by Wester547 » June 11th, 2013, 9:34 pm
I don't think there's anything actually wrong with the VR series, they're just rated at 85*C, so they're somewhat ill fitting for motherboards... any motherboard that runs hot will cook them in less than 4-5 years of use. The capacitors of the 1990s that had quarternary ammonium salt problems were no longer being produced as of 1999, so the VZ series with date codes in the early 2000s shouldn't have that problem. I don't think the VR series is bad.... I've seen plenty of (well cooled) Intel motherboards with them last much longer than motherboards with crap like KZG, or the Teapo/OST/G-Luxon/etc motherboard failures. But KZG is truly awful. I see as many KZGs fail on motherboards as I do CapXons in ATX SMPS units.... why they're still being used and how they even survived torture testings (KZGs) mystifies me. They ruin good motherboards the same way CapXons ruin good power supplies.
That said, the only place for 85*C capacitors is bypassing/decoupling/coupling (all those tasks only involve passing a signal which doesn't pass much ripple through capacitors at all), and in the voltage doubler, and maybe in audio applications, like a sound card, anything that doesn't need low ESR or anything that isn't too stressful, and anything that won't heat up the capacitor, like so. So I think temperature rating is definitely the reason (remember that 85*C capacitors only have 1/4th the life of 105*C capacitors, and the VR series is only rated for 2,000 hours at 85*C, which is equal, in lifespan, to 500 hours at 105*C), not the electrolyte, aluminimum foil, cans, etc. On that note, though, unfortunately, what Intel did do on a number of boards is put VRs right near the linear regulators for the AGP slots, and those DID get hot, and eventually those capacitors would be shot because of that. Nice going Intel...
The Seagate read/write errors don't bother me, but those would be a problem on any other brand of drives, with the exception of Hitachi, I believe. The longest running drive I have is a WD84AA. 32,000 power hours, 7,000 power cycles, no problems at all.... yep, I don't run my computers 24/7 and I'm a power cycle person (though not excessively).
Last edited by
Wester547 on June 12th, 2013, 2:06 am, edited 1 time in total.