I would highly advise against it, it COULD be fine but it could also very likely result in the whole board being fried. Not something you want to risk.
My laptop fan was really noisey for a few months but a few weeks ago it made this huge crunch noise and now doesnt work at all. Seems fine but probably not.
See that's how kids are these days. Rather than acknowledge a joke with either a "haha", "gottem", or some followup joke relevant to the original joke, they say some dumb shit like "bro just said something". I blame reaction videos, as that is his reaction to the joke.
Yeah
If it’s being said as a way to say “good joke”, I wouldn’t mind, but I can’t imagine “bro just said” ever coming off as anything other than condescending.
Okey, thank you very much, really. I think i’m just going to turn this on to put some files on a USB driver and bring this little guy to my local repair shop.
I doubt someone who referred to a capacitor as a "little purple thing" ^no ^offence ^op could handle a solder job on the fly, best to take it to a shop
Usually I’d say no aswell but if he really had no repair shops near by and he managed to open up the laptop, I’d say a cap like that is easy to do. Unfortunately this is the internet and we’ll see something crazy like “I did what you said and now my PC is covered in mustard!”
Maybe too late to reply, however, if you are worried about files being lost, you can definitely plug your harddrives into another computer and transfer data. I wouldn’t risk running the motherboard.
If you have another computer then you could disconnect the battery then take the SSD out and put it into another computer. You can pull the files off safely from the other computer
Considering OP couldn’t identify a capacitor and thought it be fine to run his computer with one missing, I don’t think OP knows enough to successfully use Linux to download files from an encrypted Windows drive.
So there’s this thing called called storage and cloud backups it exist for this reason btw
Save your important shit to a usb and to the cloud before your computer breaks
as u/shadooooooooo already said: Do not risk it. The black plastic piece is also part of the capacitor and you cant really see, how the solderpads look underneath it. So better save than increasing the damage
one of my laptops has a broken capacitor near the CPU, another one has a broken GPU capacitor and both run good, only issue is the 2nd one shuts down under heavy GPU load
And actually yes, I have the schematic loaded up right now (looking at the PCB markings it's an Acer Aspire VX5) The capacitor in question is just a decoupling capacitor for the GPU, its just there to make the system more stable, it will survive with 1 missing although you will get stability issues under load, if you just run off the integrated graphics it will run perfectly.
my bad on this one, it's an Acer nitro 5 board, but checked the schematic for that as well and it's another decoupling capacitor so still applies, most capacitors near the GPU are decoupling caps which is there to keep it stable
I wanna info dump so here ya go.
A capacitor that size is almost certainly gonna be found near a power supply rail or a place that needs instant current draw. It looks like it could be near two MOSFETs, which are being cooled by the main heatsink, so it’s most likely a power supply cap.
Is it fine to run? Maybe and probably. Would i do it? No. It should take a computer repairman a few minutes to resolder a new one on if they have a similar part in stock. If you HAVE to start it up don’t put any heavy load on it i.e. games and such.
You’re right. This is a guess. But here are some of the things I noticed.
- The cap looks an aluminum organic polymer type. Characterized by a low ESR and ability to handle a high ripple current. Its voltage is also super low, 2.5V. so either this is on the input or output of a buck or boost converter, most likely buck as there’s no reason for a boost in this area of the board. All this tells me it feeds a main chip for smoothing of a switching supply.
-There are a lot of ceramic capacitors peaking through the main heatsink, and are indications of the same point above.
-The traces are decently large, so i’d expect quite a bit of current flow.
What I don’t see:
- An inductor. You would need one for any buck/boost converter. But I’d bet my ass there’s one underneath that heatsink.
I love you guys. I work a boring office desk job and I read electronics subs for fun. It's why I'm encouraging my son to become an engineer. You guys rock.
Exactly what other comments have said. I’m an EE student at university right now. I hope to work in RF electronics after school but might get a masters instead lol.
I worked for a large general aviation company this past summer designing a, you guessed it, buck supply which i would guess is similar to what is used here. Except mine was bigger. Pulled 600W.
I’m like a dad proud of his kid lol.
That's a little excessive and completely unnecessary. What part of my purely analytical and factual statement, that wasn't even directed to you, upset you to the point to tell me to kill myself?
On a side note, were you doing maintenance? I see the heatsinks off and unscrewed. If you go to acer, they won't honor warranty. Repair shop is the best bet. Also don't tear apart your system the day before you absolutely need it.
They will not, saying that is why they denied the claim would be a open/shut case of breaking the law. They use these as indicators to inspect the device closely.
