Dying admin computers

russellhltn · #1

Like many folks, our whole stake got computers when the church announced the new 5-year plan. We got Dell Optiplex GX270. Now at the 4 year mark, they are starting to die. They symptoms are the machines will suddenly power off. No warning, no message. It's as if you turned off the power strip. Then when it boots up, the very first message is something about "the last shutdown was due to a thermal event". Not likely when the machine has been off for hours and it was only on for 10 seconds.

When I called Dell on the first one, they had me look at the capacitors on the back side of the CPU to see if the tops were "bulging". They were slightly. Diagnosis: new motherboard. I got a price and after checking with CHQ and FM group, went and ordered a new board as a repair even though the price was a little over the $150 mark (About $178 I think.)

Last week, another computer died same thing. Only now I'm told the motherboard is $263. Too high. New computer ordered.

Now today, another computer died. Same symptoms. So that's 3 out of 9 machines for a 33% failure rate (so far). I get the feeling that few months is going to be interesting .....

RossEvans · #2

RussellHltn wrote:Like many folks, our whole stake got computers when the church announced the new 5-year plan. We got Dell Optiplex GX270. Now at the 4 year mark, they are starting to die. They symptoms are the machines will suddenly power off. No warning, no message. It's as if you turned off the power strip. Then when it boots up, the very first message is something about "the last shutdown was due to a thermal event". Not likely when the machine has been off for hours and it was only on for 10 seconds......

At my workplace, before our recent PC refresh acquisition, we were all equipped with Optiplexes of the same vintange. We became very familiar with this symptom: "Thermal event" --> new motherboard.

Ours were covered under an extended third-party service contract. Somebody ate a lot of expense.

russellhltn · #3

I saw this article about year after we got our PCs. I should have followed up to see if Dell would replace things then. I did talk to the rep who told me Dell did have an extended replacement for that board but it expired at the beginning of the year. I guess that's what we get for only using them on Sundays.

Hmmm, what's this? An interesting site I saw advertised in the article. http://www.capacitorrepair.com $50 repair and $100 to buy a board. I wonder how responsive they are? Decisions, decision....

#4

Russel, the PC industry has been plagued with failing capacitors for almost a decade now and it seems there's no end in site. I've repaired several motherboards for pennies in parts, but replacing parts on a multi-layer PCB is not as easy task.

The GX270 has been a well documented problem for Dell. Follow any of the following links for more info...

http://www.google.com/search?q=GX270+bad+caps