Capacitor help: smaller cap uf value than factory part?

ifkz

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Capacitor help: smaller cap uf value than factory part?

On one of my game boards I took a chance and put a 1uf 16V cap in place of a 10uf 16V tantalum cap that had exploded before I got it. The 1uf cap seems fine, it has been running for hours as I played the game. I learned of the proper value a day ago.

In general would it cause any long term damage to components to just keep the 1uf cap on the board? It seems fine, no explosions, smoke, leakage, etc.
 
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It's probably one of the filter caps on the edge of the board, a lot of times there's a bunch of them and you don't even need all of them. So it could be that you just swapped out one that wasn't 100% crucial anyways. Long term, since the proper cap only costs about 4 cents I'd probably definately swap it out with the right one, lol.
 
On one of my game boards I took a chance and put a 1uf 16V cap in place of a 10uf 16V tantalum cap that had exploded before I got it. The 1uf cap seems fine, it has been running for hours as I played the game. I learned of the proper value a day ago.

In general would it cause any long term damage to components to just keep the 1uf cap on the board? It seems fine, no explosions, smoke, leakage, etc.

It depends what its function is on the board. However, the general rule is that you should always replace with the same capacitance value, and the voltage rating must be at least equal to the existing rating (it can be more though - depends who you ask, but I often read that up to double the original voltage is okay).
 
On one of my game boards I took a chance and put a 1uf 16V cap in place of a 10uf 16V tantalum cap that had exploded before I got it. The 1uf cap seems fine, it has been running for hours as I played the game. I learned of the proper value a day ago.

In general would it cause any long term damage to components to just keep the 1uf cap on the board? It seems fine, no explosions, smoke, leakage, etc.

I'd put the correct one on there. Depending on what the cap is for, it may well not matter at all (filter or buypass caps, for instance), but it might be something that will matter in another 5 or 10 years when other components degrade and this one being off suddenly makes the difference.

Also, future work won't have to wonder why the heck the wrong cap value is in there and spend time chasing down whether that's a problem or not.
 
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