Mainboard condensators look quite bad .....
 

Hi,

I was just wondering... Is it normal for a 1 year old mainboard (used WITHOUT any overclocking, VIA kt400) to have many faulty looking condensators (electrolyte condensators, those that r near the main CPU on both sides of it). I counted at least 3 that looked like their top has opened and became brownish, but nothing seems to be leaking, at least not yet.. The other 1s are still shiny, metallic in colour.

I admit that ive used the 2.4 kernel with such preferences that it drove the hardware to its peak... Now I have 2.6 kernel and mdk 10. and I decided to turn on most of the power saving features such as ACPI and processor idling features.. Do you think this would stop the corrosion before its too late???

No

you need to change the caps as soon as possible
be very careful (I assume that it's out of warranty) as the board will have tracks running in the middle of it

not only wiil you have corrosion problems. you will proberly have a very unstable board

The dreaded faulty capacitor syndrome, again!!!

Some capacitors are known to literally have a flawed electrolyte formula.
Some motherboards are reportedly well known to use cheapo capacitors!!!

http://badcaps.net