Has this capacitor gone bad (picture)

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I assume you are referring to the larger electrolytic cap?

It is difficult to tell.

It looks like a switching power supply.

The only was to tell for sure is to desolder it and see if the vent has leaked any electrolyte and or measure it with a Capacitance meter.
 
C*apXon is a known bad-cap company.

It pretty clearly is bulging, and the base is standing off the board too.

Time for a resolder. Find yourself a decent cap and go nuts.
 
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Impossible to tell based solely on the pictures. It has domed a bit but for that type of cap that isn't always an indication that it is bad. OTOH, if you have an electronics supply house nearby, you could probably get a replacement cap for about 75 cents.

Just make sure to not solder the replacement in backwards ; )
 
like the above post, check for output ripple. Or if you want to do a little preventive maintenance, just replace it. Either way, if it's not gone already, it doesn't have much life yet. You can get a solid one like a Rubycon for cheap.

http://thecapking.com/

I used to order from this guy like crazy when I was fixing [censored] Dell boards weekly that had those same Capxon caps. They are garbage.
 
Does this link describe something close to what you have?
http://forums.hexus.net/networking-broadband/250181-dell-powerconnect-2716-dead-psu.html
You can see the electrolytics don't always bulge + pop like a firecracker.

I bought a dead 2716 on EBay, bought a replacement Artesysn power supply, and everything worked again.

To check an old capacitor you should use an ESR meter, and they cost much more than a capacitor, but if you troubleshoot rather than throw parts at a problem...
 
yes, it's bad, and also it's a CapXon which are known to have issues

Just make sure to select a cap made by one of the four great cap companies: Rubycon, Chemi-con, Panasonic and Nichicon

the best place to buy caps that are the freshest and who is an authorized distributor for all four of the above great capacitor makers is www.digikey.com
 
Too bad you don't have a pile of leftover parts laying around. Metering the caps and stuff is generally a big waste of time, for me at least.

Dig through the parts box, find an old PSU or something with a 450v+ test capacitor, probably anything over 47uF (or a few in parallel to get at least 47uF), plonk it on the board and be happy.

Exact capacitance likely unimportant here since it just looks like a smoothing capacitor for power.

But thats me. I have umpteen amounts of useful scrap to steal parts from. Thats just my $0.02 on the situation :p

Just don't do what I did and accidentally pilfer bad capacitors! Haha.
 
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