February 2012
I found hundreds of caps inside a broken computer I’ve taken apart, but have no idea what they are all used for. I know that they store energy, however, I want to hear what you can do with them.
Is it just timing and smoothing? I’m looking to create circuits, and am puzzled by them.
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Old circuit boards are very useful for parts to build new projects. The motherboard caps are small with good capacity however you should check each capacitor for the correct value before using it! A common failure mode for motherboards is/are the capacitors swelling and going bad or venting.
One can use capacitors for filtering a power supply, bypassing an IC, in timing circuits or isolating a higher voltage. You can also use a large value capacitor to clear the shorting whiskers in a Ni-Cad battery. MUCH better than shorting out your power supply!
