Cheap DIY tricks to revive an old motherboard
You'll be surprised at how many people throw away motherboards because they've stopped working or because their computers were crashing and they couldn't figure out why, so the only solution was to trash the old mobo and replace it.
If you're experiencing random crashes, extremely slow performance, or simply want to revive an old or dead mobo to see if you can get any life out of it, try fixing it yourself, and save some money doing so!
Some basic soldering and electronic experience needed!
1. Firstly, you will need your culprit, the motherboard. That is, once you're sure that all other components in your computer is fine. Disconnect it completely from your computer, and set it aside.
2. Notice the cylindrical components on the board? Those are capacitors! They can be of many colors and sizes, sometimes, purple, black, red, and more, however, this tutorial focuses on the cylindrical shaped ones alone. They simply store and release energy really quickly.
Now what can happen, is that some of these can look swollen on the top or even burst. This is most often caused by overheating of the computer, or power surges or simply old age. As we can see in the picture above, all of the capacitors are flat. (The silver spots). In the following picture, here is an example of a bad capacitor.
Photo from: http://www.123rf.com/search.php?word=capacitor+bad&imgtype=0&t_word=&t_lang=en&oriSearch=capacitor+swollen&sti=nhsoore08qpjc4xjgn|&mediapopup=17445427
Although in the pic it shows how the capacitor exploded, sometimes they aren't always that noticeable, sometimes the top is just swollen a bit and not flat. This means that the capacitor is no longer good and cannot serve its purpose in your motherboard anymore.
This would cause your computer to crash sometimes or just run slowly, it may even cause it to completely not boot anymore. Replacing these caps are very inexpensive, as some of them are a few cents each to purchase! That's right, and with a soldering iron and a little experience watching YouTube videos, you can be a pro at soldering!
3. You simply have to look on the side of the capacitors and get the 'rating', which is usually a voltage rate followed by a capacitance rating, for example, 250V 600uf. (uf = micro farads). Go to your local electronics store, tell them the rating you need and buy all the capacitors you want.
4. Be careful and de-solder all the capacitors, paying attention to the negative sign on the capacitor as they can only be installed one way! Re-solder your new capacitors and then power on your computer and hope for the best!
I have tried this multiple times on my own computers and for multiple others with success, and they are all grateful for the cheap fix to their old/broken motherboards. However, there may be times where there are further problems with the motherboards that aren't so easily fixable, which then, you may happily throw away your motherboard!
So next time, before spending the extra money for a new motherboard, inspect it and fix it yourself!
I do not claim responsibility if you harm yourself or others attempting this fix, so be careful!
