Recently Dell recently discovered potential problems with a capacitor on the system board of GX270 systems with medium and small form factor motherboards. The problem is isolated to a specific capacitor supplier which was used in system boards manufactured from April 2003 to March 2004. The defective Nichon capacitors were placed on two manufacturers' GX270 motherboards between 04/01/2003 to 03/20/2004.

However we have discovered that the Nichon capacitors were not all produced outside control specifications. Rather the affected capacitors were limited to certain batches made during specific shifts during the manufacturing process. This means that not all GX270 motherboards are affected. Unfortunately, there is not specific way to determine which motherboards are affected and which are not.

Specifically the capacitors were filled with more liquid than required. After an approximate service life of 300 days and when the CPU reaches a core temperature of 64 degrees C they will begin to bulge and eventually overflow onto the motherboard causing a system crash and a "No Post" failure on boot. There is usually no data loss associated with this issue.

Dell became aware of the problem in the last several weeks based on high numbers of customer tech support calls related to the GX270 motherboard failures. Because of the extremely long time lag between system install and the beginning of the failure rate spike it was impossible to anticipate the problem we now face. In response to our engineering research regarding the suspect capacitors and motherboards, we have decided to proactively replace GX-270 motherboards at specific customer locations.

The GX270 motherboards have not been made in the past year and our on hand reserves required for normal fix on fail warranty repairs have been strained. We have arranged for these motherboards to be remanufactured however that process takes time to ramp up. Delivery of sufficient numbers of boards to move forward with proactive field replacement is not anticipated for some weeks.