A capacitor is a component of just about every kind of electrical board in a computer. Its primary duty is to hold a charge for a brief period. They help keep the electrical current steady. You know this as the screen you are viewing is legible and your computer isn't randomly crashing on you.

When these little battery like devices go bad, a whole boat load of things go wrong. Below are a few examples. Just remember, not all computer related problems are capacitor related.

Motherboard Capacitors:

The most common capacitors to go bad on a motherboard are the ones that hang around the processor or CPU for short. This is where most of the electrical current is flowing and requires quite a bit of electrical balance. You will likely realize there is something wrong with your capacitors when your system is freezing up, blue screens are occurring more often, and only can use the computer for a set amount of time before it just shuts off.

Power Supply Capacitors:

These bad boys are huge and are common to fail in time. Much like the motherboard, if a power supply is failing, your system may freeze up, randomly turn off without warning, games may not operate correctly. A good example of a failing power supply would be that all is working well, until you access a DVD or CD/ROM. The system may freeze up and/or turn off. When operating graphic intensive games, more power is needed, thus may cause a crash or blue screen.

All capacitors that fail do one or all of the following:

1: Bulge
2: Leak
3: Explode (sounds like a .22 cal going off)

Never touch capacitors without discharging them first. A capacitor can hold enough of a charge to kill you instantly.

Capacitor failure can be caused by overheating, age, moisture, static discharge, and/or bad from the factory to being with. They can be replaced with a little solder know-how, however you may find it is just easier and cheaper to replace the entire component that it rests on.

Thanks for reading this lens, if you like the information on this page then you will like the information that can be found at the following websites:

http://www.ryansccs.com: Visit the free help pages as well as all the other resources.

http://hard-drives.ryansccs.com: Site is dedicated to helping the average "Joe" to understand what a hard drive is and how important it is to backup often. This site will also help with data recovery solutions as well as a large list of common questions relating to hard drives and other storage devices.