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

[Pentium4]

Such garbage, looks like they all bulged. Any idea of how old it is? Is that from a Shuttle computer?

[Behemot]

No idea. Its from some research institute, I told them the price incl. load testing, they said I can keep it

But such 1U PSUs are ofen used in 1U servers, Supermicro often, but there are generic cases you can buy and make your own server with.

[Heihachi_73]

My newly-aquired ISO-450PP has well and truly earned its place here.

Bloated Fuhjyyu caps, possibly bloated primary caps and two blown MOVs (and possibly the large resistor next to them). The PC it came out of had dust which was about an inch thick from one end of the case to the other, blocking the PSU vents and also causing the video card fan to seize (that fan was caked). No idea if the PC can be salvaged or not, as when I found it in the hard waste it had also been rained on.

The PC has an MSI G33M board with 1GB Elixir DDR2 and a 320GB Maxtor HDD (soaked) and a GSA-H44N DVD burner. The Samsung Syncmaster 223BW it came with was also soaked and had the VGA and DVI cables cut off at both the PC and monitor ends (duh!) rather than simply being unscrewed and removed like any normal person would have done. Yes, the VGA and DVI cables were both connected to the computer at the same time!

Photos can be found in the Hall of Shame rather than here, as I had posted there earlier.

[Heihachi_73]

Update: After looking all over the place for another DVI cable, the monitor is working perfectly, it wasn't kicked in or otherwise trashed as you'd expect after a night on the side of the road. And I can actually get native 1680x1050 on it, unlike my "1680x1050" Hisense TV which only wants to do 1400 wide via VGA (I don't have a DVI-HDMI converter, and I doubt it would make any difference, seeing that the same cable handles 1600x1200 perfectly well on my trusty old 4:3 Dell LCD).

[Behemot]

Search the model number in the TVs section, maybe it is already there…if not make a new thread. This is mostly for stand-alone for power supplies, especially ATX.

[capacitorguy]

Possibly not the best section to post about the TV, there are other sections but I'd have a look at the DC rectification diodes in the power supply first, thats if there is no sign of capacitors bulging and then check the capacitors if the diodes are tested and working.

[Porto]

Some Apple A1097 power supply I got hold of.

[Uranium-235]

Originally Posted by momaka

I guess it's my turn to post something...
What I have for you: a Raidmax RX-380K (i.e. a Sun Pro KY-480ATX).

outside: http://www.badcaps.net/forum/attachm...1&d=1388363334

label: http://www.badcaps.net/forum/attachm...1&d=1388363334

top side (taken a few years back): http://www.badcaps.net/forum/attachm...1&d=1388363334

another top side (a little more recent - you can see another cap has failed in there just from the PSU sitting in storage): http://www.badcaps.net/forum/attachm...1&d=1388363334

primary side showing diodes in bridge rectifier and the bent leads on the parts attached to the heat sink: http://www.badcaps.net/forum/attachm...1&d=1388363334

secondary side shot: http://www.badcaps.net/forum/attachm...1&d=1388363334

botton side (solder side): http://www.badcaps.net/forum/attachm...1&d=1388363334

This is probably the crappiest power supply I have around. The case is made out of paper-thin steel. The heat sinks are equally anorexic. Soldering on the bottom side is plain awful. Lots of loose solder balls came out when I first opened it. It's a miracle it didn't short out at the factory. The primary transistors have their leads so bent that they are nearly touching each other! As you can also see from the bottom-side picture, the separation between traces on the primary is very small. I'm pretty sure this thing never passed UL, CE, or any other safety marks. Then again, it's clear from the label the safety marks were forged. The wires are all 20 AWG (with 22 AWG for floppy connector) and completely unlabeled! (not a single safety agency or UL number in sight)

380 watts output??? Yeah right . It may not be very clear from the pictures, but the PCB has some serious "burn-in", and this was not caused by a stuck fan since the fan is spinning fine (although, I should note that the fan was quite dry... looks like it never saw lubrication from the factory). Speaking of which, the fan is a Te Bao Metallic Plastic model M802512M rated for 12V and 0.14A. IIRC, this PSU was powering a mediocre Athlon XP 1600+ system with a GeForce 5200FX video card and 1 HDD, so nothing too heavy.

Primary/input side:
Not much to talk about input filter. We have us two blue (but fake!) Y caps, and a sugar-cane-colored input choke . No X cap. Better than nothing, still.
Moving on... two bigger and two smaller diodes for the bridge. Too lazy to read part numbers, but I'm guessing 3A and 1.5A or 2A diodes. The two bigger diodes are always used, so this PSU should be capable of pulling 300W from the wall with these diodes (of course it won't, as you'll see from the rest of the parts list).
Also on the primary: 2x 200V 330 uF Metacon GK primary caps that read 200 uF and 196 uF on an ESR Micro V4. Primary transistors are a pair of 13007 BJTs in half-bridge configuration. Main transformer is size 33. 5VSB transformer is the standard cute small stuff you always find in all cheap PSUs. Speaking of 5VSB - it's that good old friend, the 2-transistor design . It doesn't have a critical capacitor, though.

Secondary/output side:
12V rail has a 12A 200V fast recovery rectifier. 5V and 3.3V rails share a single 20A 40V schottky . The 3.3V rail is derived from 5V rail in a linear fashion with a CEP51A3 (48A, 30V, N-channel MOSFET).
Output caps:
12V rail: 1x brown CS "LOW ESR" 16V 1000 uF cap placed after a PI coil.
5V rail: 2x JEE "LOW ESR" 10V 1000 uF caps (1x before and 1x after PI coil)
3.3V rail: 1x JEE "LOW ESR" 10V 1000 uF cap after PI coil.
5VSB: not exactly sure. I think 2x CS 16V 470 uF caps originally (1x before and 1x after PI coil), but one of them failed, causing the 5VSB to crazy with anything higher than 50 mA of load. I think I saw the auxiliary rail for the PWM controller (an AZ7500BP) go as high as 30V when this was going on. I recapped the failing CS cap with a questionable STONE 16V 470 uF cap out of a Philips TV that had other STONE caps of the same ratings failed. But it's a crap PSU, so why waste good caps on it? I just wanted to get it working again, which the STONE cap did. 5VSB is good for up to 1.5A of load now, though it does get warm with that load. Before you jump and scream at me... don't worry - I'm not going to put this PSU back in a PC ever again .