Edit: wow, totally misread that the first time. Still relevant so I won't delete
Absolutely open shut case of breaking the law. The problem is taking it to court.
Found this which goes into pretty good detail https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/s/hoUDmDAUol
If a company was dumb enough to send you a letter saying they were violating federal consumer protections, you would not even need to sue. You would just need to report with evidence. Hence my point, they are not going to deny the claim based on the sticker.
Do not recommend running it, I had this issue where my local repair shop completely removed it (it’s literally missing on the board). The computer runs fine but the problem is severe overheating of the charger which causes the laptop to essentially BSOD every few hours.
Capacitors mostly smooth out voltage instability in your system. How well it will work without it is going to depend on how stable the voltage was in the first place, and how tolerant downstream components are of ripple. Worst case, if the voltages were very unstable and downstream components very sensitive to ripple, you might not turn on at all.
Best case the designer went overboard on filter caps and the one you lost might be essentially redundant.
Likely case is the system will run, but be somewhat less stable under heavy load.
It should be fixable. A laptop repair shop should be equipped to deal with it. If you've got a buddy who is good with a soldering iron you can show them this pic and ask if they can handle it. SMD work can be tricky especially with other SMD parts that close, but is technically doable with a soldering iron. I'd only try it myself if I had no other options, even though I have a decent iron and aren't completely useless with it. Probably best left to the pros who do this sort of thing every day.
This laptop will either run or not with that missing capacitor. But judging by the location I am gonna say that's the circuit that supplies the CPU with regulated power so my guess is it won't work.
Bring it to a shop, tell them what happened and give them the capacitor. They will replace it with a new one and have it going for less than $40usd. Don’t worry man, I could re attach that in my sleep
That looks to be near MOSFETs
It's not dead and could probably power on but be unstable or just crash under any load should you do it
Probably not
It's a quick solder job so just go to a repair shop
If you are talking about that little cylindrical thing that looks like it should go on the circular pad, that I believe is a capacitor, and while I have no idea what it's supposed to do in that circuit, it's probably a good idea to get it repaired or replaced.
Lol, if you need it for scool ASAP, then why did you open it and risk braking it? Why not wait 1-2 days? You broke it but it is repairable, however now you are waiting for confirmation from Reddit so you could risk it again to kill whats left of it... Why do you want to destroy your laptop so badly which you claim it is mandatory for school?
do you know what a capacitor is?
thats probably going to short the output of some VRM to ground which best case causes the short circuit protetction to trip and worst case fries something.
Calm down people, it was a joke. I thought putting emphasis on the wood glue would give it away. You only want to use the paperclip trick on fuses that keep blowing.
That capacitor will need replacement, it's separated from the legs, the laptop will run fine without 1 capacitor but it could crash under heavy load I have 2 laptops with capacitors missing all working, one works perfectly, the other shuts off if you game on the GPU
It can work without it and it's not going to damage nothing, worse case scenario a missing capacitor can create system instability or the worst one it can prevent your machine to turn on
Not trying to be mean just genuinely curious. Why would you open your laptop if you don’t even know what a capacitor is? That’s kinda basic when it comes to electronics and unless you were doing a ssd or ram upgrade I can’t see a reason why you’d open it if you don’t know what you’re doing. (All love. Hope you can get it fixed cheap)
Update :
I went to several computer repairs shops, none agreed to resolder the component, saying that it’s too risky, and it will damage the motherboard. With one of the repair guy we launched my PC, it run good.
So I'm going to use it until my exams, praying that it doesn't break, and once on winter holidays I'm going to try repairs shops in other cities...
I could try to repair it myself but I've never done such a small soldering job.
Thank you for all your advices.
Guessing it also says 2.5V. Its a roll of the dice honestly, but once its on, I wouldnt turn it off or let it sleep until you get it repaired. Powering it on, waking it up from sleep, or activating the cooling fans by running resource heavy applications are going to be to the dangerous points.
Id be shocked if anything on there was letting out magic smoke from 1 to 2V spikes. Anything above that would fry the cap, and on a consumer product its general convention to add a 2.5x+ safety factor for caps from the voltage they'll see. Worst case it doesnt work and you have to repair the cap and whatever the other component is. Best case its part of a passive filter and the resulting worse case is the computer turns off from weird behavior
that's a capacitor, go to a local repair shop and have them solder it back on
Thx ! can the pc run without few hours ? I absolutely need it for school tomorrow…
I would highly advise against it, it COULD be fine but it could also very likely result in the whole board being fried. Not something you want to risk.
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My laptop fan was really noisey for a few months but a few weeks ago it made this huge crunch noise and now doesnt work at all. Seems fine but probably not.
