the gutless, bloated, and fried power supply hall of shame

[Wester547]

Not arguing that, though I wonder how hot they are in an AC adapter when the AC adapter only feels scantily warm (I guess there's no way to find out)?

[momaka]

Originally Posted by Heihachi_73

King World Enterprises, Proprietary Limidet(?!).

Hmm... let's see if we can decipher this one...
- Mismatched diode sizes on the bridge rectifier - CHECK
- "7700" marks on the 5vsb transformer - CHECK
- very shitty built quality - CHECK
...
Looks like a Sun Pro or Powmax/Leadman to me. The worst of the worst really (or is it the best of the worst?). I'm surprised they put in a 30A schottky on the 5V rail though. How generous! Too bad the 12V rail "schottky" is only that "diodes-on-a-bracket" crap.

Originally Posted by Th3_uN1Qu3

Mmmm Rulycon... They fail without bloating most of the time, they just dry out

That's the exact opposite of what I have seen. All of mine have bloated, even the ones that weren't originally and were just sitting around.
I'll take your word, though. Rulycon is such a pile of crap that I wouldn't be surprised if we are both right .

Originally Posted by b700029

I have a 95W laptop AC adapter and its transformer is qutie a bit smaller.

That's different, though. Quality power adapters can get away with smaller transformers because they use a higher switching frequency. With a quality transformer, they can get much higher efficiency as well. Some even use synchronous rectification as well (instead of rectifying diodes, they put MOSFETs that switch ON only when there is a positive pulse to rectify) - those can easily get in the 90% efficiency. Ever cracked a PS3 power supply? Those use tiny transformers. Yet, due to their higher switching frequency and sync. rectifier design, they can push upwards of 350W without too much cooling.

[ben7]

Originally Posted by Agent24

I worry a bit about my Toshiba's power adaptor though. There are no vents, and the thing gets damn hot under full load, in fact they even have a warning label on it about it getting hot.

Mine is like that too, it has a yellow label on it saying that it can get hot.
Cant wait until it breaks to see whats making it so hot inside I wonder what type of caps are in there too! Mine is a PA-1650-21

Drawing ~3A at 19v, my computer makes this thing get hot! And the fact that it mostly sits on carpet doesn't help at all!

[ben7]

Originally Posted by momaka

Some even use synchronous rectification as well (instead of rectifying diodes, they put MOSFETs that switch ON only when there is a positive pulse to rectify) - those can easily get in the 90% efficiency. Ever cracked a PS3 power supply? Those use tiny transformers. Yet, due to their higher switching frequency and sync. rectifier design, they can push upwards of 350W without too much cooling.

We should design a line of badcaps.net PSUs. With good caps, and synchronous rectifiers

[Agent24]

Originally Posted by ben7

Mine is like that too, it has a yellow label on it saying that it can get hot.
Cant wait until it breaks to see whats making it so hot inside I wonder what type of caps are in there too! Mine is a PA-1650-21

Drawing ~3A at 19v, my computer makes this thing get hot! And the fact that it mostly sits on carpet doesn't help at all!

Mine's a PA-3290U-2ACA rated 19v at a nice 6.5 Amps.

That's probably because the Laptop is a P4 3.3GHz which is based on Prescott. Yep. Prescott. In a Laptop.

[ben7]

Originally Posted by Agent24

Mine's a PA-3290U-2ACA rated 19v at a nice 6.5 Amps.

That's probably because the Laptop is a P4 3.3GHz which is based on Prescott. Yep. Prescott. In a Laptop.

Haha! yeah, thats much bigger! I got a Phenom II (3-cores) in mine.

[Agent24]

Yours sounds faster, although with HT and 2GB of RAM mine can still hold its own OK. Graphics are a bit sad though - Radeon 9000 - but probably better than an Intel IGP from that era.

Of course, with the high power, you get high heat too, so mine has two CPU fans, and when you put a good load on the system, you can really hear it

[momaka]

Originally Posted by Agent24

Mine's a PA-3290U-2ACA rated 19v at a nice 6.5 Amps.

That's probably because the Laptop is a P4 3.3GHz which is based on Prescott. Yep. Prescott. In a Laptop.

