New logic board for older G5 iMacs with bad capacitors

Mar 17, '09 07:30:01AM

Contributed by: rbenezra

Not so much a hint, but a suggestion which hopefully will help someone else. My iMac G5 (1.8 GHz, 2005 model) started having frequent kernel panics which I quickly realized was hardware related, as it persisted when booted from an external drive. When I opened the machine, I saw the dreaded bulging capacitors.

This was a known issue with a defect in the manufacturing of these capacitors, and Apple had a program to replace the motherboards when the capacitors failed. As I learned when I called the Apple rep, the program just ended in January and there was "nothing to be done." As I explained to the rep, I was being penalized for my machine lasting a bit longer than others, which made no sense. In fact, since there was no recall issued, I couldn't get my machine repaired before it failed, so Apple really had no choice in my opinion but to replace the defective motherboards. The rep agreed, and set up an appointment for my free replacement.

Hope this helps someone else who machine fails in the near future.

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