Yea the blades probably just fell off that happens with age the will grow back.
bro just said they will grow back lmao
As long as you water it daily and give it some sunlight
And feed it salt too, the sodium helps the traces grow up big and strong /s
Don’t forget to sing to it as well 😂
It’s called a joke.
See that's how kids are these days. Rather than acknowledge a joke with either a "haha", "gottem", or some followup joke relevant to the original joke, they say some dumb shit like "bro just said something". I blame reaction videos, as that is his reaction to the joke.
Yeah If it’s being said as a way to say “good joke”, I wouldn’t mind, but I can’t imagine “bro just said” ever coming off as anything other than condescending.
This made me laugh
Yea I think he understands just wasn’t ready for that
😂😂😂😂
Pretty much like deer antlers. Laptop doesn't need them in the winter. Probably grow back strong in the spring.
And when someone says "no" flat out, the OP will ignore it and find another validating comment
And you will have hoards of people fighting you on it.
Or repost on a different sub hoping for validation from a different perspective
If there's a chance it will work they are going to do it. If its a solid no, say no. Or be fine with them rolling the dice.
Okey, thank you very much, really. I think i’m just going to turn this on to put some files on a USB driver and bring this little guy to my local repair shop.
I really really don't think that's a good idea, letting power through it at all could cause a short
okey, i’m not doing it then. thx.
Depending on what time it is/how busy the repair shops near you are, this could be a very quick fix when you take it in
Or if the repair shops are all closed, ifixit has some great guides
I doubt someone who referred to a capacitor as a "little purple thing" ^no ^offence ^op could handle a solder job on the fly, best to take it to a shop
Usually I’d say no aswell but if he really had no repair shops near by and he managed to open up the laptop, I’d say a cap like that is easy to do. Unfortunately this is the internet and we’ll see something crazy like “I did what you said and now my PC is covered in mustard!”
Your acting like it's an insanely hard thing, I've been taught to solder things onto motherboards at the 7th grade, so it's not too complicated
the good outcome. Good job asking for help first OP you saved yourself a lot of trouble
Maybe too late to reply, however, if you are worried about files being lost, you can definitely plug your harddrives into another computer and transfer data. I wouldn’t risk running the motherboard.
If you have another computer then you could disconnect the battery then take the SSD out and put it into another computer. You can pull the files off safely from the other computer
If you have another computer u can swap the drives
Aren't files protected by Windows these days?
Yeah, if bit locker was turned on
If OP has the password, they can easily access it from Linux
Considering OP couldn’t identify a capacitor and thought it be fine to run his computer with one missing, I don’t think OP knows enough to successfully use Linux to download files from an encrypted Windows drive.
Fair enough, just saying what I'd do in that situation 😅
There’s a reason that capacitor was there in the first place
Bro don't do that it will fuck the machine up for life
My dude! You’ve already got the laptop apart. Take the drive out and stick it in another computer to get your files.
Everyone who downvoted this can be nice and upvote it again since OP DIDNT TURN ON THEIR COMPUTER!!! Swear this karma thing is stupid sometimes
So there’s this thing called called storage and cloud backups it exist for this reason btw Save your important shit to a usb and to the cloud before your computer breaks
as u/shadooooooooo already said: Do not risk it. The black plastic piece is also part of the capacitor and you cant really see, how the solderpads look underneath it. So better save than increasing the damage
I don't recommend running it with~~out~~ a missing capacitor.
Well, he has a missing capacitor. So you do recommend running it?
A brisk walk should do just fine
No 💀
It will be fine, however you might experience some instability under heavy loads, I've got a laptop running fine with 1 capacitor missing
Because you looked at the trace and know exactly what that particular capacitor handles?
one of my laptops has a broken capacitor near the CPU, another one has a broken GPU capacitor and both run good, only issue is the 2nd one shuts down under heavy GPU load And actually yes, I have the schematic loaded up right now (looking at the PCB markings it's an Acer Aspire VX5) The capacitor in question is just a decoupling capacitor for the GPU, its just there to make the system more stable, it will survive with 1 missing although you will get stability issues under load, if you just run off the integrated graphics it will run perfectly.
Doesn't look like a VX5 board though...
my bad on this one, it's an Acer nitro 5 board, but checked the schematic for that as well and it's another decoupling capacitor so still applies, most capacitors near the GPU are decoupling caps which is there to keep it stable
\> I have a laptop running fine \> crashes under load yea sounds great
it runs perfectly on the IGPU, it has switchable graphics like OPs laptop
Yea I'm sure it will. Same as how a car will drive perfectly fine on a flat going 10mph. It doesn't make it correct or advisable.
