Capacitors on top of CPU are short

[shahbaz200]

Actually I have a laptop in home which went dead. It usually overheated, Tried changing paste, applying thermal pad with no help. Finally I realized heat sink might be bent. I made a roll of electrical tape, put it on top of heat sink pipe and closed its body which made tape press against heat sink and it made good contact and CPU stopped overheating. Was working fine and after maybe a month or 2 it died. Tried removing HDD, RAM, everything it doesn't powers on, charger light works only. Disassembled almost fully, made connections again still dead.

I checked capacitors on top of CPU with multimeter, and all of them are short circuited, is it supposed to be like this or CPU is really dead? Even one capacitor to another shows a short circuit.

BTW laptop is Toshiba Portege A600, CPU is Intel Core 2 Duo SU9300.

 

[artk2219]

Actually I have a laptop in home which went dead. It usually overheated, Tried changing paste, applying thermal pad with no help. Finally I realized heat sink might be bent. I made a roll of electrical tape, put it on top of heat sink pipe and closed its body which made tape press against heat sink and it made good contact and CPU stopped overheating. Was working fine and after maybe a month or 2 it died. Tried removing HDD, RAM, everything it doesn't powers on, charger light works only. Disassembled almost fully, made connections again still dead.

I checked capacitors on top of CPU with multimeter, and all of them are short circuited, is it supposed to be like this or CPU is really dead? Even one capacitor to another shows a short circuit.

BTW laptop is Toshiba Portege A600, CPU is Intel Core 2 Duo SU9300.

I would say it's probably gone, it seems like it gave you a good run though, 8 or 9 years from the looks of it? You could try just replacing the caps, but its still a really old laptop. Honestly you could pick up a junker to replace it for not much.

 

[k1114]

What were you doing to think it's shorted? It's showing 0 ohms?

 

[electro_neanderthal]

It sounds like it's dead, heat probably killed it.

I hope you didn't replace the thermal paste with a thermal pad, that would make your CPU more likely to overheat. Also, once the heat sink in a laptop bends, it's usually bad (the inner part of the tube "kinks" and prevents optimal heat transfer).

The capacitors are probably alright, and are probably unrelated to your PC not starting, but since the subject has been brought up:

How did you test the capacitors? What do you mean by "shows a short circuit"? All capacitors store and release electricity, they don't "short" unless the circuit (the path they are soldered in to) shorts. A bad capacitor doesn't store any voltage, and testing resistance is iffy.

The "dumb" ways to check a capacitor (not very accurate, and may be useless depending on the motherboard design):

You would, using the leads of the multimeter, have to connect the output leg to a ground (the metal bit in a mounting screw hole is a good place), where, if it was recently turned on, you would see a voltage that disappears quickly (it's designed to get rid of the power it stores when it can). This would determine it's doing what it should. Note: after it drains, it won't fill back up unless the PC turns on again.

You can also check for resistance, as a high resistance or no flow is bad.

The "proper" way (requires a multimeter that has the function described in the instructions): http://en-us.fluke.com/training/training-library/test-tools/digital-multimeters/how-to-measure-capacitance-with-a-digital-multimeter.html

There are also some special tools for checking a capacitor.

In some cases, you may have to remove the capacitor to test it properly.

 

[shahbaz200]

What were you doing to think it's shorted? It's showing 0 ohms?

Yes 0 ohms, also checked with continuity mode, it beeps. Between both connections of capacitor or from one leg of capacitor to another. capacitor's leg.

 

[shahbaz200]

Actually I have a laptop in home which went dead. It usually overheated, Tried changing paste, applying thermal pad with no help. Finally I realized heat sink might be bent. I made a roll of electrical tape, put it on top of heat sink pipe and closed its body which made tape press against heat sink and it made good contact and CPU stopped overheating. Was working fine and after maybe a month or 2 it died. Tried removing HDD, RAM, everything it doesn't powers on, charger light works only. Disassembled almost fully, made connections again still dead.

I checked capacitors on top of CPU with multimeter, and all of them are short circuited, is it supposed to be like this or CPU is really dead? Even one capacitor to another shows a short circuit.

BTW laptop is Toshiba Portege A600, CPU is Intel Core 2 Duo SU9300.

I would say it's probably gone, it seems like it gave you a good run though, 8 or 9 years from the looks of it? You could try just replacing the caps, but its still a really old laptop. Honestly you could pick up a junker to replace it for not much.

Yea around 7 years lol. Not even sure about the cap values.

 

[shahbaz200]

It sounds like it's dead, heat probably killed it.

I hope you didn't replace the thermal paste with a thermal pad, that would make your CPU more likely to overheat. Also, once the heat sink in a laptop bends, it's usually bad (the inner part of the tube "kinks" and prevents optimal heat transfer).

The capacitors are probably alright, and are probably unrelated to your PC not starting, but since the subject has been brought up:

How did you test the capacitors? What do you mean by "shows a short circuit"? All capacitors store and release electricity, they don't "short" unless the circuit (the path they are soldered in to) shorts. A bad capacitor doesn't store any voltage, and testing resistance is iffy.

The "dumb" ways to check a capacitor (not very accurate, and may be useless depending on the motherboard design):

You would, using the leads of the multimeter, have to connect the output leg to a ground (the metal bit in a mounting screw hole is a good place), where, if it was recently turned on, you would see a voltage that disappears quickly (it's designed to get rid of the power it stores when it can). This would determine it's doing what it should. Note: after it drains, it won't fill back up unless the PC turns on again.

You can also check for resistance, as a high resistance or no flow is bad.

The "proper" way (requires a multimeter that has the function described in the instructions): http://en-us.fluke.com/training/training-library/test-tools/digital-multimeters/how-to-measure-capacitance-with-a-digital-multimeter.html

There are also some special tools for checking a capacitor.

In some cases, you may have to remove the capacitor to test it properly.

I did replace both, pad + paste. And I did checked it properly between both legs of same capacitor and also from leg of one cap to leg of another cap. 0 ohm