When I read "Dell Optiplex GX270," my memory tickled and I looked it up. Just as I thought. I used to be a field tech for a service company around 2007 and 2008. I remember having to swap the motherboard for a bunch of those computers in grocery stores. Same problem every time; popped capacitors.

Grocery stores run by Nash Finch, on the other hand (Sunmart, if you're in Nebraska) had old NCR POS terminals from the early 1980s. These were some of the very first computerized point of sale terminals in non-upscale retail stores. Those things were still going strong more than thirty years later. The printers on those things were mechanical failures waiting to happen, but the POS terminal, itself was crazy reliable.

The Midwest gets some impressive electrical storms. Occasionally, one of these storms would fry a peripheral card in one of the terminals. When that would happen, I would have to go to the store after closing hours, call up the tech who specialized in these terminals, and he would walk me through ripping out the proper card and rebooting that terminal from the master POS terminal. Yup, the thing would still boot up; even after a peripheral card had been burned.

NCR had long since gotten sick of that model and I don't blame them. Those printers were dodgy. Nash Finch were such cheapskates.

I had to replace 280 small servers all over the eastern US thanks to this problem. We were just starting out so it came down to just two of us spending lots of time on the road.

This also contributed to the failure of a startup I was working for in early 2000s. To be fair, it wasn't the only cause but it contributed to a loss of confidence from investors and partners.

I remember on reddit somebody talked about making a serious fortune by specializing in replacing those capacitors on numerous types of devices.

I made about $6000 in 2011 resoldering the capacitors in iMac G5s and selling them. It was only feasible because I had about 40 broken iMacs from my old job. But that was enough to pay rent for 6 months in Idaho. For everyone with dreams of VC capital and incubators, I highly recommend just scraping out a living any way you can if it's a stepping stone to your dreams. You can make as much in an hour as other people make all day, and use the rest of the time to code. It worked great until I ran out of inventory, now I mostly work from elance, odesk and freelancer. Taught me some valuable lessons though.

I had a Dell computer back in ~2005 that broke down literally 2 days before the warranty was up. I was dumbfounded as to why. Nothing had changed. I shut down the computer properly every time and it always started back up.

Two days before the warranty wears out, the "motherboard fries" according to the tech who showed up. I asked him him, he said it was probably static electricity. I figured it was some corporate conspiracy to bust computers just after the warranty was up and mine came a bit too early. (I mean... imagine if it had busted a day after the warranty! I'd be flippant!)

But this "capacitor plague" business makes a load more sense than that.

On the plus side, you could get some really cheap electronics if you had a soldering iron and some replacement caps.