Poppin' Them Thangs...

In order to recondition an old Dell workstation for use as an OpenNMS server, parts were harvested from several other machines that were lying around. During the process of testing the various memory modules on offer, the machine had to be powered off and on repeatedly and, after a while, it simply ceased to display any output on the attached monitor.

Attempts to reseat the graphics card didn't have any affect and upon closer inspection, it was clear the graphics card was dead:



As you can see from the image of the card in question, the capacitors have clearly "popped"; their tops are bulging outwards. Also, you can see that the electrolyte has vented through the top of the capacitor in the centre of the image.

Luckily, there were plenty of other machines lying around to harvest parts from!