of £200 at a 3 year old machine, can you? Spend approximately 3x that, and we could have a brand new machine capable of running Vista perfectly when it's out next year.
The other option is get a standard motherboard from another manufacturer... but then because of Dell's infinite wisdome in case design, I'd need a new case, PSU and heatsink - which would probably be no cheaper.
So - hands up for new PC, hands up for scavenge parts for me to use in another project another day and get a new one.
