^ If it was shorted, wouldn't it read 0uF?
I have generally found that heat does play a large part in whatever goes wrong inside a monitor. I would say that WLED backlit monitors have not really been around long enough to assess this comparatively but I haven't had any severe problems with LED-backlit monitors at all yet. I did have a problem with a Dell I remember particularly well that literally went 'pop' and started smoking. It was a 2407WFP-HC and it was apparently related to capacitors - this uses a very strong broad-gamut CCFL backlight and it is like a radiator when you turn the brightness up. There was a well documented case of Nichicon Capacitors suffering this fate in Dell Optiplex desktops -
http://en.community.dell.com/dell-b.../01/dell-on-the-nichicon-capacitor-issue.aspx. Now I don't know a lot about capacitors, only the complete end product. I hope that if Samsung are still using 'cheap' capacitors that they can operate normally for a long time if the screen is a low heat output LED-backlit screen with external AC/DC 'brick'.
Edit: I've spoken to the guy who dealt with the 'blown up' 2407. He has dealt with issues stemming from CapXon (and other) capacitors in the past and has found they are extremely widespread in LCD monitors. He has opened up monitors from Viewsonic, Acer, ASUS, Samsung, HP, BenQ, Hanns.G, Dell, LG and Philips and found CapXon capacitors. So it seems that Samsung are being used as a bit of a scapegoat here and it's a much wider issue than that! It's probably just that Samsung monitors (and TVs) are so popular that the issue tends to be reported more frequently with their name attached. He also said that he has yet to come across any such problems in LED-backlit monitors but it's still early days.
Hi, apologies for not replying sooner but I find it a pain to make long posts from a phone so I'm back on a PC now...
Anyway you are right when you say heat is the enemy here. The hotter the environment is, the earlier that the cap will fail. This probably why that Dell went pop!
Many capacitors have a temperature printed on the say, most of them say 85°C or 105°C. This temperate rating is how the lifetime is rated... so for example the capacitor has a lifetime rating of 2000hours, then this measured when the capacitor is at 85°C (if 85°C is printed on the side of the capacitor.
I usually try and use 105°C caps if I can, even in things that run cool, they may cost a little more, but it's worth it. If you open up almost any electrical products which runs from the mains then take a look at the capacitors if you can. If they say 85°C and some random lesser known band (CapXon, Jackcon, Teapo, etc) then it's safe to say they're cheap and nasty. If however the caps say 105° and are made by a more well known brand (Panasonic, Rubycon, Nichicon, etc) then they are good quality and will last a lot longer in my experience. I also try and avoid getting capacitors from e-bay if I can, lots of fakes out there, but if you know what to look for then it's not too hard to tell the fake from the real ones... I just order from Rapid or Farnell and know that I'm getting the real thing!
As for the LED screens, am I right in assuming they run cooler than CCFL screens usually? If so we may end up seeing less cap failures from LED screens even if poor quality caps are used simply because they run at a low temperature! Still I'll be keeping an eye out for some photo's of the innards of these newer screens in order to see who is using what, it's a shame many review sites so not show internal photo's but I guess most journalists couldn't care less what inside...
I agree about the negativity towards Samsung also, many other manufacturers are guilty of using these poor quality caps which result in early product failure so this isn't just something Samsung do. That doesn't really excuse them either and I'd certainly pay a little extra for a product with better components in, they could even offer 5 year warranties as a selling point if they did this I think...
EDIT:
Nice work diggsy cheers yes looks like it and i did order those but they are so much smaller than the one thats in there i thought it cant be that.Just going to wait on the further 4x 820uf's I ordered today and find out that last unknown in the middle.
Unsolder the unknown ones if you haven't already, the capacitance really should be printed on there somewhere, if not post a pic of them removed, it should say the somewhere unless it's been intentionally rubbed off!
