How to Identify Failed Capacitor on Circuit Boards

This post will give a little bit of idea, how to identify a leaked / Bad capacitor that soldered on a circuit board by visual inspection. This might help you in checking capacitor problems on motherboards and other circuit boards.

The most common method of identifying a failed electrolytic capacitor is by visual inspection. Because we cant desolder all the capacitors and test it using multimeter right? So the below symptoms may be expected to inspect on the electrolytic capacitors within the board.

• Bulging of the vent on the top of the capacitor. the vent is designed to normalize the pressure inside the capacitor and if it will go beyond a particular level, the electrolyte will split at the vent's seams relieving the pressure rather than making it explode.
• visible hole in the vent.
• visible as  brown deposits like rust on the top vent.
• Crusty brow electrolyte may leaked on to the circuit board surface.

these are the common visible symptoms of a failed electrolytic capacitor. Also check out the images around to familier with those..

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