Dell Won’t Recall Defective Motherboards

Ed Foster writes on his Gripelog, “”We are not a very large company, but we have nearly two hundred Dell GX270 small form factor PCs,” a reader wrote recently. “This is an information business that we’re in, so we depend on these systems to get our work done and keep revenue coming in the door. Earlier this year we began to experience problems such as random reboots and power-downs with some of the GX270s. At first we thought it might be a virus or spyware outbreak, but we eventually realized what we were experiencing is a systemic problem with Dell’s motherboard. There’s an issue with the capacitors that cause them to start ‘bulging’ and then eventually burst.”

As has been well documented on DSL Reports and elsewhere, PCs from a number of manufacturers suffer from this “bulging capacitor” problem, but a batch of GX270 motherboards seem to be especially prone to failure. The wide range of symptoms can mimic power supply, fan, monitor, RAM and disk drive problems, so just identifying the true source is difficult. Once he discovered what was going on, though, the reader found Dell more than willing to replace the motherboards that had clearly gone bad, and replacing them always eliminated the problems.”

[Continue reading Dell Won't Recall Defective Motherboards]