MSI PM8M3-V recap

[trodas]

MSI show on it's website this image, of a MSI PM8M3-V mainboard:

As you can see, the Vcore output is populate with 7 Oscon polymer caps. In reality, however, you get this:

A strip down version, from 7 caps to 3 (!)... and that is for the power hungry P4 CPU's! Yes, there are also the two top caps, but they are not polymers and even the another top two up are Vcore connected (3300uF 6.3V)...
But the main rip off is the caps type used. They are OST 680uF 4V caps, so not a good caps by any way In short, they show you seven polymers, but deliver there OST crap caps. Is not that irony?

To make this post more usefull, the caps list for MSI PM8M3-V goes as follows:
5x 680uF 4V d8 OST RLA (+4 leftovers)
2x 3300uF 6.3V d10 OST RLX
3x 1000uF 16V d8 Panasonic FL (+1 leftover)
12x 1000uF 6.3V d8 OST (+4 leftovers)
2x 470uF 10V d8 G-Luxon
1x 10uF 16V d4 SMD

Mine MSI PM8M3-V is PCB v. 1.0. Only there Ost caps on side, FOUR missing! That is stealing by MSI marketing!

AGP powering is rather underpowered, not to mention NIKOS mosfets bad rep:

Ram's run on Ost caps too, completely:

Vcore is supported with big 3300uF Ost caps (and two small Ost caps nearer the socket LGA 775 on top):

Near NIC (Realtek RTL8100C) is G-Luxons (!) ... a terrible known bad caps. Unacceptable!

The Vcore input have space for 4 caps, just there are used and they are Panasonic FL caps, witch cannot be bought on Digikey and I did not suppose they are even original Panasonic caps... What is worser is, that they are d8 only, while 16V caps are hard to source even with d10, not to mention d8...

 

[trodas]

So this obviously cannot stays like that, because the mobo is starting to shown first unstability issues and crash on load, so, there had to be recap. I also wanted badly to give the mobo back the nice polymers, the MSI marketing striped it off... In short, I wanted to trumph out the advert Because even better that Sanyo Oscon polymers exist - and that are Nichicon LE polymers. So I made my list of ideas, how the recap shuld look like:

9x Nichicon LE 820uF 2.5V d8 493-3058-ND
2x Nichicon HZ 3300uF 6.3V d10 UHZ0J332MPM-ND
4x Nichicon HZ 1000uF 16V d8 UHZ1C102MPM6-ND
16x Nichicon HM 1000uF 6.3V d8 UHM0J102MPD-ND
2x Nichicon LE 470uF 6.3V d8 493-3066-ND
1x Taiyo Yuden 47uF 6.3V 587-3406-1-ND

However certain things go wrong. The first was, that I managed thru friend to order only the original number of the 1000uF 6.3V caps, 12 of them. I had to improvise and replace the remaining 4 unused before with the Samxon GC caps, witch is similar is quality, tested good caps.
At lest I see what caps are new there, lol.
However worser was, that the only one d8 caps for 16V was really hi-end elytes Nichicon HZ, but they are out of the stock for months. So, what to do? I had no chance but to press on and thy some improvisation there...
And at last I completely forget the little SMD cap behind the AGP slot, witch I indented to replace with ceramic caps, when there is available even 47uF ceramic SMD caps with the little 12210 size!

So the main idea was to get the Vcore voltage filtering on hi-quality level, witch I managed easily by using the best polymers ever produced (nothing beat their ripple current rattings):

But now what to do with the input caps, that are not stock? In the end I managed to squeeze easily in their places (luckily, there is nothing upclose near them) replacement caps, witch I took from my stash - a Panasonic FM 1000uF 16V d10:

Of course I added even the unused one, right after the input coil:

Ram's get a quality Nichicon caps too now, so they cannot complain on discrimination changes:

What I also did miss is the sad look of six empty places, where a good quality ceramic caps should be, so the Vcore will be stable even in extreme situations:

As I mentioned, on the previously unused places I slap the Samxon GC caps:

And the NIC controller must be jumping out of joy, because it got the quality Nichicon LE polymers voltage filtering instead of the G-Luxon crap caps - now this is a jump in quality!

