Question Do system boards use electrolytic or solid state capacitors ?

[knowledge2121]

Do all Taiwanese gaming boards use electrolytic capacitors ? or do some of them use solid state caps ?

What type of capacitor does this board use ?

Do you recommend this board ?

 

[Lutfij]

Do all Taiwanese gaming boards use electrolytic capacitors ? or do some of them use solid state caps ?
That depends on the board that's being sold. The higher the price of the board, the higher the quality of the components that go onto it, logically.

Do you recommend this board ?
Recommend the board for what? The answer depends on what you intend to use the board for. If you're chasing behind overclocks, yes, if you're trying to build a system for gaming, maybe. If you're on a limited budget, then no.

 

[Eximo]

Quite a high end board, so should be fine.

All of the above and more.

There are some electrolytic caps for the audio chipset, this is relatively normal as they have better characteristics for that work. Little silver topped yellow wrapped ones in the bottom left.

Most common large capacitors found in computer electronics these days are surface mount aluminum electrolytic capacitors. These are the ones you see around power electronics.

Polymer aluminum caps are also commonly used in some power delivery. Often referred incorrectly as POSCAPs, these are thin black rectangles. Often see these on PCBs where height is limited.

And the most common capacitor on electronics will be tantalum. These are little yellow rectangle/cubes that you find around all kinds of circuits.

 

[knowledge2121]

Quite a high end board, so should be fine.

All of the above and more.

There are some electrolytic caps for the audio chipset, this is relatively normal as they have better characteristics for that work. Little silver topped yellow wrapped ones in the bottom left.

Most common large capacitors found in computer electronics these days are surface mount aluminum electrolytic capacitors. These are the ones you see around power electronics.

Polymer aluminum caps are also commonly used in some power delivery. Often referred incorrectly as POSCAPs, these are thin black rectangles. Often see these on PCBs where height is limited.

And the most common capacitor on electronics will be tantalum. These are little yellow rectangle/cubes that you find around all kinds of circuits.

So does the board in the OP use solid state or electrolytic caps near the VRMs ? and should I worry if it is electrolytic or solid state ? I have heard solid state is more durable ?

 

[35below0]

Which capacitors are you looking at? I't not my area of expertise. But i think all but the dirt cheapest motherboards will use quality caps. Capacitors are not usualy a reason one motherboard is better than another.
This pic shows some of the exposed capacitors: https://www.noticias3d.com/articulo...fi7/imagenes/z790-aorus-elite-x-wifi7-9-G.jpg

Would i recommend the board for what? Gaming? What kind, or quality level?

The board is good or great or overpriced. Depends what features you need.
Do you need thermal shields on four NVMe drives?
Are you going to use 2 PCIe 4.0 16x slots?
Does it mean anything it supports up to 8266Mhz DDR5 RAM?
etc, etc.

The short answer is yes, it is a good motherboard. But it may be unsuitable depending on need or budget.

 

[35below0]

So does the board in the OP use solid state or electrolytic caps near the VRMs ? and should I worry if it is electrolytic or solid state ? I have heard solid state is more durable ?

VRM is good on that motherboard.

https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...oes-solid-state-refer-to.403473/#post-4119581

Polymer capacitor - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Eximo]

So does the board in the OP use solid state or electrolytic caps near the VRMs ? and should I worry if it is electrolytic or solid state ? I have heard solid state is more durable ?

It uses aluminum electrolytic for the VRMs.

Nothing to worry about. Most of them switched over to that type so that the pick and place robots can pull the caps from reels rather than the old through hole type that was mostly done by hand.

In the past they used poor temperature rated ones and they used large ones in place of many small ones. This was to save money during hand assembly. So basically created a single point of failure for a lot of motherboards. In the late 90s and early 2000s there was also a huge influx of cheap capacitors from China that a lot of manufacturers ended up using.

