A hardware and software service company from Vermont filed a legal class-action suit against Microstar International accusing one of the leading mainboard makers in the world of intentionally using low-quality components on its mainboards.

A report from Reuters claims that the suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court last Thursday by Electronic Connection Services Corporation  claims that MSI has knowingly used capacitors, devices used to regulate the power supply to microchips, that can leak or even explode and cause mainboards to short-circuit. The suit, which seeks to cover any person or company in the United States who has made a wholesale or retail purchase of an MSI mainboard since 1999, seeks unspecified damages and restitution and other relief.

Leaking, exploding and deforming capacitors on conventional mainboards is an issue that has been around for years. However, in the last 12 to 36 months the problem has become pretty big as modern chips consume a lot of energy and the risk of capacitors’ failure became extremely serious.

A number of companies, namely ABIT and ASUS, recently engaged plethora of measures to avoid problems with capacitors by utilizing only quality components and perform exhaustive testing before mainboard go into mass-production. The former has been supplying mainboards with revamped power-circuitry for more than a year already calling this technology BulletProof, while the latter opted to use expensive capacitors on its next-generation mainboards for Intel and AMD processors to be available in retail later this month after discovering certain issues with existing product lineup.

Electronic Connection Services believes that MSI has known for years that its capacitors were made with an improperly-formulated electrolyte solution and that they are prone to leak or even explode, the report says. In case the court finds that the accusations have ground, MSI may have to pay certain compensations to those, who suffered materially from faulty mainboards.

MSI did not comment on the report.