NetGear WGR614v1 router

[trodas]

Once upon a time - okay 10. 6. 2006 - I got f*cking furious!

Two years ago I bought two NetGear WGR 614 v1 routers. One I used 24/7 with 4 devices + two eight port NetGear switchers and one I borrowed to friend, who use it less with only 3 computers. Port 4 not used on "his". I never had any reall issues with them, yet...

Yesterday I talked on ICQ with Big Pope about caps and stuff, and my connection went down. I assumed that this is my ISP again, and don't worried too much about it - there is lot's offline work too, so... Anyway, since the connection won't kick even in next morning, I rebooted few times cablemodem (but ping on router and then cablemodem was good) and finally I rebooted router, witch seems to be working good, yet still... And connection kick for a while AND there was again a problem on port 4 of the 4 port switcher output part of the router!

When I stated earlied in the that I did not have any issues with my WGR614 v1 I did not wanted to elaborate on one problem, that I had and never be able to figure it out, so I won't listed it as problem.
That was - about half or 3/4 year after purchase and install the router become losing sometimes (!) connection on port 4 - I would say the least powered port then. I thought - bad contact. Cleaned, bend the contact to make better contact, inspected again, again measured cables, put new connectors at them again and again... and no help at all.
But suddently - he always did it after some fiddling - the port 4 kicked back in and worked for month's w/o signle issue. Hmmm.



So, I remembered one unhappy complainin user with WGR 614 v4 and his bad caps inside of it and in hurry I opened the router to check out what NetGear come up in v1 - and !DAMN! - these are Tocon caps! Yep, similar "grade" as G-Luxon, GSC, Evercon, Fuhjyyu and other "worsest of the worse"....





I got a bit more furious and - checked the Pannyes stock of mine. Well, their 470uF 16V ones are 16mm high. There is no more that 12, maybe 13 mm space. So, I checked out and whoa, Samxons GD 470uF 16V fit well.
It should be noted that there are two 470uF ones and two 330uF ones - these are 25V rated, tough there is no 25V on them - nowhere near, 16V ones is more that enought there... I recapped all with 4x 470uF 16V Samxons GD and - turned the router on/off at least 20 times today w/o a glitch - eg. it never lost again the connection on port 4.



I should be happy - after all, 5min of work or something? And problem is gone for good. But all I feel is growing anger at the NetGear designer, who used such caps - Tocons are well-known for his failing - in fact, that is the only one thing one can count on them...

And how the price could increase, if there are used proper caps, like Rubycons, Nichicons or Samxons - when the Panasonic ones are out of question as Panasonic don't make small-enought 470uF ones...?

Now, 470uF 16V Pannyes at http://digi-key.com cost 0.116$ in 1000 pieces volume and I bet NetGear produced much more that 250 units, so their price will be far lowr for sure.
(when one want 25000 of them, it cost only 0.09289 then for general public, NetGear sure could negotiate even lower price...)

Come on, this is four caps per unit and the damn cursed Tocons gotta cost something!

So, I take it, that for NO REASONS NetGear rob their customers by using known bad brand of caps in their units and I bet countless of users pay by their time like me, trying to figure out WTF is going on with their router - I must consider myself happy, no major problems, but I also did not used much the WiFi part, mostly disabled it, so...


Anyway, since the unit run pretty hot, I decided that it is time for better cooling holes that these very little ones NetGear made:





Hope you like my work, guys

[ECHO]

I do!


I have 2 very similar netgear units at home, both died at the same time. I ended up just shoving them in their boxes and giving up (couldn't be bothered chasing the warranty).

I wonder if replacing the caps would breath new life into them ... hrmmm ...

[sammy_b0i]

ive got a dg834g that drops the connection randomly every few days. after a hard reboot, or even sometimes a soft reboot from the modem page, it works fine again. Hmm..

[Scotty_DDR]

sorry not sure if i got what the problem with the modem was, were u sayin that the connecters where you plug in the RJ-45 jacks were dropping connection constantly? it is interesting cos i have a non wireless netgear modem/router that drops connection often on some jacks and i've forever been blaming the cables.

anyway great result!

[TMM]

Yep, pretty funny really how manufacturers skimp on a few parts to save a couple of dollars only to give them self a really bad image...

[-KoMoD0-]

Netgear make shit products anyway, even d-link are much better

I dont understand either why they use shit caps, its only going to cost them in warranty and PR costs down the road

[trodas]

ECHO - I wonder too, but since you did not have anymore them, we can't try... I would bet yes, but... we can't prove it anymore. I would certainly ask Big Pope for some caps to this testing and he sure donate them to good case


sammy_b0i - open it, and check out what caps you got. Then I can help you - or, I can tell you, if this can be the caps and what ones to get there (for that I need their dimensions and awailable space there, of course)


Scotty_DDR - it was rouer, modem is fine. Motorola 4200 and now 5100 used. And yes, on the port4 are the connection often dropped. As you, I was blaming cables, re-crimping them (luckily I got the tools) repeatedly and cleaning the connector and cursing...
And exactly as for you, it never helped. Yep, we are likely on same boat. Open yours (what it is?) and like previous poster, tell us what caps your unit use. I almost willing to bet that something like Teapo, GSC or similar "Tocon" (Jamicon, Taicon...) pop out and we then know for sure.
Mind you, like my Tocons, the cap can look perfectly on the outside!


