Dell Dimension 8300 Motherboard Capacitor Replacement 

There's that buzzer again!

Wow, I loved my 8300 It was my best PC ever and it has the same problem but no one will repair it for me here in my area..told me I was better off buying a new system..brought a new dell Inspirion and not even a year later the hard drive goes out!!! I kept my 8300 in hopes of finding out how what could be done. Just wish someone lived near me that did this type of work. Thanks for sharing this information, gave me a better understanding of the system.

Since you already had the timer set, you should've cooked the old capacitors in the oven!

you sir are VERY tech savvy, and blow me away with what you know. you will def be my first go to when i have computer problems i am unable to fix.

this conversation takes me back to when i used to subscribe to maximumpc

I have a very rare Pentium 4 processor too. It's a Northwood with HT at 2.8 Ghz with doubled L2 cache ! 1 MB of L2 Cache ! I know absolutely nobody knows this processor, and I triple checked it. It's not an early Socket 478 Prescott. This thing seem pretty rare because the only thing that I found on the internet talking about it was an old news about the fact that prescott was not on schedule so Intel released this unusual processor. The only official Northwood with 1MB cache was the P4-M.

I guess that's one good thing about the clamshell case, the pull out tray.

When I worked in a computer shop I saw this all too often on the Optiplex GX270 line. I got replacing caps down to a 10 minute job by the time I left there!

Don't know if someone else already commented. The soldering pen you're using might be the source of your soldering woe's on something like a motherboard. The motherboards like to suck the heat right off of the tip. And there's always the question of Leaded vs Lead-free, but I'm sure that you are familiar. Very good video, makes me happy to know other people are repairing things also instead of tossing them.

congrats on getting your connection back.... I can't solder worth a darn anymore either but I always got better results with a solder station (even a cheapie one) then just a stand alone iron.... I think some of it has to do with not having to worry about the darn thing rolling off the table, etc.....

I may have one of those power ribbon cables, I'll have to look.

That Video card BIOS at 8:59 is a similar BIOS to my NVidia GeForce 256's BIOS, only except that my AGP Video card has 32 MB of RAM, not 512.

The Vcore rail needs low ESR caps per Intel/AMD spec, and such caps are always 105C rated. 85C caps also wouldn't last very long. The endurance spec at max temp is usually very short, but improves exponentially at cooler temps. If you feel adventurous on a project like this, you can even swap Vcore caps to lower value, very low ESR solid polymers. If ESR is dropped, required capacitance also drops (I've seen this described in both Intel and AMD datasheets). I polymerized some old P3 boards.

Oh my god I have to do this to my dell optiplex gx280 thank god you made this so i can replace mine my fan just goes full blast

First electronic soldering job I did, all I had was the 65-watt iron I used on metal. I put a new battery into my old Zelda 1 NES cartridge. Boy, was I sweating over that thing, but I managed to get it done without melting the whole thing down! :D

@uxwbill Makes sense. The one thing though is that they don't really overheat and bulge up. It will NEVER get above 105 celsius in that case. If the fan is too poorly positioned, it would actually power off.

i would try using a de-soldering wick or suction tool to remove the solder then brushing a small about of liquid or gell solder in the joint it will suck up the solder

I doubt the caps failed because of the fan. Nichicon had a bad run of capacitors from 2003 through 2005, and many pieces of equipment from many brands were affected by it. The Nichicon cap failures seems to be unrelated to the "capacitor plague"

Nichicon HM and HN series did fail early, and it was especially common in dell computers. Nichicon is a high quality company, but HM and HN were their series that had a defect. Similar to NCC's KZE and KZJ series and Samxon's GF series.

When I worked for NCR for 9.5 years before I was hit they had the contract to fix all sears packard bell computers and Dell computers . I can not tell you how many motherboards I replaced with that same problem of the bad caps it was a somewhat common problem. I had a couple with the same fan problem aand caps were good never had one with caps bad and fan bad . I have a Dell 8300 motherboard in front of me with the same problem . I somehow kept it when they took my van back and packard bell sys

That is an excellent graphics card. I have one that I flashed in my Power Mac G5

Hey uxwbill, Love your videos. I took in about 20 of these dell 8300's two weeks ago that were all stripped for parts and i have a few case bits in my workshop (aka the shed) i'll be happy to have a look and see if i have any of one of those cables you needed knocking around if you like. I'm in the UK but if i have one i'll be happy to ship it to you.

