A capacitor 'mix-up' is inflicting some mini PCs to fail and it's giving me flashbacks to the nice capacitor plague of the early '00s
Some Minisforum mini PCs are being recalled because of incorrect capacitor supplies, however let me ease a minimum of some folks’s issues instantly. This downside would not apply to Minisforum mini gaming PCs. It applies solely to a selected batch of NAB9 mini PCs.
Minisforum explains (through VideoCardz) that the “potential difficulty” impacts “some NAB 9 Mini PC models manufactured between September 19, 2024, and March 14, 2025.” The NAB9 is not a gaming PC, because it lacks a devoted GPU and would not have an built-in GPU able to correct gaming.
The corporate continues: “In excessive circumstances, these gadgets might expertise startup failures, particularly irregular shutdowns or failure to energy on after a standard shutdown, with no indicator lights turning on. Our investigation revealed that this difficulty is because of a mix-up within the capacitor supplies equipped by our vendor for this batch.”
When you do have one among these mini PCs, you may examine if yours is affected by studying the serial quantity on the white label on the underside. If the third to fifth numbers are between 386 and 526, or between 017 to 117, and in the event you’re experiencing startup points, then you definitely is likely to be affected by this capacitor difficulty.
I am slightly sceptical of the vary that Minisforum suggests, although, as a result of after wanting into the NAB9 I discovered {that a} honest few on-line customers claimed to have had startup issues earlier than September 19 2024.
Though it looks like changing the CMOS battery helped these customers, this repair solely lasted a number of months earlier than the PCs would not boot once more. This may very well be a separate difficulty, in fact, nevertheless it does make me query whether or not the issue would possibly span wider than the timeframe Minisforum suggests.
At any price, in the event you suppose you are affected and your PC was manufactured in that point span, you may contact Minisforum (assist@minisforum.com) or submit a report “by the unique buy channel”, no matter meaning.
Affected models, the corporate says, will must be returned for verification, after which as soon as it is confirmed a alternative unit shall be shipped out to you with a further 12-month guarantee.
This would not be the primary time dodgy capacitors have brought on a problem for producers of electronics. They could be tiny, however choose the mistaken capacitors and it might shortly flip right into a disaster. One well-known occasion spanning the early 2000s, dubbed the ‘capacitor plague‘, noticed widespread points because of defective capacitors. Y2K by no means occurred, however this was very a lot an actual nightmare.
Oh, and in newer historical past, capacitors have been the seemingly wrongdoer for numerous points on some graphics playing cards, similar to EVGA’s RTX 3080.
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