Prevalence
Faulty capacitors have been discovered in motherboards as old as Socket 7 (1996), but mainstream electronics journals began reporting on widespread defective capacitors around 2003. Problems with "bad caps" have affected equipment manufactured up to at least 2007 and beyond. Many well-known motherboard companies have unknowingly assembled and sold boards with faulty capacitors sourced from other manufacturers. Major vendors such as IBM, Intel, Dell, HP, Samsung, and Apple Inc. were affected. Circa 2005, Dell spent some US$150 million replacing motherboards outright and another US$150 million on the logistics of determining whether a system was in need of replacement. HP reportedly purged its product line in 2004. The motherboards and power supplies in the Apple iMac G5 and some eMacs were also affected.
While the capacitor plague has affected large numbers of desktop computers, the problem is by no means limited to that category. Bad capacitors can also be found in external power supply adaptors, network switches, audio equipment, flat panel displays, and a wide range of other devices. "Bad caps" can cause a simple failure to turn on, or a wide range of bizarre (often intermittent) behavior of afflicted electronic equipment.
Read more about this topic: Capacitor Plague
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