Clock Capacitor

1F 2.5V Super Capacitor

It's recommended to remove the clock capacitor from 1.0-1.4 motherboards and leave them off the board. These motherboards will work fine without it. All it does is provides memory to the time circuits for about a half hour after the console is unplugged so its not really necessary for this cap to be on the board. These caps leak from the bottom and if left unchecked can cause trace rot issues which can lead to having to do trace rot repairs and in worst case scenarios can even catch on fire, permanently damaging the board beyond use. Because of the heavy corrosion that the black clock caps leave on boards, its recommended to remove your clock cap and check the level of corrosion on the board before purchasing. Quite often the corrosion is too heavy to successfully install a new clock cap on the board.

The 1.6 motherboard will not boot without a clock cap on the motherboard. Most sites will say that the gold caps are of a better quality and don't need replacement. This is only half truth. They are a better quality but they still fail and leak. The 1.6 has its clock cap in a much more sensitive area of the motherboard and the leaked acid can cause much more damage than it will on other motherboards. The damage that can be caused is nearly irreparable.