Bad caps are like the Plague. It happens to most electrolytic capacitors. Especially the cheap ones.
You can almost always see on that capacitor if it is bad. Look at the top. It should be flat and plane. If it is bulgy or you see some brown fluid it is on its way to the eternal capacitor fields.
If you know the design to be Chinese and are more than four years old you have a good hint right there. Chinese caps don’t last long.
Don’t mind the blue dots and the black lines. The previous owner had some artistic tendencies and made dots and lines on top of them. What you should be looking for is the bulgy top on the two first capacitors. They are done! The third was placed in the same Power Supply Unit and was exposed to the same temperatures so I took that out right away so I didn’t have to open the device in 5 months and remove it. It looks ok and it is probably going to last a little while, but for convenience, I replaced it anyway.
Here is a video on what bad caps can do for your monitor and how you can repair the damages. It is rather simple.
- Disconnect from the power source. I some times forget. “It’s electrifying” as John Travolta sang once!
- Locate the bad caps. They are bulgy on the top or they leak.
- Discharge the capacitor by shorting its legs.
- Read on the capacitor what type it is or if you have a schematic you can read the values there.
- Find new capacitors and buy quality caps!
- Replace them and make sure they are mounted correctly. They have a minus and a plus leg. If you mount it wrongly it might explode when you turn the power back on.
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