X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional (PCIe) -- Capacitor Mod Questions

I'm trying to help a friend modify his X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro (the Tit-Fat-Pro as I call it, since it's a mouthful!) since I have became rather interested in mods, having read a wealth of stuff over the last few months, and frankly don't shut up about it haha Well he's got a number of Creative brand cards and decided to take the plunge on his Audigy2 ZS, at least by swapping out the Power Filter Cap since it was easily documented. Long story short, even the by-no-means "Audio Grade" Nichicon he dropped (donated by some dead motherboard) sounded better, so he was hooked enough to buy some MUSE FX caps. They arrived and he swapped out the standard Nichi for the MUSE, not even having broken in yet he is quite pleased, and wants to move forward with the X-Fi's filter cap! However, much to our dismay, a page outlining mods on them cannot be found :\ If it was a PCI model there would be a better guess to be made as to which is them, but he doesn't really want to desolder caps and hope for the best, which I understand personally. Either way, the best I've been able to come up with (as my knowledge is all gained from reading over the last 5 or so months to build a HP amp) is a educated guess based off a annotated photo for a PCI standard-Titanium... Of course, it is a 50:50 shot and for all I know we would be giving the SDR X-RAM module cleaner power lol

Basically the hope is that with the knowledgeable people here, and the wealth of X-Fi mods which have taken place, someone will know which is the one to go for. And perhaps even someone has a few other simple tricks to perform! Also to not force anyone to go looking for a picture I made him take a nice close up of the card to better help you, help us! (blame Casio for the picture quality)

So for his polarized MUSE FX caps (EDIT:1,000uF 63V, not 1,200uF), would one or two be recommended? (He has some 4562s en route as well, if that has any bearing)

If two, is them in parallel as:
(- +)
(+ -)
... frowned upon, not a good idea to begin with, or? Reason I ask is my understanding was that the - side of the cap doesn't have quite as good a plating as the + side and this in effect makes it out to have "equal" grade plating on both sides. [/ignorance] At the same time though that went against my understanding of Caps in that reversing the polarity will frankly ruin a cap (and literally could blow it up), and that IF this was a plausible method, then would be be performable with Bi-Polar caps. A simple 'yes' or 'no' will more than suffice, but of course anyone willing to expound on why that is if there are corrections, or if it is a resounding 'No', then that'd be awesome as well

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Question 2 is the one I'm not fully understanding, no matter how much info I read: Capacitor Coupling/Decoupling and what should be done... I am sure it is a rather simple (relatively speaking) concept to understand, but I just can't seem to wrap my head around what should be or needs to be done when it comes to sound cards. If they are currently coupled and you should de-couple; if they are decoupled and should be coupled; how to go about doing that effectively, yet keeping it simple; but also what size capacitors one should move to?

Since that is likely more than I should probably ask, especially for a first post, I'll proceed on S-T-F-U now lol

Any and all help is really appreciated! If this has been gone over somewhere and I just wasn't searching for the right thing, by all means redirect me there! I know how it is to be a Veteran on a forums and having "noobs" come in asking something that has been asked time and time again, but I did try to find it on my own at least!

Thanks!


SB X-Fi "Tit Fat Pro" SB0880

Edited by Formula350 - 3/19/11 at 5:38pm

He already has the MUSE FX caps, but I appreciate the recommendation. I was going to go with Elnas for whatever amp I decide to build. Regardless if they are better than the MUSE FX though, they are both better than the stock Jamicon that Creative used lol

Yea well, I prefer the entertainment value hahaha TFP would be quicker to type, but just isn't as funny! There is also the Tit Fat Champ and Tit HD

 

 

Not a soul has a clue?

Well the main thing we're trying to find out is which of them is the main power cap (power filter cap, filter cap?) so he can replace it. My lack of owning the X-Fi for an in-person view of it means I can only speculate as to the roll of some of these. That is why I'm on the fence about which of the two caps are the one I'm after: The one directly above the PCIe x1 connector. Or the one directly below the memory chip (next to the X-Fi chip).

Assuming you're referring to his comment about being the only person to have thought about doing this, which he was obviously being sarcastic about, but if it has been done over and over, why could I not dig up any info on them? The vast majority of 'tutorials' or people discussing it is in relation to the low end and/or old models (XtremeMusic). Seemingly had the T-F Pro or Champion been done, I would've been able to turn up something about it. I Googled and forum searched for a good few hours to no avail :\ Though I'm pretty sure I figured out the cap we're after anyways, as it dawned on me when looking at a naked (EMI shield-less) Titanium HD... Majority of the caps were 10v, which PCIe is 12v. The only one on the card that wasn't 16v is one I thought may be it which is under the SDR chip, and it is 25v.