@uxwbill Don't worry!! Not about to try this at home (at least not anytime soon)....I will most likely buy a another motherboard and keep the old one as a spare and have it repaired. There has to be some brillant minds and tech heads around here somehwere. Thanks again for your videos and your suggestions!!!

These motherboards are multilayer boards with heavy ground planes and power planes. You will be more successful desoldering and soldering these if you use a heat gun to gently preheat the area where you will be performing the repair.

@MrDelightfulPink if you are using the mainboard based integrated graphics then yes it can cause video issues

you like rigs of rods!!?? Nice one, great simulator!

Those ground / power planes sure suck up heat when soldering on them. You pretty much need for a powerful temperature-controlled soldering station for it to be reasonably painless (that heat gun trick isn't bad either, I guess). Doing a reasonably acceptable job with a run of the mill iron thus can be considered an accomplishment. Yeah, the Northwoods and the later-stepping Prescotts weren't /too/ bad. Pushing the P4 and abandoning the P3 early sure was one of Intel's worst moves though.

Yeah, I find most mass produced desktop computers have capacitor problems. The power supplies and RAM also go bad too.

I had a dimension 8400 with the Prescott 3.24 GHz

I actually thought my old 3GHz P4 was pretty good. Combine it with a good video card and it played crysis!

same here, but I wish my computers did!!!

I believe Nichicon made a bad batch of caps in 2006 but other than that they've been the most or second most trusted brand out there.

I've always wondered what the Pentium 4 would be like if it was manufactured on the 45nm or 32nm process. The Phenom II is clocked up to 3.6GHz at 45nm, while the Pentium 4 maxed out at 3.8GHz at 90nm. They'd run cooler, that's for sure. But I wonder what the clock speed would be like. People overclocked the 65nm Pentium 4's up to 8GHz. I'd love to see what could be done at 32nm.

The board has an Intel chipset, but is manufacturered by Foxconn for Dell.

totally agree about the Pentium 4 processor. I used to have (i still have i belive) a 2003 Pentium 4 2.4Ghz. Is seriously a blast furnace. getting easily at 75°C even with a couple of programs open, in winter! i never closed the case properly, never cool down, a friend of mine made even a mod that let the fans on for 5 minutes after the pc was turned off. Don't know if the stupid Intel motherboard is installed on caused trouble by itself.

I actually have a 3.4 Prescott in my Dimension 8400.

@uxwbill no the add on card u are talkin about

IIRC, you said in a previous video that your first 8300 had an x1300 Pro video card. That would be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 6200. The P4 really is a dog. One of the computers I used a couple of years ago (and still have somewhere in my basement) has a 1400MHz P3 processor, overclocked to 1575MHz. It totally outclasses a 1.8GHz Dimension 4400.

Your house is looking good and those copacitors go to the fan because those are failing on my optiplex gx280 and my fan goes jet speed for 10 seconds and finally boots or just goes fll blst and nothing happens

What type of soldering iron would you reccomend for doing this? Also what type of solder would be best for motherboard repair? Which methood do you use to de-solder the caps? Please respond.

I have a Dell Dimension 2400 and 8200 and the 8200 is slow lol it's old but it still works after 9 years.

So, is this gonna replace your 8300 you bought new?

i never had problem with that model dell with caps now the gx270's that i have tons of sitting around i have and by tons i mean like 60 to 120 that need caps and don't have time to replace sins i can buy a bunch for 100 bucks at auction

Actually, nichicon caps were affected. I had a Dell Dimension 2350 with nichicon caps by the cpu, and all of them failed.

