Hello!

I have a motherboard with a few bad capacitors. They are 3300uF 6.3V (can't do the micro sign, I'm on my mobile.) I have 2200uF capacitors at home. Now I'm asking if I can replace the 3300uF capacitors with those 2200uF capacitors. Are they big enough? I have only general knowledge of electronics

Thanks all!

No you can't. If you do, you'll probably have ripple on the power lines. Bad idea.

Just go to radio shack and buy what you need.

If you have only general knowledge of electronics, who will do your repair? Proper desoldering technique is mandatory, as is proper soldering technique. Also, proper rosin-core elecdtronic solder. And pay attention to the polarity of those caps (I presume they are elecdtrolytics).

I know how to solder and desolder. Done it actually quite a lot. Unfortunately I don't have any component store near my hometown. That's why I was thinking if it would work with those 2200's. It would have spared me from "hunting".

Thanks a lot for your help!

USA is not the world!

This already makes me a bit worried; when you say they are bad, How do you know and how did this come about?

If the capacitors have visible leaks, make sure that you have cleaned up any electrolyte that has leaked onto the board.

And electrolytics normally only leak when they are pretty old, or have been abused (ripple current too high, temperature too high or reverse connected). So, what happened?

Well, you can. Just don't have high expectations of it working.I suspect capacitors of this size are in the power supply and if they are in the output of a switched mode power supply, ESR and ESL are as important as value. So, in an ideal world, you'd look up the ESR and ESL and ensure that you get capacitors that were similar to the originals. As you might have difficulty getting matching components, I suspect you'll be forced into trying something, which may or may not work. And they may or may not have a long life if they do, either for the same reason that the originals died, or because the ripple rating is inadequate.

Oh and watch out for the form factor; you wouldn't want to replace a radial capacitor with an axial one and have to use long, sprawling leads to connect to the board.

So, it might not be worth it.

Good luck.

Oh, and They will be, at that value. Non-polar caps run out into the low tens of microfarads.

I got the mainboard from my buddy, so I really don't know what's happened to it. For what I've heard it's quite usual nowadays for a mainboard to get it's capacitors broke. It has a few capacitors with visible leaks and others are bloated. The mainboard isn't that old... From Socket A times (5-9 years?). The capacitors are next to the processor socket. Probably they are just bad quality. I tried those 2200's. Didn't work. But doesn't really matter since I luckily found another board.

Thank you all for your help and advice.

you can double up on 2200 the tolerances on caps is -10% to +80% for electolitics or parallel them to equal 3300uf

Get low ESR/"switching supply rated" caps from someone like Mouser or DigiKey. Don't bother with anything Radio Shack has for sale.

Added:
Oh, it looks like you've abandoned this project. Never mind.