Capacitors are a very inexpensive part of a computer motherboard but if they start to fail they can cause all sorts of problems with the system that you might thing is related to something other than the motherboard. Reciently Dell has announced that they will be taking a $300 million financial charge on there earnings to cover the replacement of motherboards with faulty capacitors in some of there Optiplex workstations manufactured in April 2003 to March 2004.

Dell isn't the only manufacture to have this problem HP and Apple Computers have also experienced this type of problem. For the complete article go here:
http://news.com.com/PCs+plagued+by+bad+capacitors/2100-1041_3-5942647.html?tag=nefd.lede

I've only run into this problem once, a few years ago with an poorly designed Gigabyte MB. Had too few, and was replaced by a better designed revision.

I haven't run into this....hope i never do.