Defective Dell Motherboards
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Dell Won't Recall Defective Motherboards
Readers have responded to the original "Dell Won't Recall Defective Motherboards" story with many questions, some answers, and a number of interesting experiences of their own. Are other GX270 customer faring better or worse under Dell's motherboard replacement policy than the first reader we described? How can customers tell if their motherboards are among those that are likely to fail? Are other Dell systems effected? And how do other computer manufacturers seem to be responding to problems caused by the bad capacitors? If you've had experiences of your own in any of those areas, add your comments in the appropriate sections below. --Ed Foster 17:46, 3 Sep 2005 (PDT)
Read the original story along with Dell's response and all the comments readers have posted on Ed Foster's GripeLog.
Here's a quick pictorial tutorial one reader sent on how to recognize GX270 bad capacitors.
GX270 Motherboard Replacements
- E-mail from the reader quoted in my original story:
Dell has now provided me 10 free workstations to use to swap out with machines exhibiting the blown capacitor behavior. When one blows, the motherboard is replaced in 24 - 48 hours. They have still not scheduled our proactive replacement. The technician who fixes our Dells tells us that GX280s have the same issue, but he's IBMs with the same problems too. In the end, it has been the unsatisfactory response from Dell about the issue that pissed me off. We'll be examining a few new vendors next year when we do our next significant PC purchase. Perhaps IBM and HP are treating there customers better?
(Note: While Dell offered to speak to this customer, he chose to remain anonymous. The 10 free spares therefore are a solution he negotiated on his own. --Ed Foster 17:46, 3 Sep 2005 (PDT) )
- E-mail from reader:
I'm an old-fart computer jock and I'm aware of the GX270 issue from the many we've seen in our organization. Apparently, the only real indication is the "X" on the top of the bad capacitors (see his photos of leaking 'X' and good 'T' stamped campacitors).
- E-mail from reader:
It gets even worse ... we also have over 200 GX270s. We get the same runaround from Dell that the person in the article gets. The worse part is that when they do break -- we get about 5 a week -- Dell is supposed to have repairs for us by the next day. Average repairs have been running about 10 days. All we ever seem to get is a call from somebody every now and then about which units we have in our defect pile. Those cases get expedited but then when more break and we start all over again. We must have replaced at least 30% of this model, and the cost on our side is huge. It takes manpower to go get the computer, swap out something that will work for the end user, and then take hours on the phones with Dell getting somebody out here. Going to the GX280 and getting discounts sound plausible until you realize how different that platform is. Our software image doesn't load onto that and thus we have to rebuild an entire software image from scratch to get it to work. One idea I had was at least they could give us a buffer of say 10 diskless units and then we could swap the hard disk from the bad machines fairly quickly and then call in for repairs. It would buy everybody time, but that idea didn't seem to fly with them either. Nothing proactive ever did on this issue.
- E-mail from reader:
Yeah, Dell promised us replacements, too. Until we couldn’t get our fingers on EVERY single one under recall. Then they did the usual and backed off, not replacing any. They didn’t want to make it easy and let us replace each with a whole unit, as in a swap, they wanted a tech to see it and do component switching, meaning user downtime. We told them with all these requirements, forget it, expect us NOT to use you as a vendor. Our threat to move to HP finally worked. We had already moved our servers ($30 million) to HP, so they understood this meant losing all their biz with us on desktops and laptops. We've been taken care of now.
- Reader allencts posted:
All 18 GX270s in our lab have been replaced. We are now having to have some of the replacements replaced. You can see the repaired boards by looking at the solder joints on the bottom. So they are only fixing the caps that look bad. The tech commented, they are doing so many, they are running out of replacements at times. The replacement rate has slowed down, but it is summer, classes start tomorrow.
- Reader MrPhil posted:
I have a single GX270 from a customer that he sent back for a hard drive replacement. While replacing it (under warranty), I came across this story. The caps have a "K" stamped on the top, but three of them also have corrosion looking material on top as well. Dell is going to replace the board for me. We'll see. UPDATE: They just finished. The tech said they had only recently starting seeing a lot of these problems.
Other Dell Systems
- E-mail from reader:
I just wanted to give your reader with the GX270s a warning about Dell's "trade-in" offer for 280s. He should not even consider that. Nearly all of the 270 and 280 models that my company has purchased from Dell and put on the floor to date have had the same capacitor issue. The GX280 become even worse than the 270's because the towers actually catch on fire. This has happened with three out of the four tower models I have put in service so far. He needs to hound them until he gets a fair deal: total board replacement.
- E-mail from reader:
We've experienced this problem on many of our small-form-factor GX280 machines as well. All but one of the machines have now had their boards replaced. Luckily we didn't get too many of them. I think I'll just contact my sales rep about the remaining machine. He's been good to work with.
