A capacitor ‘mix-up’ is causing some mini PCs to fail and it’s giving me flashbacks to the great capacitor plague of the early ’00s

2025-07-17 09:19:00
www.pcgamer.com

Some Minisforum mini PCs are being recalled due to incorrect capacitor materials, but let me ease at least some people’s concerns right away. This problem doesn’t apply to Minisforum mini gaming PCs. It applies only to a specific batch of NAB9 mini PCs.

Minisforum explains (via VideoCardz) that the “potential issue” affects “some NAB 9 Mini PC units manufactured between September 19, 2024, and March 14, 2025.” The NAB9 isn’t a gaming PC, as it lacks a dedicated GPU and doesn’t have an integrated GPU capable of proper gaming.

The company continues: “In extreme cases, these devices may experience startup failures, specifically abnormal shutdowns or failure to power on after a normal shutdown, with no indicator lights turning on. Our investigation revealed that this issue is due to a mix-up in the capacitor materials supplied by our vendor for this batch.”

If you do have one of these mini PCs, you can check if yours is affected by reading the serial number on the white label on the underside. If the third to fifth numbers are between 386 and 526, or between 017 to 117, and if you’re experiencing startup issues, then you might be affected by this capacitor issue.

I’m a little sceptical of the range that Minisforum suggests, though, because after looking into the NAB9 I found that a fair few online users claimed to have had startup problems before September 19 2024.

Minisforum AtomMan G7 Ti mini PC on wooden background

A Minisforum AtomMan G7 Ti mini PC. Neither this model nor the Venus UM790 Pro pictured at the top of the article are known to be affected. (Image credit: Future)

Although it seems like replacing the CMOS battery helped these users, this fix only lasted a few months before the PCs wouldn’t boot again. This could be a separate issue, of course, but it does make me question whether the problem might span wider than the time frame Minisforum suggests.

At any rate, if you think you’re affected and your PC was manufactured in that time span, you can contact Minisforum (support@minisforum.com) or submit a report “through the original purchase channel”, whatever that means.

Affected units, the company says, will need to be returned for verification, and then once it’s confirmed a replacement unit will be shipped out to you with an additional 12-month warranty.

This wouldn’t be the first time dodgy capacitors have caused an issue for manufacturers of electronics. They may be tiny, but pick the wrong capacitors and it can quickly turn into a catastrophe. One famous event spanning the early 2000s, dubbed the ‘capacitor plague‘, saw widespread issues due to faulty capacitors. Y2K never happened, but this was very much a real nightmare.

Oh, and in more recent history, capacitors were the likely culprit for various issues on some graphics cards, such as EVGA’s RTX 3080.

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