Audio dedicated capacitors in the all recent motherboards

[Ramboli]

I have an unusual  question:

I noticed something about the on-board audio capacitors in all of the new Z170 / X99 motherboards (all brands).

They seems to be the least quality ones, not the well known Japanese long lasting capacitors, which fortunately still used for the rest of the MB circuit components.

I wonder why they decide to do that. maybe Realtek instructed the manufacturers to use this specific capacitor type from some reason? I'll be glad to understand why.

The long-lasting Japanese shape vs the regular type:

 

Thank you!

 

[mariushm]

The capacitos in the first picture are polymer based capacitors. They're pretty much solid inside.

The ones in the bottom picture are electrolytic capacitors, which use a liquid or semi-liquid solution inside to work.

The electrolytic capacitors are "audio grade" which really is just marketing speak for regular capacitors slightly "optimized" to work better in audio circuits. Polymer capacitors are too "perfect", too exact, the electrolytic capacitors have some electric properties that can make the audio circuit produce a sound that feels slightly better compared to same circuit but using polymer capacitors. 

Lots of capacitor manufacturers produce electrolytic capacitors for audio applications, like those gold ones are, but really they're overrated, the effect on the produced sound is very small. I sincerely doubt that a normal person with a normal speaker setup would even notice differences between a motherboard with these audio grade capacitors and regular electrolytic capacitors.

 

Motherboard manufacturers use them because they're sometimes cheaper than polymer capacitors and they can just add another checkpoint on the box, add another thing to

the marketing list, to make the motherboard better than other competitors' motherboards.