TMM - well, now it is funny. But when I discovered that, wow, I was MAD And I mean really mad. I was about to kill the responsible person... wait, killing is not enought...
That really suxx and for 4 caps there is no reason to do it... Unless they want promote their sales making the units self-terminate after some time...


-KoMoD0- - well, I miss some features, but other than that - I can't complain since I exchanged the caps, I can't say one bad word about it
Clearly a better firmware could do wonders, but... look at my uptime:


(hours:minutes:seconds - so, 108 days )

And yep, the person responsible for using Tocons shall end up by nailing to cross by nuts...

[bleckers]

Does anyone know where the screw is located to remove the case on the dg834gv2. Or possibly on other models?

[ener]

check behind stickers, and little rubber matts

[Kaine[zof]]

now i'm having evil thoughts about replacing caps in my flatmate's router to try and get better sync speeds. we should be getting about twice what we are.

[Captain-Nasty]

Yeah my exact same router died about 3 months ago. I didnt know it was the caps i did open it up but couldnt tell what was wrong. Its sitting here now.

And yes im friggin angry at the quality control of netgear. Will not be buying another unit made by them as long as i live.

[trodas]

I see I was not wrong - it is the caps. If it was just me, then it not need to be the caps, but seem that they used bad caps in almost everything they made, so, people can expect "great things" happening to them...

Kaine[zof] - ROFL Carefully there. You gotta use quality caps (Samxons GD/GC, Rubycon MCZ or Panny FM only) and first at all, make sure witch caps are there. If they are known bad ones and in witch state they are. Might help and also might not.
My Abit ST6-R used Teapos. Need 1.650, then 1.675Vcore for 120 x 14 Tualatin, then died. Teapos replaced with Panny FM, vcore need drop to 1.625V. I reversed one, other get slightly damaged, coil noise, etc. Replaced with Samxon GC, no noise, Vcore can go down to 1.600V with still (of course) the same O/C Draw your own conclusions.

Captain-Nasty -

im friggin angry at the quality control of netgear. Will not be buying another unit made by them as long as i live

Quality control have nothing to do with this. The person responsible for choosing caps are. Quality control can fix bugs that are eminent. Not these, that will happen in year or so (usualy more) of service
It is not like me defending them (why I should, right?) but just making sure you point your anged at the right person.
Second to that, not buying anything from them as long as you live - consider one thing. In for example PSU bussines, there is, except Zippy and only the server edition (the Gamers edition are not good enought) have use only the known GOOD caps. All other companies (and that include Enermax, Antec and so on) use KNOWN BAD CAPS in their PSUs.

My point is, that with the current state of things there are almost no good caps used. Ever. Hence the other company (you will favor to Netgear) is likely to use bad caps too... At lest NetGear is easily fixable and your router can work like a new - oh, wait, better that new
Getting caps - for example for PSUs imputs, are challenge. Some Panny TS-ED snap-in are good, but the diameter is always a problem...

[chatmaster]

Well i dont know where your getting your info from for PSU's but ive got a antec 550Watt here thats been going strong for 3 and a half years. Havent heard of any going belly up. Netgear on the other hand fall over more than ten pins.

[unixyk]

I think he's referring to the new Antec PSU's, pieces of shit! I have an old Antec which I've had for nearly 4 years and it's still going strong, a new version of the same model I got lasted a month before it crapped itself (Cap related too)

[trodas]

chatmaster - my informations are based on first-hand experiences and reviews that open and check the PSU for used components. Hence I know, that no consumer PSU is using good caps these days.
Not even my Enermax 620W Liberty. Simply not. OST are bad caps, just to take one easy example related to Enermax. They are China-made from stolen formula and they dry inside...

If you haven't heard about any bad Antec PSU, then I suspect you did not hear much... Antecs are infamous for dying. Look, I bought Antec NEO PSU. It was first one with configurable cabling and stuff. Great reviews and stuff. However in just year the Fuhjyyu caps DESTROYED MY DFI LP B mainboard! The imput Vcore caps (right after the 12V CPU power connector) EXPLODED with lout boom and the DFI LP B mobo died on me!
(to put it short - you pick wrong person to convince me about Antec reliability)

Maybe you did not stress your Antec much? I was running at 2600 - 2700Mhz and folding all day long... + gaming and 6800GT is a hell of requirment to power... So, my expensive Antec teach me a lesson. Fuhjyyu caps are really inferior. Todays they use OST and Teapo caps. Both well-known infamous bad caps, however these are the "good ones" from the bad caps... So, take your luck. I will recap rather that losing my precious moded mainboards again, thanks to inferior crap-caps in PSUs.


unixyk - I did not believe Antec anymore and my research find out that there is no PSU with good caps - except these get recapped by their owners. BTW, the Antec NEO PSU, after recap with Samxon caps, has like 2x better specs in ripple on load that Enermax 620W Liberty...
So the Antec is, in fact, pretty good. But only recapped