<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>eurasiantiger</author><text>Low ESR only matters for PWM filtering capacitors, such as those found in monitor backlight drivers and some switching power supplies’ secondary circuits.&lt;p&gt;It is not necessary to use such capacitors on the primary side, i.e. when the large capacitor nearest to the mains input dies, just replace it with a normal electrolytic capacitor that matches or exceeds the original’s voltage rating and closely matches its capacity.</text><parent_chain><item><author>squarefoot</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve repaired several TVs and monitors, LED lamps, etc. just by replacing bad capacitors, and in a few cases some diodes too, so it&amp;#x27;s worth trying especially on electronics that would otherwise be thrown away. If you see a TV&amp;#x2F;monitor going off randomly or a LED lamp starts flashing, pretty sure there are one or more defective capacitors in there.&lt;p&gt;Defective capacitors are a common plague in modern electronics, and the culprit is always the capacitor: the market is literally invaded by rubbish quality capacitors, and swapping a bad quality one with another bad quality one guarantees it will fail again one day, so buy only reputable parts from reputable vendors; avoid online purchases of branded parts from unknown resellers (pretty sure that 99.999% of Nichicon or ELNA capacitors sold by any Aliexpress, Ebay, Amazon, etc. sellers are relabeled fakes); pay them more but pay them once.
A web&amp;#x2F;image search for &amp;quot;counterfeit capacitors&amp;quot; works better than 1000 words.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, when shopping for (hopefully genuine) electrolytic capacitors, respect also the temperature ratings. Capacitors mounted into a power supply are exposed to higher temperatures, so always choose the 105c degrees type. Capacitance is usually not critical; electrolytic capacitors accuracy can be worse than 20%, and that&amp;#x27;s not a problem because they&amp;#x27;re not required to be accurate for their job, so if you don&amp;#x27;t find the exact value, you can safely swap the part with one with slightly higher capacitance; same for the rated operating voltage which can be higher (not lower!). Low ESR rated ones are preferred; if you can, buy them instead of generic ones.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>A VGA monitor may be easier to repair than you think</title><url>https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/09/06/how-to-repair-vga-monitor-flatron-w1934s/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>yitchelle</author><text>&amp;gt; the market is literally invaded by rubbish quality capacitors, and swapping a bad quality one with another bad quality one guarantees it will fail again one day&lt;p&gt;Actually, even a quality capacitor will fail eventually, just not as early as the fake ones. As you have mentioned about the heat, the capacitor will be exposed to it and will fail because of it.</text><parent_chain><item><author>squarefoot</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve repaired several TVs and monitors, LED lamps, etc. just by replacing bad capacitors, and in a few cases some diodes too, so it&amp;#x27;s worth trying especially on electronics that would otherwise be thrown away. If you see a TV&amp;#x2F;monitor going off randomly or a LED lamp starts flashing, pretty sure there are one or more defective capacitors in there.&lt;p&gt;Defective capacitors are a common plague in modern electronics, and the culprit is always the capacitor: the market is literally invaded by rubbish quality capacitors, and swapping a bad quality one with another bad quality one guarantees it will fail again one day, so buy only reputable parts from reputable vendors; avoid online purchases of branded parts from unknown resellers (pretty sure that 99.999% of Nichicon or ELNA capacitors sold by any Aliexpress, Ebay, Amazon, etc. sellers are relabeled fakes); pay them more but pay them once.
A web&amp;#x2F;image search for &amp;quot;counterfeit capacitors&amp;quot; works better than 1000 words.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, when shopping for (hopefully genuine) electrolytic capacitors, respect also the temperature ratings. Capacitors mounted into a power supply are exposed to higher temperatures, so always choose the 105c degrees type. Capacitance is usually not critical; electrolytic capacitors accuracy can be worse than 20%, and that&amp;#x27;s not a problem because they&amp;#x27;re not required to be accurate for their job, so if you don&amp;#x27;t find the exact value, you can safely swap the part with one with slightly higher capacitance; same for the rated operating voltage which can be higher (not lower!). Low ESR rated ones are preferred; if you can, buy them instead of generic ones.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>A VGA monitor may be easier to repair than you think</title><url>https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/09/06/how-to-repair-vga-monitor-flatron-w1934s/</url></story>