# Jetway V266B with GSC caps



## trodas (Jan 5, 2007)

*Recap (exchange of caps) on JetWay V266B mainboard from March 2006.*

My stepbrother has a refined taste to pick the worsts boards ever made, I ques. He has sort of "thing" for Jetway mainboards. Anyone familiar with GSC caps must know already how it end ;-)
Well, the board was first used with Duron 700 (slightly overclocked to 866Mhz - 133x6.5) and worked great for some time. Yet when my bro bought Palomino 1700+ AXP, the problems started. Board was not stable anymore, and re-flashing and bios updating won't cure a thing.





Funny thing - the Vcore voltage settings mentioned in manual as well, as available in bios disappeared after one flash update. We never get it back, even flashing the older bios back won't help, it just produced a thrashed DOS display (!) on AXP - according to my bro it worked well on Duron...





All guys at BadCaps know now why and how, but at the time even I was clueless. We decided that "the board simply did not like AXP, or specificaly the Palomino" and he bought another board - Jetway N2PAP Ultra. What happen to this is another story. This V266B suxxka (yep, VIA KT266 chipset, so FSB133 is max) was sort-of borrowed to one friend and then it finally get to my sis. At the time the board won't like anything more that 800Mhz (133x6) and yep, Duron only. Yet still problems continue getting worser. For example if you copy anything over network + run a WinAMP = sure crash. Copy or WinAMP alone = all good.





Sooner or later it get to the point when we had to back from 133Mhz overclock and get to 100x7 default to make things at least not crashing often :-/ There are some remarkable things like enabling fast writes in bios ended up with instant crash as soon, as the Radeon 9000, witch support fast writes flawlessly, start to draw anything on 3D screen 





Around at this time I noticed the caps close to the CPU, serving as Vcore caps, are pretty bulged. We cleared the leaking, but it still look kinda bad...





It was obvious what to do, but I looked at the board and started to like it. I mean - it have everything - even holes around CPU, so, why so crappy GSC caps have to ruin it?
The board support either SDRAM (2 slots) or DDR ram (2 slots) and we managed to increase stability (speed increase is not noticeable or measurable tough) replacing the SDRAMs with DDR rams. Probably the DDR ones utilize cap's that was not utilized before? Or we just dreamed up the increased stability in all the instability issues? Or the 2.5V is possible to get stable from the cap's, while 3.3V was not? Can be... 





Around that time I got first optimistic results from recapping my DFI LP B boards with Panasonic FM caps, yet there was also a bit of argument on the China (okay, Hong Kong precisely) made caps under the Samxon brand and how they are or are not good. And since space is valuable and Panasonic ones are too big for the mobo, I contacted Joe, alias Big Pope and asked about the Samxon caps. Simply if I could test them out.





The idea was to overclock this board high, and stress it with folding - on top of that, it will still serve my sis as gaming/working/browsing machine and sort of "general public computer" for everyone to access net at my home 





Joe agreed and unlike my bro suggested (replace just the bulging ones...), I replaced ALL the caps on the board. Everything over 100uF simply goes for Samxons  (okay, the there 100uF caps are Rubycons, as Joe did not have stock Samxons RS 100uF 16V, but that is excelent brand also)





*The results.*

Forget semi-stable 100x7 with poor 64k L2 Duron! Now there is a Barton 2800+ inserted and run at *150x12.5*  That give PR2200+, witch is nice performance kick! I tried even 166x12.5 to get the 2800 rating the CPU is made for and it was on Prime CPU test stable, yet the used rams can't handle 2-2-2-5 at more that a little over 155Mhz (and long-time nothing over 152Mhz stable), so I decided that the few Mhz up it not worth decreasing the latency settings. Also fast writes is possible now, yet when I later replaced the R9000 with FX5600XT they has to be disabled, as the XT crap won't support them at all. Not a big deal, tough. All other bios options regarding speed could be now maxed out w/o worries and they work! 
(a big improve since before they just crashed the machine...)
I also used Revoltec passive nice cooler on the NB and the standard NB cooler put on the SB to gain stability when overclocking the oldie poor VIA KT266A chipset to 150Mhz 
It also have *2x512MB DDR* ram's and at *2-2-2-5* and I bet they stress the Vdimm powering circuit well!

So, now the mobo run fully on Samxon's, fully stable and under 100% load by folding all the time (run as service) 





It is about nine months now, so I posted these result as sort of statement that the Samxons aren't about fail soon. We see how long the Samxon's hold up - my bet is, that as long, as we want the board to run, but to know for sure, a stress test is need. Unlike DFI recap work I did not increased any of the caps sizes.

So, stay tuned for longer test, yet so far I managed excellent results, I think. Especially compared to what the board was able run before, it won't even post with AXP CPU, even with 256k of L2 only... And the Samxons are still mostly GD and few GC ones. So, only the more average Samxons are being used.

No Samxons GA used, yet these should be (according to specs) mortal threat to Rubycons MCZ or even Nichicons HZ by their cheap price yet still stellar specs - simply the absolute hi-end top.