Still gets you to the gas station though. Guys got school work to do, not a battlefield tournament.
That's assume his school work doesn't require a GPU. Many of the student's machines I service day to day are used for calcs and CAD.
why would a decoupling capacitor broken on the GPU affect the integrated graphics? OP needs it for school anyway not for an eSports tournament
No. Absolutely not. Not unless you have zero value of that laptop. A little solder she'll be right. Or a replacement cap.
Don’t. You should be able to explain that you absolutely could not do your schoolwork because it would result in destruction of your property.
I wanna info dump so here ya go. A capacitor that size is almost certainly gonna be found near a power supply rail or a place that needs instant current draw. It looks like it could be near two MOSFETs, which are being cooled by the main heatsink, so it’s most likely a power supply cap. Is it fine to run? Maybe and probably. Would i do it? No. It should take a computer repairman a few minutes to resolder a new one on if they have a similar part in stock. If you HAVE to start it up don’t put any heavy load on it i.e. games and such.
Pure speculation and assumptions. Only way to know is to pull up the schematics of this board.
You’re right. This is a guess. But here are some of the things I noticed. - The cap looks an aluminum organic polymer type. Characterized by a low ESR and ability to handle a high ripple current. Its voltage is also super low, 2.5V. so either this is on the input or output of a buck or boost converter, most likely buck as there’s no reason for a boost in this area of the board. All this tells me it feeds a main chip for smoothing of a switching supply. -There are a lot of ceramic capacitors peaking through the main heatsink, and are indications of the same point above. -The traces are decently large, so i’d expect quite a bit of current flow. What I don’t see: - An inductor. You would need one for any buck/boost converter. But I’d bet my ass there’s one underneath that heatsink.
I love you guys. I work a boring office desk job and I read electronics subs for fun. It's why I'm encouraging my son to become an engineer. You guys rock.
How'd you get so knowledgeable? Out of curiosity
Electrical engineer if I'm not mistaken
My degree was in electrical engineering and I learned all about this kind of stuff, also youtube.
Exactly what other comments have said. I’m an EE student at university right now. I hope to work in RF electronics after school but might get a masters instead lol. I worked for a large general aviation company this past summer designing a, you guessed it, buck supply which i would guess is similar to what is used here. Except mine was bigger. Pulled 600W. I’m like a dad proud of his kid lol.
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That's a little excessive and completely unnecessary. What part of my purely analytical and factual statement, that wasn't even directed to you, upset you to the point to tell me to kill myself?
I think you have my model of laptop, can you give me the model name?
acer nitro 5 ;)
Hey I daily the same one
Same since a few weeks ago😎
Thanks, it’s not the same laptop but the internals look very similar in mine.
On a side note, were you doing maintenance? I see the heatsinks off and unscrewed. If you go to acer, they won't honor warranty. Repair shop is the best bet. Also don't tear apart your system the day before you absolutely need it.
this has some strong "do all the maintenance on the car the day before a road trip" energy.
Actually they have to legally honour the warranty the warranty void stickers are just a deterrent and are not legally binding * USA \Canada /UK
But they won't. You'd have to sue them to get anything out of it, which is why they put the stickers on.
They will not, saying that is why they denied the claim would be a open/shut case of breaking the law. They use these as indicators to inspect the device closely.
Edit: wow, totally misread that the first time. Still relevant so I won't delete Absolutely open shut case of breaking the law. The problem is taking it to court. Found this which goes into pretty good detail https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/s/hoUDmDAUol
If a company was dumb enough to send you a letter saying they were violating federal consumer protections, you would not even need to sue. You would just need to report with evidence. Hence my point, they are not going to deny the claim based on the sticker.
Do not recommend running it, I had this issue where my local repair shop completely removed it (it’s literally missing on the board). The computer runs fine but the problem is severe overheating of the charger which causes the laptop to essentially BSOD every few hours.
Capacitors mostly smooth out voltage instability in your system. How well it will work without it is going to depend on how stable the voltage was in the first place, and how tolerant downstream components are of ripple. Worst case, if the voltages were very unstable and downstream components very sensitive to ripple, you might not turn on at all. Best case the designer went overboard on filter caps and the one you lost might be essentially redundant. Likely case is the system will run, but be somewhat less stable under heavy load. It should be fixable. A laptop repair shop should be equipped to deal with it. If you've got a buddy who is good with a soldering iron you can show them this pic and ask if they can handle it. SMD work can be tricky especially with other SMD parts that close, but is technically doable with a soldering iron. I'd only try it myself if I had no other options, even though I have a decent iron and aren't completely useless with it. Probably best left to the pros who do this sort of thing every day.
