A Can Cap. Explaination by Wiki

I just stumbled across this and thought I'd throw it out there to help explain whats going on with the failed motherboards/power supplies and flatscreen monitors and TV's.
Evidently this has been a ongoing problem for quite some time. Motherboard blowouts like this usually take out other parts but the same failure in monitors can be limited to just replacing a few new caps. This is compliments of Wiki;

The capacitor plague[1] (also known as bad capacitors[2]) is a problem with a large number of premature failures of aluminium electrolytic capacitors with non solid or liquid electrolyte of certain brands especially from Taiwan manufacturers.[3] The first flawed capacitors were seen in 1999, but most of the affected capacitors failed in the early to mid 2000s. They failed in various electronics equipment, particularly motherboards, video cards, compact fluorescent lamp ballasts, LCD monitors, and power supplies of personal computers. News of the failures (usually after a few years of use) forced most manufacturers to repair the defects. The problem seems to be ongoing; faults were still being reported as of 2010.[4]

Here is a sample pic of some shorted out can caps. Some will just bulge the tops while others will vent out the liquid either from the top or bottom.