Recap guide

Recap the Sound Blaster 16 and AWE cards

Cards rarely die from caps alone, but a recap can improve the noise floor and clarity if yours has cheap Elgen or Wincap parts. Veterans say diagnose first. Guides cover CT2230, CT2980 and CT4520 cards.

Open the interactive checklist Tick off each capacitor as you replace it. It saves in your browser.

Check first. A recap is not always the answer here, so look at the guides before you order parts.

Which board do I have?

Boards changed during production. These notes come from the linked sources, and many are only partly documented, so check the board in front of you.

CT2230 (board revisions 19413, 29417, 49432) (Medium confidence). How to tell: Model number on the card, then the five digit board revision printed on the PCB; mixer chip is CT1745A, CT1745-S or CT1745A-S depending on revision. Capacitors: One CT2230 had mostly Chemi-Con caps with wincap 10uF (7) and 47uF (2) and two 470uF Elgen; two Elgen 1uF 50V caps tested bad on another. Creative mixed suppliers by stock. Capacitor list differs from other revisions: not known. Source
CT2290 (board revisions 19439, 29445, 49513) (Low confidence). How to tell: Model number on the card, then the five digit board revision printed on the PCB. Capacitors: No cap list; same DSP and mixer chips on all three revisions. Capacitor list differs from other revisions: not known. Source
CT2770 Value Edition (19423, 29409, 39416, 49434) (Low confidence). How to tell: CT2770A drops the old CD-ROM headers and the CSP/ASP area; CT2772 has no CD-ROM interface. Capacitors: No cap information on the source page. Capacitor list differs from other revisions: not known. Source

Where to start

Clues from write-ups and forum threads, not a diagnosis. Low confidence means one thread or one repair; high means several write-ups agree.

Cheap brand caps (Medium confidence). On one CT2230, two ELGEN 1uF/50V caps measured badly out of spec. The thread also counts the board's caps by value and brand. Source
Small improvement (Low confidence). One CT4520 recap improved the noise floor only a little, and the poster found the DAC mattered more. Source
Diagnose before swapping (Low confidence). One thread on a dead AWE32 traced the fault to a faulty EEPROM, not caps, and advises not swapping caps until you know the issue. Source

Tips, tales and maybes

Found in write-ups and forum threads. These are other people's reports, not tested by us. Check part references and values against your own board.

Tip: Noise may be mixer settings, not caps (Low confidence). In a thread on noisy SB16 cards, posters found noise depended heavily on mixer gain staging, with sources high and master low sounding cleaner, and on jumpering off the onboard amp. Try this before blaming capacitors. Source
Story: Hanging notes after recap (Low confidence). One poster recapped a CT2950 and reported smoother sound and no more hanging notes. It is a single report and the same thread credits DSP revisions for hanging-note fixes, so the recap may not be the whole story. Source
Tip: OPSL and OPSR jumpers to Line Out (Low confidence). A poster reported near-zero self-noise on a CT1750 after setting the OPSL and OPSR jumpers to Line Out and tuning mixer levels. Card revision matters, with the CT1600 noisy and the CT1770 quieter but prone to DMA clicks. Source

Before you start

Boards changed during production. Check your board number against the guides before you order parts.

Guides we used

This page and the interactive bench are built from these. They have the photos and the full detail, so please read them and support their authors.

Sound Blaster Re-Capping (Forum) by VOGONS forum thread. Has a capacitor list. Covers CT2980 and CT2230 SB16s, the values found on the board and which brands people swap in
[Research] I have a beautiful CT2230 (Sound Blaster 16) on hand, however it needs a repair. Maybe capacitors? (Forum) by VOGONS forum thread. Has a capacitor list. Measured the cap inventory (count by value and brand) and which ones failed testing; good basis for a checklist
Capacitor replacements on old Sound Blaster cards (Forum) by andychak and VOGONS members. CT4520 recap results: noise floor improved a little; DAC matters more; Elna Silmic suggestions
R.I.P. SoundBlaster AWE32 (Forum) by VOGONS forum thread. Counter-advice thread: faulty EEPROM, not caps; do not swap caps until you know the issue

The capacitor list

We have not checked a capacitor list for this machine yet, so none is shown. Follow the guide above for your board, then add the capacitors in the interactive checklist and it builds a shopping list for you.

Skip the sourcing

Ready-made kit: Amazon · eBay
Already recapped: Amazon · eBay

While you are in there

Need the machine itself?: Amazon · eBay
A box of spare capacitors: Amazon · eBay

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Steps, tools and safety

The steps, the tools in top, middle and budget picks, and the safety list are the same for every machine, so they live on one page: How to recap, step by step.

Values are shown as published in the guides above, and boards changed during production. Check the board in front of you. A recap involves hot tools and, on some machines, dangerous voltages. You do it at your own risk.