Replacing Capacitors
Capacitors go bad easily and often go bad due to poor manufacturing quality. I recently replaced capacitors on a video card and a motherboard. Capacitors can easily be replaced by anyone who has basic soldering skills. Replacement parts can be ordered from digi-key. There are a few things to consider when buying replacement capacitors. Obviously the voltage and capacitance values are crucial. Other aspects which are commonly overlooked include diameter, pin spacing, and height of the capacitors. With certain heatsinks, capacitors must be under a certain height to coexist with the heatsink. Without the correct pin spacing your new capacitors will not fit well into the baord. If the diameter of the replacement capacitors is greater than the original capacitors you will have to make room for the larger ones (As I did by filing part of the heatsink on this graphics card) or buy smaller ones.
If you want to replace the capacitors on some sort of electronic device of your own I highly recommend practicing many times before starting on the actual repair project. I took an old motherboard and removed everything I could with my soldering iron to be sure I wouldn't damage the board when I did it for real.
I highly recommend using a vacuuming soldering iron. Solder wick works, but not very well. A mechanical solder sucker will also work, but it is not always effective. You will need at least one of these tools to remove solder from the holes once the old capacitors are removed.
First the old capacitors must be removed. They can be cut off, but do not twist them off or pull them off the board. This can damace the traces and pads on the pcb, and the device will end up more damaged.
Removing the old capactors is by far the hardest part. Once they are removed, the new capacitors should go in very smoothly. It is a good idea to cut the leads on the new capactors. If there are any small amounts of solder in the holes from the old capactiors, shorter leads make it much easier to push the leads through the holes.
When putting on the replacement capactors be sure the polarity is correct. It's a good idea to take a picture of the bad capacitors to get their orientation before they are removed.
Here are pictures of a video card, and a motherboard with their original, bad, capacitors as well as the replacements
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