Since then several of the Chinese manufacturers realized that repeat customers were a good thing, and they got a lot better. Also why you still see Japanese capacitors sometimes pointed out as a feature. At the time they were known to have quality parts.

They know these things live next to the CPU socket or GPU power deliver, and they don't want a bunch of warranty claims. So they pick out quality parts. Not to mention we are down to like 4 major suppliers of Intel boards to consumers, they are fighting in a pretty small market so bad reputation is a really bad thing now.

 

[knowledge2121]

It uses aluminum electrolytic for the VRMs.

So all gaming boards in the same league as the Gigabyte Aorus Elite X use aluminum electrolytic caps for the VRMs ? and every other cap is also the same type in this tier of gaming boards ?

 

[Eximo]

I would say almost universally all motherboards, GPUs, and PC expansion cards in general.

It really hasn't been a problem in the last 10 years or more. Components can and do still fail of course, but been a while since you could point at the capacitors and definitely say that was it.

On the righthand side, electrolytic capacitors. At the very top left, two polymer caps.

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-founders-edition/images/front.jpg

On the back, we have almost exclusively polymer and tantalum caps:

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-founders-edition/images/back.jpg

And here we see a typical motherboard with 12 caps around the VRMs, next to the chokes, with the actual VRMs underneath heatsinks. You will boards without heatsinks and they are essentially the same. Also see caps for the PCIe slots as well as a few more on the motherboard's power supplies (next to the ATX input)

https://pisces.bbystatic.com/image2.../6522749cv1d.jpg;maxHeight=2000;maxWidth=2000

 

[35below0]

So all gaming boards in the same league as the Gigabyte Aorus Elite X use aluminum electrolytic caps for the VRMs ? and every other cap is also the same type in this tier of gaming boards ?

What they're made of is not as important as what they're rated. Cheaper boards with poor VRM are unsuitable for all but the weakest CPUs. Overclocked and top tier CPUs require very good VRM.

This tier of motherboard is aimed at higher end CPUs, but maybe not the insanely overclocked ones.


The features like ports and RAM support are just as important if not more. It is good to check VRM as well, but at this price point it is unlikely to be bad. Like Eximo said, manufacturers do not want returns or a bad reputation.

 

[Eximo]

Well, the VRM design isn't super reliant on the capacitors. Cheaper boards will have less VRM modules/phases meaning the load is on fewer components. Even if the manufacturer uses the exact same VRM, choke, and capacitors, the amount and electrical arrangement matter a lot. Sometimes the layout is just doubled on higher end boards. Or you will see the exact same layout across several boards from the same manufacturer. Cheaper to design it once and set up the machines once and only have to source a single component set.

You often see quad VRM parallel sets, in parallel with other sets to build out the VRMs. I believe this is done because the VRM chips themselves are extremely cheap and mass produced for lower power solutions and getting a whole bunch of them is far cheaper.

Higher end boards tend toward more expensive VRM chips and still run 8-16 in parallel for power delivery.

To be honest, most of the VRM setups on Z class boards are super overkill, even if you overclock or run 24/7.

 

[Eximo]

Recently did some napkin math in another thread on this topic.


My board brags about a 13 phase design. Which I take to mean 10+2+1 likely. So only 5 parallel phases. They also claim 50A.

5x50A would be 250A, but it is more likely 50A per chip, so 500A. That would be 750W capacity at 1.5 volts, which would nuke any CPU. Even half that is 375W which is way more than the CPU could need. The idea is just to keep the voltage stable under varying loads and having enough capacitance to avoid a sudden drop in voltage.

 

[35below0]

To be honest, most of the VRM setups on Z class boards are super overkill, even if you overclock or run 24/7.

Better overkill than sorry?

Maybe 3+1+1 is something to run away from screaming, but that's pretty rare. And cheap. Very obviously cheap.
Ultimately, if a full ATX motherboard costs $66 it's probably safer to frisbee it off a cliff than to install components onto it.