/diy/ - Do It Yourself

there are 2 main difficulties in replacing caps. the first is that the negative terminal is connected to a lot of copper so it takes a long time to heat. with a 35W iron, it can take a minute. (1) dump a big blob of solder on the terminals, and angle the iron so you can heat both terminals at once, and pull off the cap with your other hand.

(2) cleaning the negative hole is a huge pain. the trick most likely to succeed is to stick a sewing needle into while heating it. then let if cool and pull out the needling by twisting.

you need to practice on actual motherboards, coz normal PCBs are a lot easier.