Yeah i figured that and i also do not know if the new CPU that was 2.8Ghz supported the hyperthreading OR if it was the updated bios to A01 and if hyperthreading even makes any difference. i upgraded the computer i have with a A00 bios to 1GB of ram and it made it alittle quicker but not much. So im thinking five dollers more on ebay and i can have a 2.8Ghz CPU with hyperthreading if i can update this bios to A01.

not a big dell fan, had more dells die on me than any other brand computer, HP, toshiba, asus, and 2 dells are what my family has. all at least 3 years old, guess which ones we've had the most trouble with

@uxwbill and its a fully clean hdd

hello i really like this video.he really explains it to the fullest.i love how easy he made it for me to fix my dell!!!!!!!!!!!

T have the 3.4 ghz P4 in one of my dell optiplexes..

@uxwbill Yes, it was the exact same problem. System comes on and tries to boot but can't and the repair shop showed me the failed capacitors and say I needed to just buy a new system. But your video helped me to understand what was going and and how it can be fixed. Just not sure if I could do tor would want to do that myself. LOL

I had a dell dimension 4400 that had capacitor plague issues

Funny thing is Bill. Even in 2001 if ye remember the original Xbox, rather than using the newest Pentium 4 chips which I think by then were just about to come onto the market, it came out in 2002 and even though it's a console, it still used a derivative of the Coppermine Core 733MHz Pentium 3 or something like that. The Pentium 4 , even the lower clocked ones would prob have fried in the confined space of the Xbox cabinet. Even though I think it still used a fan, in fact yes it did have a CPU fan would've needed one. The Xbox 360 in 2005 switched from x86 to the RISC PowerPC Tri-core job, can't remember it's name off hand. But it just goes to show the Pentium 4 never really went many places. Shame really although Intel must've incorporated some of the instructions from it into the next Pentium M and Core series we have today. No doubt there was some useful extensions the P4 Netburst architecture had that are now needed by modern software, SSE3 I think is needed by alot of stuff now. So, in a way the P4's legacy is still with us even if the chips aren't really worth bothering with anymore cause of their heat output and power consumption LOL. I always kinda had a soft spot for em even though as ye say the P3 in alot of ways was much nippier and ran far cooler, I certainly felt that in older computers too.

Bill another great video! I like how you take it step by step and always include interesting facts ( at least I think so) keep it up buddy. - James

@uxwbill In their defense though, millions upon millions of electronics got these faulty capacitors based on a incorrect stolen formula. I used to work in a computer repair shop though, and we would see plenty of these P4 Dell computers with flaky RAM, blown caps, and dead Bestec power supplies.

What soldering iron and what desoldering thing should I use. What voltage should the iron be and what tools do you need. I have a wick and 30watt soldering iron. Can never get the right solder to add to the part. :(

Is it just me or does Intel tend look back to their previous generation from time to time? They have done it with the core series and the Pentium 3 as mentioned in this video. And they've done a similar thing with their socket sizes going from LGA 1155 to LGA 2011 but eventually going back almost to where they started with the LGA 1151. It's kind of interesting.

The worst part about the 8300 is that it has a socket 478 instead of a 775 like the 8400 did witch really makes your options for processors limited.

Saw your video about replacing the capacitors in the motherboard of the 8300, and have decided to give it a try. My 8300 has the same messed up capacitors as you replaced, mine are 820uf 6.3v, could you tell me which brand and model # you replaced your's with? Any help you can give will be great, because this is all very new to me....thanks Bob5326000

Why does dell love there green clips and green air ducts and green what ever else? i never really understood it.

I have a pentium 4 3.4 for socket 478.

Hi, last month i trashpicked a perfectly working dell dimension 4400. When i got it home, i realized it was filled up with dust and one of the capacitors (and it still is) bulging. Any suggestions? I did buy a replacement capacitor with the same microfrads and voltage.

Damned capacitors...I've got an IBM ThinkCentre that needs a complete recap. I bought a second board and the second board probably needs a recap too...

What solder did you use. Was it lead free. I cant seem to desolder it to remove capacitors.