- E-mail from reader:
The small-form-factor model that has the problem for us us the SX270 series. I have had to have Dell fix over 125 of the little buggers over the past year or so. In fact, to this day, I still call Dell Gold Support and they still have no idea what I’m talking about and will try to troubleshoot the problem unless I specifically tell them I have opened the case and that the capacitor has burst and leaked all over the motherboard. Fortunately, I work for a school district and none of the failures have been "mission critical," so next day service has sufficed. But when they fail simultaneously in batches of 10 or 20, it gets really frustrating.
- Posted by anonymous reader:
We have 260s, 270's and 280's -- brand new 280's -- that are also failing due to the capacitor problem. When I confronted Dell regarding the situation, they said that if we meet a certain percentage of failures they would dispatch a tech to our site and replace all of our motherboards. I'm am still waiting for the percentage figures ...
- E-mail from reader:
Dell is also not owning up to bulging capacitor problems in their 400SC model. These machines are supposed to be server class. This [forum] has pictures.
(Note: The PowerEdgeForum readers also say capacitors stamped with an 'X' on top are those that are likely to fail, but the good ones in the 400SC are usally marked with a 'K')
HP/Compaq Experiences
- Posted by anonymous reader:
D530 Ultra Slim systems here at work have the same problem. If the row of capacitors near the CPU is five long, then it's going to die within a year. HP will replace them fair enough as a warranty problem, but they refuse to recall or publicize the problem. The D530 US with 6 capacitors in the row don't have the problem.
- Posted by anonymous reader:
A couple years ago we had a batch of Compaq Deskpro EN SFF machines that started developing video problems. We had about 1200 of these machines scattered across the country and after identifying the problem, Compaq made arrangements to proactively replace all the motherboards on these machines to fix the problem. All we had to do was thell them where the machines were and arrange to have someone meet the techs at the site after hours so the tech could do the swap. Compaq did it right for us - sounds like Dell isn't being as helpful in this case..
Apple Experiences
- Posted by ItalCanCan
Apple's G5 iMacs used the same capacitors and those logic boards (sometimes called "midplane assemblies") are also failing. Unlike Dell, they're standing behind their product with a [warranty extension].
- Posted by talmy:
Even Apple won't do proactive replacements. You have to wait for your system to fail first. I've got a G5 iMac in question, as well as a number of Dells. Let's say I'm not sleeping as well as I should be.
- Posted by anonymous reader:
I believe the first generation of Apple's G5 iMac's had the same capacitor problems, and met with pretty much the same response from Apple. No matter that you can see obviously defective capacitors; wait till something fails. Of course, if you can see they're leaking or bulging, I'd guess the probability of a future failure is around 100%. Of course, given the likelihood of future data loss, overheating, fire, why would anyone continue to use a machine like these? And Dell and Apple have about the highest customer satisfaction raings around.
- Posted by Pik0 10:50, 7 April 2006 (PDT)
Interestingly, we've replaced nearly ALL of our GX270's under an extended warranty. As a result of this series of failures and Apple's recent release of Boot Camp, we've decided to purchase a few evaluation Mac Mini Intel Duo Core's to see if that would be a viable alternative. The best part? The price of the mini is about half the price of the GX270 in the same configuration. Coupling that with Apple's notorious reliability (I have an iMac from 1997 that ran continuously (24/7/365) until some time late last year.
IBM Experiences
- Posted by tscoff
I bought several of the IBM NetVista computers which ended up having the bulging capacitor problem. IBM's response when I called them after the warranty had expired on one of the computers? "Would you to install the replacement motherboard yourself or would you like us to send out a technician to replace the motherboard for you?" Now that's service!
- Posted by bmckee
I replaced a little over a dozen motherboards on IBM NetVistas within 6 weeks or so. IBM would not send out a replacement motherboard until it failed, but once it failed they sent it's replacement within 24 hours every time. They would not cover labour, just parts, but I wouldn't have wanted to wait for the local authorized IBM service guy to get the work done anyway. Since they were all coming close to being out of warrantee I was concerned I would be left with a few that failed out of warrantee, but luckily? all of them died within warrantee. If they hadn't, I probably would have called them in anyway....
- Posted by anonymous reader:
The company I work for bought a batch of IBM xSeries 200 servers (in the hundreds or thousands) and had similar problems with capacitors. IBM paid for field replacement of motherboards in all of these systems, and the installers installed CD-RW drives (which the systems previously didn't have) with us only paying for the CD-RW drives.
- Posted by hongjo
A couple of Netvista died and IBM sent someone to replace the boards the next day. As the systems approached the end of their warranty periods I checked all the Netvistas for leakage and IBM cross shipped me replacement boards so that I could change them myself. No complaints here.
