I had a PC that was acting a bit flaky and sure enough, at least ten of the caps on the mobo are puffed up like fat-albert. (well the tops are dome-shaped where they should be flat, they don’t actually resemble a portly fictional cartoon character).
As many of you know, there was a famous case of ‘industrial espionage gone wrong’.
Back in 2001 or so, a scientist working for a company in Japan stole the formula to make capacitors and got it wrong, then sold the formula. Several Taiwanese manufacturers made tons of faulty caps as a result of using the faulty stolen formula.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
I am tempted to simply start testing and swapping the faulty caps, but being lazy I guess I will just spend the $$ for a new mobo.
Personally I’ve seen caps in TV power supplies that popped open like soda cans, or exploded like firecrackers. Fun and exciting stuff. Once I had a motor-start cap on a garage-door opener blow up as I was on the ladder oiling the thing, but I digress…….