PCA Forums

Cleaned my good ol' Celeron out today. Noticed there are two or three rusty caps below the heatsink! =o

Works fine though, and god knows how long those caps were rusty. Mobo is around three years old.

Also, when I took the heatsink out, noticed the processor has a little bit of a blackish tint on it, especially where the sticker is (which is almost completely black now xD).

Anything to be worried about, or is this normal with an aging computer?

I have pictures if anyone really needed to see.

No such thing as "resty" caps. They probably leaked. Your mobo's days are numbered.

Here's what leaky caps look like: http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=195

Well. They aren't bulged. And they don't look like the "leaky" caps in that page you linked. There's a reddish, rough substance on top of the caps that look exactly like rust.

As for the black tint on the processor, a friend said that's sometimes normal, depending on the environment.

Reddish or brown stuff that looks like stucco is usually leaked capacitors. There's no reason for there to be any on the caps on a mobo. In a PSU there's sometimes white epoxy poured on the caps to keep them from moving around.

If the mobo is working then don't sweat it too much, but if those caps did leak then sooner or later you will start having problems. Usually random crashes or a failure to boot.

By the way, couldn't I just replace the caps? I'm pretty handy with a soldering iron.

You could, but it's harder than it looks without a professional de-soldering station. There are traces on both sides and it's very hard to remove a cap without heating the traces so much you damage them.