Over on the CPU socket, there come together two important caps. A Nichicon HZ - the best electrolyte caps ever when come to the ripple current (Samxon GA are par to par with it, but nothing other come even close, not even Rubycon MCZ, yet the Man Yue stoped manufacturing them ) and then the Nichicon LE - best polymer ever made:

And at last - overal look on the Vcore regulation - now it look far much better that before!

And the result? Well, the CPU and rams and HDD is working perfectly. The Vcore regulators, with the serious heatsinks, are - even that no fan is blowing at them, yet I removed the serial and parallel ports to get them better ventilated - after a day of work, night of stress test and half day of gaming heardly even warm...!
That well shown the fact, that quality caps means lesser temperatures of the components. That was just great. And with stock box fan and no case fan...!

Now just the AGP cap and some of these ceramics...

 

[micropage7]

Classic board.
Yeah thats kinda sad
Re-cap maybe not as popular solution but its pretty interesting to see

 

[Frick]

Nice to see, but a waste of good caps imo.

 

[micropage7]

Nice to see, but a waste of good caps imo.

Thats why its interesting


Some caps may harder to find but so far he did it well

 

[SKBARON]

Yet another awesome thread, congrats trodas!
Keep them coming!

 

[trodas]

micropage7 - but recap is popular for me Puting a good old HW back in usage...

Frick - indeed the board is rather old and pathetic when compared to todays speeds, but hey... why just let him die? If I can fix it, then I feel like doing it so.

SKBARON - thank you! I was just wanted to prove, that I can do it and I can do it better that MSI Also my point was, how much can these review board differ from what one can actually buy (compare first two images).
If you look closely, you see that on the "advert" board is 10 pcs of ceramics inside of the LGA 775 socket. And on the sale version, there are just 4 pcs of the ceramics.

Seems that these damn people remove everything that they can. Maybe that is why they disabled a LOT of options in the bios, so user cannot seem them, much less tweak them. Maybe overclocking won't work stable, because of all these removed caps...?

Besides, there is the last MSI PM8M3-V bios v1.5 and previous v1.4 - original ones and unlocked versions where you see all the options with much more settings:
http://www.mediafire.com/?9npsvnsc8pmzhx1
http://dfiles.eu/files/z5ar3lnbl
http://www.uloz.to/xKAgfX51/MSI+PM8M3-V+bioses.zip
Well, in the version 1.5 I did not unlocked all the settings for the IGB, because I dubt anyone can use it anyway, so...

...and if when they use it, then this is probably not necessary? (from v1.4 unlocked bios) There are pretty much tons of settings what can be unlocked just using Modbin At first the mobo looked in bios very very cheap, almost no settings, but when I get to the unlocking, then I realized that there are plenty of settings and even enought of sensors...


But I did not believe that the mobo can take a 333MHz of ram ram speed - 666MHz of DDR speed! No way in hell:


And also I did not believe that the mobo can utilize a DDR2 rams, even the bios claim it:

 

[SKBARON]

I'll check my motherboard if it is the same as in the pics on MSI's website

 

[Frick]

Frick - indeed the board is rather old and pathetic when compared to todays speeds, but hey... why just let him die? If I can fix it, then I feel like doing it so.

Yeah but such nice caps...

I've recapped some motherboards with good results (though if they're actually busted it's usually a sign of something else).

 

[trodas]

SKBARON - so, what's the results? Same or different? In my case it was rather different. And I did not like that at all...


Frick - yep, very nice caps. That is why I used them But I understand that the board did not look it is worth the effort. But ATM I did not have any better hardware, so I not only pity the board for the stolen caps and wanted to make it up for him, but I'm also forced to use it.
Hance - you see, there we are
Yep, busted caps are either bad caps that do bust even w/o any usage, or there is a PSU problem (another bunch of bad caps in PSU, lol). None of these caps on the MSI are busted. But with the lack of the last one to recap, I getting terrible troubles with the AGP... failing to PCI mode, uh oh...