MS-6330 diagnostic LED error

Thanks Michel

There is no obvious damage, but C171 & C172 (by the AGP socket) have very slight browning and the top is very slightly convex compared to other capacitors.

The fault first occurred about a week earlier, but disappeared when I moved the RAM & network card to a different slot. The fault has now returned and is permanent. I've tried using a PCI graphics card in place of the AGP but see the same fault. When starting from cold I get the initial BIOS display page but then it locks up. If I retry without leaving it powered down for a few minutes then I get no display at all.

Capacitor problem does seem likely. I've never replaced a soldered component on a mobo, but am willing to give it a try if you think it may help. It's either that or a new mobo, I guess!

Thanks once again,
Peter
 >> Stay informed about: MS-6330 diagnostic LED error 

Coincidentally, I seem to have the same problem.

Have you been able to fix the capacitors?

Is there any reason to suspect that any other capacitors may fail in the future as well? MSI seems to have been in a lawsuit for this:

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=195
 >> Stay informed about: MS-6330 diagnostic LED error 

No, I haven't done anything with it yet. I'm now pretty certain that it is the capacitors but have done some research on the web and found that it's a pretty common occurrence with boards from certain manufacturers at that time - probably due to a bad batch of components with faulty electrolyte. The advice given is that all capacitors on the board should be changed as others may be on the point of failure.
I don't feel confident enough to be able to replace these myself without damaging the board so my choices are either finding a local company that will do it for a reasonable charge or buying a new board. I've tried a few bids for similar used boards on eBay, but don't want to go very high as they are not guaranteed to work and, even if they do, they also may suffer from bad capacitors before very long.
I'll probably end up going for a new board, but some of the existing components will have to be replaced; for example all new boards have DDR memory.
So, that's my position. I'm using an older, slower PC at present while dabbling on eBay. Any suggestions from this group will be very welcome!
 >> Stay informed about: MS-6330 diagnostic LED error 

As I've got nothing to lose -- my recently upgraded pc133 ram wouldn't work on a new board, and the same holds true for my matrox g400 agp2x videocard -- I'm currently trying to replace the capacitors myself. I've been able to extract them from the board pretty easily, and I hope to find the right capacitors in an electronics store on Monday. I'll let you know what the outcome is.
 >> Stay informed about: MS-6330 diagnostic LED error 

Good point; I'm in the same position with PC133 & AGP card so I'll do the same thing. Again, I'll let you know how I get on!
 >> Stay informed about: MS-6330 diagnostic LED error 

Okay, then you should certainly check out http://www.badcaps.net. Loads of information there.
 >> Stay informed about: MS-6330 diagnostic LED error 

Okay, it took some soldering but it works. I replaced the two bad capacitors near the agp slot and the motherboard seems to be stable again. No visible damage to any hardware as yet, I'm going to check my memory with memtest86 but I'm writing this on my Windows XP partition without any blue screens this far so it seems to be okay.

I'm not replacing the other capacitors yet, I'll see if my system remains stable. Some of the 1000µF 6.3V caps seem to be bulging a little, but nothing to worry about I think. My electronics supplier told me that the 2700µF are more prone to failure.

I'm not very experienced at soldering so if you've got two hands that are not too clumsy, you could probably fix this yourself too. It only took me some research at http://www.badcaps.net -- all is explained in detail there -- , some work and 5 euros.

Good luck!
 >> Stay informed about: MS-6330 diagnostic LED error 

I'm very pleased that it worked for you. Sadly mine is still showing a (different) fault now, so my soldering technique can't be as good as yours, although I did try to follow the advice on http://www.badcaps.net.
I was not able to find any 2700µF capacitors so tried with the nearest that I could get - 2200µF. That could be part of the reason for my further problem, although the guy in the shop thought it should be OK.
It was worth a try; the capacitors were less than £2!
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Seems that I've cheered too early. The mobo stopped working again in plain action. The same symptoms: no boot, blank screen after a few seconds and no hd activity. The combination of diagnostic leds is different each time. I'm beginning to suspect that my PSU may be too light for my system, though the same problems occurs in a minimal configuration (no hd, network or sound cards etc).

Some of the small caps are bulging a little too (the 1000µF ones). I think I'm going to replace all of the caps if it's not too expensive.
 >> Stay informed about: MS-6330 diagnostic LED error 

Sorry that you still have problems. I've given up on my MS-6330, as I may have caused further problems, and bought a used Gigabyte GA-7ZXE board on eBay. Caps look OK (so far) and the board works fine with my CPU, RAM & AGP card etc.
 >> Stay informed about: MS-6330 diagnostic LED error