Is 'Mercury' a good PSU brand?

[Tom41]

The SUNTEK PSU on my main PC (which had bad caps and was causing the machine to reboot) has now been replaced. The new PSU is made by Mercury - I know them for making good mice, but how are they for PSUs?

I don't want to open it up to check for bad caps just yet, as that would void the warranty (which is for 1 year!).

[willawake]

Re: Is 'Mercury' a good PSU brand?

freddie mercury?

post some exterior pics and the label especially

[Oklahoma Wolf]

Re: Is 'Mercury' a good PSU brand?

Last I head of Mercury units, they had Deer innards. Hopefully this isn't one of them.

[jonnyGURU]

Re: Is 'Mercury' a good PSU brand?

Is it AMS Mercury or Mercury?

AMS Mercury is good. Mercury (no AMS)... let's just say listen to OKW.

[linuxguru]

Re: Is 'Mercury' a good PSU brand?

Kobian Mercury? It's an India-based reseller selling rebadged stuff, mostly in India and the Soviet-bloc. The quality is variable - they had fairly decent P3 motherboards in the past, sourced from companies like Gigabyte, ECS, etc. OTOH, the only Mercury PSU I've seen is crap - the innards say Y-B200 ATX Ver:2.8, but its labelled as 300W on the outside. Probably Deer or similar.

[Neo2_000]

Re: Is 'Mercury' a good PSU brand?

The PCs I have seen that use the Mercury Mobos are really bottom end junk sold by Target Department Stores and have a very bad track record. I would avoid anything branded Mercury but I am biased.

[Tom41]

Re: Is 'Mercury' a good PSU brand?

Sorry for bumping this really old topic, but I just wanted to update... it IS indeed Kobian Mercury (according to the label on the PSU). Also, it's just died due to bad caps!

Since it's still under the 1-year warranty, I'll be taking it back to the store tomorrow for a replacement. That also means I can't open it without voiding the warranty, or I'd take some pictures of the bad caps. Looking through the vents though, I can clearly see one of the output caps behind the fan that's vented and spilled electrolyte.

The PC it's in occasionally does the 'bad memory' beep code, and has been rebooting itself at random (though not constantly like the SUNTEK PSU). I also have a VERY slow logout procedure in Windows, and it never actually finishes the shutdown - I have to flip the PSU isolator switch to shut it off. In addition, IE7 can't connect to any sites.

The PSU itself was also making a high-pitched squeal when in standby mode (power coming to the PSU, but PC shut down), not unlike a CRT monitor. It didn't do that before, so I suspected bad caps from the start - like the squeal I heard when my VCR blew a cap.

Swapping the PSU out with the one in the ex-WinME machine (still good) cured the random reboots and beep code errors, but the system is still slow with the other errors mentioned. Probably some Windows settings have become corrupted by it rebooting during a disk write; I'll have to do a System Restore or reinstall

[Fizzycapola]

Re: Is 'Mercury' a good PSU brand?

I've had one of those for years NO PROBLEMS, but then it's always been in it's box

As I recall I bought it hastily, the choices were, this one on special offer for £15 or a Tagan roughly the same wattage for £80.

Brands inside:
Canicon
G•LUXON
Su'Scon
(unknown, just a logo looks like a planet with a ring around - (smaller caps))

Anyway heres the p0rn pictures:






Larger full scale internal photo: Click Here

I wonder if upgrading the caps would be a good idea? if so which ones would benefit the most from upgrading?

[Rainbow]

Re: Is 'Mercury' a good PSU brand?

Looks like DEER to me. One from the group of 3 caps near the fan often fails and causes whine when it's in standby mode. So far I've seen only failed Canicons at that position. One PSU that had Su'Scons there and they were OK.

[linuxguru]

Re: Is 'Mercury' a good PSU brand?

2,3,5,6,7,7.5,8,B and the kludged 3 Amp rectifier near 6 can all be replaced. As Deers go, that one is not too bad - should be OK for 135-180W after recapping.

[willawake]

Re: Is 'Mercury' a good PSU brand?

One from the group of 3 caps near the fan often fails and causes whine when it's in standby mode.

what is the purpose of that group? it seems to be a common failure mode.

[Rainbow]

Re: Is 'Mercury' a good PSU brand?

The one that fails is output filtering cap for 5VSB. On the PSUs where it failed, there were only 2 caps populated from that group of 3 and the failed one was always bulging (more or less) Canicon 1000uF.

[linuxguru]

Re: Is 'Mercury' a good PSU brand?

Also consider replacing the sleeve-bearing fan with a 3" NMB/Minebea KL-3110 or similar ball-bearing fan.