An article to understand "advantages" and "cons" of solid capacitors

The dielectric of liquid electrolytic capacitors is a liquid electrolyte. Liquid particles are very active at high temperature and create pressure inside condenser. Its boiling point is not very high, so it can explode.

Solid capacitors use polymer dielectrics. At high temperatures, solid particles are less active than liquid electrolytes in terms of particle expansion and activity. Its boiling point reaches 350 degrees Celsius, making it almost impossible to explode. Theoretically, solid capacitors are almost impossible to explode.

Compared with traditional electrolytic capacitors, solid capacitors have better performance in terms of equivalent series resistance. According to tests, equivalent series resistance of solid capacitors is extremely small when operating at high frequencies, and conductivity is especially good at frequencies. which has ability to reduce electrical impedance and lower thermal power characteristics, most evident between 100 kHz and 10 MHz.

▲ Solid Capacitor

Traditional electrolytic capacitors are more affected by temperature and humidity of working environment and are somewhat less stable at high and low temperatures. Even at minus 55 to 105 degrees Celsius, impedance of solid capacitors ESR (equivalent series resistance) can be between 0.004 and 0.005 ohms, but electrolytic capacitors change with temperature.

▲ Electrolytic Capacitor

In terms of capacitance value, liquid capacitors at temperatures below 20 degrees Celsius will have a lower capacitance value than marked capacitance value, and lower temperature, capacitance value will also decrease accordingly. %, and capacity reaches 37% at minus 55 degrees Celsius.

Of course, this does not affect normal users, but for players who use liquid nitrogen for final overclocking, solid capacitors can ensure that capacitance of capacitor will not affect temperature drop, resulting in stable overclocking. discount because capacitance value of solid capacitors will drop less than 5% at minus 55 degrees. Solid capacitors have many advantages, but they are not always applicable.

The low frequency performance of solid capacitors is not as good as that of electrolytic capacitors. If they are used in parts related to sound effects, they will not get best sound quality. In other words, it is not necessary to use solid capacitors for motherboard!

Whether it is a solid state capacitor or an electrolytic capacitor, their main function is to filter out interference. Therefore, as long as capacitance of capacitor meets a certain numerical requirement, and quality of its components is in line with standard, it can also ensure that motherboard runs stably. And this, electrolytic capacitors also know how!

When a solid capacitor is kept at 105 degrees Celsius, its service life is same as that of an electrolytic capacitor for 2,000 hours. After lowering temperature, their service life increases, but service life of solid capacitor increases to a greater extent. As a rule, operating temperature of capacitor is 70 degrees or less.

Currently, service life of solid capacitors can reach 23 years, which is almost 6 times longer than electrolytic capacitors! But... will your motherboard be usable in 23 years? And these 23 years refer to 24 hours a day, even if capacitor has such a long life, other components may not last 23 years!

Compared with electrolytic capacitors, capacitance of electrolytic capacitors is much larger than that of solid capacitors at same volume and voltage. Solid capacitors are used in most parts of computer motherboard CPUs these days. Although tearing problem is avoided, due to volume limitation, redundancy power is very small, in addition, due to capacity problems, it is necessary to increase switching frequency of CPU power part.

Both solid capacitors and electrolytic capacitors will experience capacitance decay problems during use. However, if solid capacitors are used on PCB, slight capacitance fluctuations can cause ripple in power supply and cause processor to fail to operate normally. . Therefore, in theory, service life of solid capacitors is very long, but service life of boards using solid capacitors may be short.

Maintenance of computer boards using solid capacitors: Since CPU power supply is often connected in parallel with several capacitors, solid capacitors do not warp, explode, or leak. In event of a failure, one of these (good or bad) is often removed during maintenance and replaced with a large capacitor (electrolytic capacitors can be used in many cases). This method can usually fix problem quickly.

Theoretically, service life of solid capacitors is very high, but in actual use, many faults still occur. The author has many times encountered problems with failure of capacitors during maintenance.

Currently, most overclocking motherboards from many manufacturers will use solid capacitors. The statement that "solid-capacitor motherboards are better for overclocking" is hardly true, and it's not capacitors that make difference in overclocking.

The circuit design, BIOS design, quality of CPU itself, and heat dissipation measures can determine success or failure of an overclock. So it cannot be said that "replacing conventional electrolytic capacitors on motherboard with solid capacitors can improve overclocking performance of motherboard", this statement is completely wrong!

If you really want to talk about the impact of solid capacitors on overclocking, it's because they have higher voltage and temperature tolerances, so they provide some guarantee of system stability after overclocking.