I have an older PII 400 with an 993AN (I think its Jetway) motherboard. A quick look shows a couple of capacitors near the slot 1 cpu as slightly bulging near the top and turning brown. Does this mean the motherboard will soon go or can the computer keep on going with the capacitors like this? Asus K8V-X Athlon 64 2800+ ATI AIW 9800 Pro 512 PC3200 WD 80 GIG LG DVD-RW XP Home Full time employee of Dharma. One of the "others".

The former - plus it can be classified as a potential fire hazard (something that your insurer won't pay if it somehow burns down your house). i_XpUser

Make sure they don't just have brown dust on them - the telltale sign is brownish or yellowish fluid, or dried fluid deposits. Chances are very high your mboard will die because of the faulty capacitors, sooner or later. There were many mboards made between about 2000 and 2003 that unknowingly used electrolytic capacitors that turned out to be faulty because the electrolytic fluid inside them did not have the proper composition. They are time bombs - they work fine for a long while then they begin to bulge and leak and/or they blow up. If you have one, you probably have many. If you're handy with a soldering iron, you can replace the individual capacitors as the defective ones show symptoms if you can still identify what they are by their markings (often impossible for one that has blown up), or there are places on the interet you can get sets of all the electrolytic capacitors for some mboards, but most people don't bother with either and just get another mboard. If a capacitor blows up it may instantly ruin the mboard. Some mboard makers are more likely to have used the defective capacitors than others. E.g. MSI (MicroStar)

Thanks for the info, I'll scrap it. Its not worth taking the chances for an old PII. Asus K8V-X Athlon 64 2800+ ATI AIW 9800 Pro 512 PC3200 WD 80 GIG LG DVD-RW XP Home Full time employee of Dharma. One of the "others".

Another mboard maker that tends to have them - Abit Economical capacitor kits, can make custom kits for other mboards: http://www.badcaps.net If you want to re-use your components, I haven't seen any Intel made mboards that have the problem - oem in brand name systems or retail - they likely have a Phoenix bios version; and I haven't heard of Asus mboards having the problem.

Funny, I haven't run into an Abit with crappy caps yet, but that's not to say they don't exist! Boards I HAVE seen that had short-lived caps: Epox, Biostar, Gigabyte, Asus. I think most major board makers got taken by a bad formula a few years back. :) "If it ain't broke, upgrade anyway."

"Funny, I haven't run into an Abit with crappy caps yet, ..." See http://www.badcaps.net