The bulged capacitor
I inspected my main retro pc’s capacitors and found out that one of them was already bulged and leaking. The capacitor was between two PCI slots, one of which has my Sound Blaster in it. The PC worked fine and didn’t suffer from crashes or freezes, but I decided to replace the capacitor just in case (the worst thing that could happen is the PC breaking down while playing a Quake 3 match!).
The capacitor was a 1500 μF 6.3 V. An exact replacement wasn’t available, so I ended up buying a 1500 μF 16 V capacitor. It is a bit taller than the original one, but it fits perfectly between the two PCI slots.
So I opened up my Enlight case and removed the motherboard from the case. The case is unique in a way that it allows me to remove the motherboard and expansion cards in one piece.
Motherboard and cards removed from the case
Removing the capacitor was easy, but getting the new one in turned out to be a bit tricky. The holes for the capacitor were too tight so I had to use some force to push the new capacitor’s legs through the motherboard. I could get them about a millimeter through and then I soldered the legs tightly.
The PC worked as usual and didn’t crash. I can only hope that this was the only broken capacitor on the mobo.
The new capacitor