My sister's old laptop was a Sony Vaio with a 2.8 GHz Prescott. That thing is LOUD! Fans were always on full blast no matter what you did. Except when playing games - then the GPU fan would turn on as well and you'd think there was a jet engine near you. It also had a Radeon 9000 like yours. In all honestly though, that GPU is not too bad at all. It ran CMR 3 okay. Intel's graphics of the time were crap compared to that. Even recent Intel IGPs will probably still struggle with that game - they just suck for games.
Surprisingly that laptop never ran too hot though. Neither did the power adapter. Actually calling it a power "brick" would be more appropriate.

Originally Posted by ben7

We should design a line of badcaps.net PSUs. With good caps, and synchronous rectifiers

Just take a Sony PS3 PSU and mod it. You can probably fit 3 in a standard ATX PSU case. Considering each one can do 32A on the 12V rail, that's over 1 kW of power available on the 12V rail. Could make your computer double as a welder .

[pdavid]

That gutless Gigabyte psu I mentioned here

Fuse, mosfet blown.

-some EMI filtring
-passive pfc
-470 Capxon primary capacitos
-10A bridge diode... why
-3842 pwm chip
-6A mosfet;
-ERL 35 trafo
-12V: sbr10200; 5V: mbr2040; 3,3V:2040
-some weltrend supervisor
-ntc on heatsink
-tiny capacitors, missing filter coils;

I think it could be usefull after a full rebuild though.

[Behemot]

By coincidence, I found some ASUS which looks similar - at least from outside it had also black stick, similar heatsinks and 80mm fan. Will try to get my hands on it

[b700029]

Originally Posted by pdavid

-6A mosfet;

Only one? That's probably good for 180-200W at most.

[c_hegge]

Low end Gigabyte PSUs aren't that good. I posted one on post 119 of this thread with half a PCB and miniscule heat sinks

[Behemot]

OK guys. I couldn't resist and opened intelligence module for our Symmetra LX 16k UPS. It was suspicious that it dies, well, not dies, becomes to behave strangely every like 2 or 3 years. Of course there are four bulged caps (T.I.C. brand) on its power supply part.

If this will be the only problem - and I bet it will - I just saved worth 640 E / 780 USD.

Just how the sucks use Chemi-Cons on the parts where it could die in less than 2 years where they would have to change it under warranty!!

ADD// Guess what? It works!! This is one of the worst cases of fraud I have ever seen. Yes, I heard botu the plasma TVs, but never had them in my hands. This, I had. And the price is pretty much the same.

[c_hegge]

I bet no one thought a Delta would ever end up on here, but today I have just that - a destroyed delta. THe fan was branded T&T (Thieves & Thugs ?) and it quit. Here's the carnaige. The PCB discolouration didn't show up quite as clearly in the photos as I'd hoped, so if it looks slightly discoloured in the photo, it's really bad in real life. The cool part is, it still runs, albeit with very high ripple due to all the bad caps. I'm thinking it might be salvagable by replacing the caps, fan and secondary torroids.

[Wester547]

How did it (almost) murder itself like that? Is it the tan/brown glue? Placement of diodes? Or something else?

[c_hegge]

^
The fan quit, as I said, and it lacks OTP

[Behemot]

Originally Posted by c_hegge

The PCB discolouration didn't show up quite as clearly in the photos as I'd hoped, so if it looks slightly discoloured in the photo, it's really bad in real life.

Oh yeah, it is pretty bad even on the foto (in comparison with Pentium's photos ). I get the feeling I should check and lubricate every fan in every PSU going through my hands from now on…?

[Wester547]

Originally Posted by c_hegge

^
The fan quit, as I said, and it lacks OTP

Whoops, I don't know how I missed that. ^^; No surprise that cheap sleeve bearings seize sooner than late. I'm surprised it could still start up given all the capacitors were bloated (usually the capacitors on the 5VSB rail prevent a system from posting whence they fail).

[ben7]

WOW, that thing really fried up!

I laughed at how the one taicon is not vented, and the rest (capxon and ltec) are :P

[c_hegge]

It's probably just dried out. Given the amount of heat discolouration, I wouldn't blame a Panny for failing.