Question Capacitor broken. Will the board be unsafe?

[Mizzou739]

I seem to have knocked off the capacitor near the pcie slot.
My question is, should I be replacing the mobo, getting it fixed, or just use it anyway and keep an eye out for errors?

I'm just unsure of the risks

 

[McKeu]

Any physical damage on a motherboard should be reason for concern and having it fixed / replaced. You can damage the other components running it as is.

 

[drea.drechsler]

I seem to have knocked off the capacitor near the pcie slot.
My question is, should I be replacing the mobo, getting it fixed, or just use it anyway and keep an eye out for errors?

I'm just unsure of the risks

Picture to see the damaged component?

It could be a redundant part meaning if it's missing it might work well enough...but even then the damaged part could pose a hazard as it could short out a voltage and damage something else. You may have to remove it completely to be safe.

Or it could be needed but a circuit may not work well: maybe the on-board Audio will have distorted output or LAN may not function well. You could solve those problems by disabling the on-board circuit and getting an add-in card to do the job instead.

A picture will help someone know what to suggest.

 

[Mizzou739]

https://ibb.co/HhDVXfr

Ah, there we go. Picture!
It's on the left hand side of the pic

 

[McKeu]

It's an aluminum electrolytic capacitor, but I cannot figure out exactly what it is used for on the mobo.

EDIT: Looking at the plan for your mobo it might be audio, but could also easily be close to the GbE Lan.

 

[drea.drechsler]

https://ibb.co/HhDVXfr

Ah, there we go. Picture!
It's on the left hand side of the pic

OK...here's the problem...

That capacitor is 'safely' off the board, meaning it look like none of the residual leads are in position to short out to another component. But also looks pretty important. See that fat square device right next to it? That's a Nikos FET, used to develop the supply voltage probably for the Audio chip (right close there) and possibly also for the LAN chip (not to far away). That cap appears to have been used for filtering the output voltage to remove extreme ripple, i.e. high voltage excursions.

So those circuits may be getting really crappy voltage inputs, now, since the filter cap is missing. They may or may not work...they may work for a while (sort of) and then crap out later on as the extreme voltage excursions that filter cap took care of take its toll on them.

You're choice is to fix it (not too hard to solder in a replacement) or take your chances for a while but be ready to either buy one or more add-in cards to replace LAN and Audio or a whole new motherboard.

 

[Mizzou739]

I do have an audio card already, but I do worry for the lan.
Thank you all for the quick replies, I think it'll play it safe and solder in a new one

 

[AllanGH]

You may want to "fold-over" the leads on the new capacitor, so that it's laying on its side, when you install it. The positioning and height of the lost capacitor suggests that it was damaged when the GPU was inserted.

I really wish that MB manufacturers would clear the way for I/O card seating, in regards to component and header placement, on the ends of the PCIe sockets; because this looks like a layout error on the part of GigaByte.