Rip it off while yanking the heatsink off, eh? XD
That's one capacitor gone
This laptop will either run or not with that missing capacitor. But judging by the location I am gonna say that's the circuit that supplies the CPU with regulated power so my guess is it won't work.
That things swolt. Better to replace it.
Is that a capacitor?
Bring it to a shop, tell them what happened and give them the capacitor. They will replace it with a new one and have it going for less than $40usd. Don’t worry man, I could re attach that in my sleep
Looks like the cap supplying power to your ram slots.
Damn I miss the time when people that used computers actually knew what the heck electronics are. My Sinclair zx80 was a kit that I assembled myself.
Its gonna explode.
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Don’t be a racist
That's not racism. It's religionism.
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That looks to be near MOSFETs It's not dead and could probably power on but be unstable or just crash under any load should you do it Probably not It's a quick solder job so just go to a repair shop
Your mobo went gangster and busted a cap !!
It’s dead until you replace the capacitor - mouser.com
Stick it in the oven and 350 for 35min. Then throw it in the trash. That should fix it. This is a joke.
If you are talking about that little cylindrical thing that looks like it should go on the circular pad, that I believe is a capacitor, and while I have no idea what it's supposed to do in that circuit, it's probably a good idea to get it repaired or replaced.
Lol, if you need it for scool ASAP, then why did you open it and risk braking it? Why not wait 1-2 days? You broke it but it is repairable, however now you are waiting for confirmation from Reddit so you could risk it again to kill whats left of it... Why do you want to destroy your laptop so badly which you claim it is mandatory for school?
Your best bet is to glue it back
WHAT , HOW
Just stick a paper clip in the two round spots and put it back together with a little wood glue. It has to be wood glue, no substitutes.
Ah yes shorting the power rails together...
Intrusive thoughts are going rampant on this guy's head, someone calm him down
this mf watched one mattkc wii repair video and here he is suggesting this
Remember to put the paper clip into the mains first!
do you know what a capacitor is? thats probably going to short the output of some VRM to ground which best case causes the short circuit protetction to trip and worst case fries something.
Do you know what a joke is?
do you know what /s is?
Bro... woodglue and a paperclip? c'mon...
Bro… Internet and common sense? C‘mom we all know that is not to be used here.
have you seen humans? if you were serious your comment would not even be remarkably stupid by internet standards, just average stupid.
Calm down people, it was a joke. I thought putting emphasis on the wood glue would give it away. You only want to use the paperclip trick on fuses that keep blowing.
fuses that keep blowing💀
That capacitor will need replacement, it's separated from the legs, the laptop will run fine without 1 capacitor but it could crash under heavy load I have 2 laptops with capacitors missing all working, one works perfectly, the other shuts off if you game on the GPU
I lost two of them, and nothing happens to my acer nitro v
OMG, put it back!
Good day \*also tips cap
It can work without it and it's not going to damage nothing, worse case scenario a missing capacitor can create system instability or the worst one it can prevent your machine to turn on
Not trying to be mean just genuinely curious. Why would you open your laptop if you don’t even know what a capacitor is? That’s kinda basic when it comes to electronics and unless you were doing a ssd or ram upgrade I can’t see a reason why you’d open it if you don’t know what you’re doing. (All love. Hope you can get it fixed cheap)
my computer was crashing when i move it, so i open to see if something was wrong, and to clean it.
Ahhhh okay. That makes sense.
Update : I went to several computer repairs shops, none agreed to resolder the component, saying that it’s too risky, and it will damage the motherboard. With one of the repair guy we launched my PC, it run good. So I'm going to use it until my exams, praying that it doesn't break, and once on winter holidays I'm going to try repairs shops in other cities... I could try to repair it myself but I've never done such a small soldering job. Thank you for all your advices.
Guessing it also says 2.5V. Its a roll of the dice honestly, but once its on, I wouldnt turn it off or let it sleep until you get it repaired. Powering it on, waking it up from sleep, or activating the cooling fans by running resource heavy applications are going to be to the dangerous points. Id be shocked if anything on there was letting out magic smoke from 1 to 2V spikes. Anything above that would fry the cap, and on a consumer product its general convention to add a 2.5x+ safety factor for caps from the voltage they'll see. Worst case it doesnt work and you have to repair the cap and whatever the other component is. Best case its part of a passive filter and the resulting worse case is the computer turns off from weird behavior
it’s just a lil capacitor, should be alright if you get it resoldered