Dell GX270 Motherboards have Leaky and Broken Capacitors
"There is a known problem with capacitors on the GX270 motherboard bulging and corroding... (Actually, this is a problem on a lot of systems... the GX270 and a few others have a more specific problem where the capacitors were overfilled)."
This came to my attention a couple of weeks ago when a client called with a PC that wouldn't boot. "It won't power on at all" she said.
The technician I sent quickly determined that the problem was the Motherboard, but why did it fail?
However we have discovered that the Nichon capacitors were not all produced outside control specifications. Rather the affected capacitors were limited to certain batches made during specific shifts during the manufacturing process. This means that not all GX270 motherboards are affected. Unfortunately, there is not specific way to determine which motherboards are affected and which are not.
Specifically the capacitors were filled with more liquid than required. After an approximate service life of 300 days and when the CPU reaches a core temperature of 64 degrees C they will begin to bulge and eventually overflow onto the motherboard causing a system crash and a "No Post" failure on boot. There is usually no data loss associated with this issue."
A quick call to Dell resolved the issue in no time at all. After I gave the person on the phone the service tag number and a description of the problem, he informed me that the Motherboard was still under an extended warranty (that ended Jan.31 2008) and they would send a replacement.
23hrs later, the board is at our office door! WOW! That was quick! Thanks Dell! I can't say that we've needed much from their tech support, but they certainly impressed us this time around.
This post was written on February 8, 2008 but more recently Dell has admitted to shipping out millions of computers with faulty capacitors on them. Even worse, they replaced many motherboards with more defective motherboards. If you have an Optiplex GX270, I would call Dell immediately to see if it is an affected unit.