*Samxon GA 1800uF 16V - impedance 0.0065 - ripple current 4140 (2000 hours) 10x25
Nichicon HZ 1800uF 16V - impedance 0.0065 - ripple current 4140 (2000 hours) 10x25
Rubycon MCZ 1800uF 16V - impedance 0.009 - ripple current 3230 (2000 hours) 10x25*

Dunno if they could make difference in such oldie mainboard, but in new ones and in case of extreme overclocking - well, that could be different story! 

And for the record, the case is fanless, so they get proper thermal stressing as well. More pictures on demand possible 

Samxon caps are available from Big Pope.

Semistable situation before:






Rock-stable situation after:





Yet now there times faster!   





*For recapping JetWay V266B you need:*
9x 1500uF 6,3V d10
4x 1500uF 16V d10 (possible to replace with 6,3V caps)
12x 1000uF 10V d8 (possible to replace with 6,3V caps)
8x 470uF 16V d8
2x 220uF 16V d6.5
3x 100uF 16V d6.5
16x 22uF 16V d4-d5

JetWay V266B A12 bios: http://ax2.old-cans.com/V266BA12.ZIP 
JetWay V266B A13 bios: http://ax2.old-cans.com/V266BA13.ZIP 
JetWay V266B A13 moded by me: http://ax2.old-cans.com/V266BA14.ZIP 
(I just changed settings the way I usualy set the boards - leaved the ram settings and overclock settings at default, so anyone can use it, not just me)

After about eight months of work I finally made to replace the remaining small caps. It's a mix 10 and 22uF caps, so I replaced them all with 22uF ones. Used Samxon RS 22uF 35V caps. They are d5 in diamater, tough it did not matter. Luckily.
Why I did it? Even that mobo did not and never crashed, it did other nasty things. Sometimes it did not kick in, when one provide the power to the mobo. And recently sooner and sooner it simply forget after the setup 10 minutes to turn off it's monitor. (later it was clear that this monitor power off is the gfx card fault anyway) The failure to power on was fixable by reset, however then come the day when reset was not enought and I have power off and then again power on the machine to get it working. So I exchanged the caps then.
And like wave with magic stick, it was kicking on and ever powering the monitor off perfectly. After 30x power on's for test it yet failed to show any failure. I will post ASAP in the JetWay V266B thread to notify when the mobo stop post after providing the power (bios settings say kick on on power on) just once more 

It become apparent that recapping even the smallest electrolyte caps from inferior brands aren't voluntary but matadory. Especially on oldie boards, such as V266B...


PS. Vcore settings are still not back in the bios and I tried push the CPU harder (as it is currently underclocked - 2800+ Barton should run at 2075Mhz (166x12.5 and not at just 150x12.85 - 1875Mhz) ) by changing it's multiplier to x14 to get 2100Mhz, but even soldering the multiplier settings by wires on the back of the socket does not convice the mobo to use x14 multiplier. Maybe it just can't use it? Or maybe I should try mod the AXP to AXP mobile in order to get the multiplier x14 I want? 


PS2. *There is one thing I must confess to, tough. To be entierly honest, I* (with my best intentions, as always) *added in parallel to the Vcore caps 100nF ceramic SMD caps.*

While it at first lookes like very nice thing to do to help filter the voltage, I quickly realized that on the DFI it caused so massive ripple, that the mosfets heat up more that twice they do w/o these SMD ceramis caps. It was hardly stable at 2200Mhz then, while the same mobo and CPU can go to 2900 (!). So adding these caps to hi-end DFI LP B Socket mobo render it unstable at anything close to 2Ghz. Yet mine V266B JetWay was fine even with these caps...

*Now for the longetivity estiminates it looks like these ceramics added a hell of unnecessary stress, so after first 8 months I removed them. I think we can easily estiminate that it stressed even at poor 150x12.5 these poor Vcore caps with heat enought that it might in fact be like it is tested already about twice the time...* It is just a speculation, tough not entierly unreasonable, I'm affraid. My Abit ST6-T with also added 100nF SMD caps in parallel to the Vcore ones become unstable as well. Probably these Panasonic FM caps aren't as good and tough as the Samxons GC? Because they managed stable operation even in such situation... And I got another V266B for recap already, hehe, this time I will experiment with more GC caps and lower their voltages, as there is nowhere near need for 16V in the imput ones for Vcore, for example - they are powered by 5V line, etc...


PS3. Adding ceramic caps for better voltage filtering require adding in serie to them R33 resistors to prevent these oscilations I encounter while trying make things better.


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## Azn Tr14dZ (Jan 5, 2007)

Wow


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## D4kk0n (Jan 5, 2007)

Azn Tr14dZ said:


> Wow



I'll second that. If you're not an EE you'd better get your butt in school because you have no excuse!


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## Protius (Jan 5, 2007)

Azn Tr14dZ said:


> Wow



i 3rd that, nice job man


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## trodas (Jan 6, 2007)

Thank's guys, it was not that hard, tough the PCB is low quality and these slight small wires are so easily damaged...  The worsest part is cleaning the holes so one can solder a new cap in there.
There should be very interesting then the subsequend recap of the GFX card used there...


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