Actually, the case from this power supply is now housing the guts of a beefy HiPro HP-P2507F3P 250W PSU that a friend gave me.
Sorry for that wall of text above. Hope you liked this one

A customer of mine with a P4 I built for them like 6 years ago. The computer worked great, even though the 3ghz HT p4 /w 1GB on XP. No problems till one day...well anyways...

I have another RX-380K, in, a SLIGHTLY bit worse condition than yours momaka. I think this perhaps it is a fair bit worse dare I say?

http://www.badcaps.net/forum/attachm...1&d=1437463738 (Back)

http://www.badcaps.net/forum/attachm...1&d=1437463738 (See it is a 380K, isn't that so clear?-yeah the photo sucks)

http://www.badcaps.net/forum/attachm...1&d=1437463738 (LARGE IMAGE - top view entire supply)

http://www.badcaps.net/forum/attachm...1&d=1437463738 (medium caps, view of fetts)

http://www.badcaps.net/forum/attachm...1&d=1437463738 (yes this slim plastic hunk is *was* the fan)

http://www.badcaps.net/forum/attachm...1&d=1437463738 (LARGE IMAGE - overview of the main area of damage, coil completely burned, caps obliterated, and I just noticed, one of the cap tops is behind one of the large caps)

[Uranium-235]

^^and as far as the rust, he said he stored it in a plastic bin a few months ago when it burned cause the smell from it even being in the room. We had some massive rain about a month straight and the moisture found its way in. The CD drive also had rust on it. I don't think it was there when the supply ...burned shall we say.. He said there was no fire but black smoke billowing out the back. I think it was on fire inside but didn't last long when there was nothing left to burn

[c_hegge]

Wow! even my dust experiment didn't end quite that badly.

On a somewhat related note, I had a bit of a disaster come in at work today in the form of a Dell Inspiron (530s IIRC). It was a TFX form factor, and it had the stock Dell PSU (OEM'd by Lite-on). After not being used for about 18 months, they plugged it in, attempted to turn it on and, kaboom! It blew up, threw the circuit breaker, and took the motherboard and HDD out with it. I didn't get any photos of it, but the only visible damage was 1 small resistor which had a melted leg.

[Agent24]

I have never seen a PSU that toasted before. The heatsinks are still good though!

[Uranium-235]

haha, I just looked at the lid, components actually melted into a plastic puddle



ahhh, the power cable...well....theres your problem



shes getting me to build her a new one. I'll be getting a corsair CX 430, MSI board, haswell celeron, and 25" monitor (specifically requested by her). 1TB hdd /w win7

[Agent24]

Bet it smells lovely...

[c_hegge]

You do realise that CX430s are full of CapXon nowadays, right? I'd be more inclined towards a Seasonic S13II 430W, S12G 450W or G-450 (or a re-badged version of one of those).

[ben7]

WOW, I actually said "Oh my god" out loud when I saw those pics.
That is crazy!

Edit: You should report that to the CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission).

-Ben

[Behemot]

For Celeron with (presumably) no dedicated graphics, get ASRock Mini-ITX board with 19V input and some 65W laptop brick and you will be fine.

You can even use ASRock AM1H-ITX, with Athlon 5350. It is just OK for all those youbooks, facetoobs, HD video etc. and even some very mild gaming while the TDP is only 25 W incl. graphics.

Those Seasonics c_hegge suggested are overkill in any case and also S12G/G series are not really that good.

[Uranium-235]

Originally Posted by Behemot

For Celeron with (presumably) no dedicated graphics, get ASRock Mini-ITX board with 19V input and some 65W laptop brick and you will be fine.

You can even use ASRock AM1H-ITX, with Athlon 5350. It is just OK for all those youbooks, facetoobs, HD video etc. and even some very mild gaming while the TDP is only 25 W incl. graphics.

Those Seasonics c_hegge suggested are overkill in any case and also S12G/G series are not really that good.

I generally stay away from asrock and asus (except for high end Asus...and after my recent boxing match with a Maximum VI Hero and two different PCI-express USB 3.0 cards, perhaps not even that anymore).

I've had a lot of success with MSI Millitary labeled motherboards. This is a microatx one in an atx case with the USB ports facing upwards (1 3.0, 2 2.0), as this customer has it right next to her I don't want to risk her breaking a port, happened on her last computer...yeah, the burned one

it does look like everything else inside the computer shows no signs of burn marks. I'll test later to see if it actually works

if I wanted to go mini itx I would go atom/bga celeron with a mini brick. But I want a bit more power

[Behemot]

I stay away from everything but ASRock.

Athlon 5350 has higher power compared to those and way better graphics. It actually can play Full HD without acceleration thanks to those 4 cores. I remember that using acceleration it was not so smooth as with CPU playback.

[Uranium-235]

I've already used MSI Millitary class boards in 4 high usage business computers and one customers. All rock solid from the start. Nichicon Polymers everywhere (no FP)

passmark score on the G1840 beats the 5350. This Lady isn't going to be doing any gaming, in her case CPU power need beats GPU power need

[goodpsusearch]

Originally Posted by Uranium-235

I'll be getting a corsair CX 430....

CAPXON