My Dell Optiplex GX620 USFF has a Pentium 4 3.4 GHz CPU. :)

I tried taking out those capacitor and the solder wouldn't come off

how do you remove the four plastic things below the processor, on the motherboard tray?

This video was recorded on my birthday!

I have a ribbon Cable

on the dell i dont no if u no this but under the nb heat sink it looks like an old amd xp chip its only got a small core,but i dont no if u ment that any way i have or had the front panel plug and wire.

Why buy an old 8300 when it is old enough to rely mostly on IDE? Also, it was made about the same time as the GX270's, which is basically the OptiPlex equivalent of the Dimmension 8300 and notorious for the capacitor plague, which IS what this one has. Those are NOT quality capacitors they are knock-off Nichicon. The refurbished boards have real Rubicon capacitors and they are reliable.... I replaced at least 80 if not 100+ GX270 motherboards!

6:25 removing motherboard from tray is not in the movie

AND for some reason or another there dell dimension desktops at least the more low end ones have the really shitty 2.5Ghz CPU and no hyperthreading and whatever else. I beefened up one with a 2.8Ghz CPU and 1GB of ram and it lit a fire under its ass, but i dont know if it had to do with the new motherboard being upgraded to a new BIOS or what.

so i actually got a system similar to this one (a dimension 4500) and it had... get this NO THERMAL COMPOUND ON THE CPU!!!! i had been using it with no thermal compound for months now im deciding, leave it that way, or add thermal paste

Why did the video jump at 06:05 to a new clip?

And by the way do you know what the highest bios these dell computers can support by any chance?

Greetings, I have a Dell like yours, I would like to know where could I buy the capacitors to replace the.

What brand of Capacitors should you use, what are some kits that are worth buying, I see the cheap ones of course?

so what i am hearing is the core microarchitecture is based off the p6 microarchitecture?

what kind of ddr memory dus this board support? or even better what are the specs of this motherboard?

Where did you bought the capacitors?

man my harddrive failed on the optiplex gx270 so i got the 4100 but i cant install the os on the hdd any tips?

Thanks for the help uxwbill. PS.. I saw a few of your videos and thought they were all very informative and well done. I'm a mechanic by trade, and do a fair amount of electrical work on cars, but that only means that I know which end of the soldering iron Not to stick in my mouth, printed circuit boards are a whole new ball of wax, and yes, I'll get some practice time in, again, thanks for your help. Bob5326000

what is the model number on that p4 please and thanks

at least you ddn't go to a pentium 4 williamette @ 1.8ghz, those things really can'trun ror!

Can I upgrade my Video card for my Dell Dimension 8300? plz reply thxs =)

@uxwbill *digs into his reciepts* well im going to buy a new one from tiger direct and what kind of card for the pci slot???

Hey Bill, how do you remove the board from the metal tray? I can't find any posts from online forums about it, the service document (understandably as I'm sure Dell would have wanted the whole board replaced) makes no mention of it, and I just can not get these pushpins holding the bracket out! What's the trick?

@uxwbill bill i cant even get the setup screen for the xp disk so im thinkin i just need a new hdd

I have a question, my dimension 2350 has a swollen capacitor that just has a slight leak. It is like a tip of a pen size leak. Should I stop using it and replace the board? Would it be bad if I kept using it?

i very much enjoy pentium 4 processors, they do everything i need them to, you know except play netflix, they even play youtube if i use a standalone player, my p4 actually plays youtube in browser at around the level my core2duo latitude d630 did, but my macbook does it much better

"Let's turn that buzzer off... STOP IT! Ah..." That made me laugh SO hard, lol I Love your videos man! Keep up the good work!

Nice Kitty Calendar

out of curiousity why do u call that one guy bizarre fur head

Go out a get yourself an Apple.. You will be happy with it.. Win98 what? You did not upgrade

I have a ribbon cable u need....u want it? If u do shoot me a comment

Go out a get yourself an Apple.. You will be happy with it..

@uxwbill uh im installin a 320 gig and im using xp pro dammit i can only have 137 fuck

@uxwbill lol