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Taking care of how you handle your PSU

[Walter/RGP]
By [Walter/RGP]
in Power Supplies
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Go to solution Solved by Dttocs,

Didn't you use the insulation pads under the psu to stop it from shorting on the chassis ;)

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A little more than a month ago I had fixed my noisy power supply unit. A 500W one. Not a known brand, but my best until today. Yesterday I was working on overclock my FSB+GPU+RAM+PROCESSOR. Not a big deal, considering that those specs where an old ASUS P5S800-VM MOBO / Nvidia GeForce 6200 LE / 2x1GB DDR 400 / Pentium LGA775 2.66GHz (1c1t) 1MB/533MHz... Not a big deal. Not very efficient also. Well, today I tried to turn it on, and boom! Sparkles from the back side of my PC (At least the light of it). I guessed well when I thought what would be burned, but there were more than a broken fuse. This is the picture under the PSU's PCB.

IMG_20180918_193635.jpg

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Posted
14 minutes ago, [Walter/RGP] said:

A little more than a month ago I had fixed my noisy power supply unit.

How did you fix it?

:)

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1 minute ago, seon123 said:

How did you fix it?

Badly by the looks of it. ;)

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Posted
15 minutes ago, [Walter/RGP] said:

A little more than a month ago I had fixed my noisy power supply unit. A 500W one. Not a known brand, but my best until today. Yesterday I was working on overclock my FSB+GPU+RAM+PROCESSOR. Not a big deal, considering that those specs where an old ASUS P5S800-VM MOBO / Nvidia GeForce 6200 LE / 2x1GB DDR 400 / Pentium LGA775 2.66GHz (1c1t) 1MB/533MHz... Not a big deal. Not very efficient also. Well, today I tried to turn it on, and boom! Sparkles from the back side of my PC (At least the light of it). I guessed well when I thought what would be burned, but there were more than a broken fuse. This is the picture under the PSU's PCB.

-image-

This is why you don't use CHEAP power supplies. Even a CM500 or old EVGA 500B or 430W would have been better. 

 

Fine you want the PSU tier list? Have the PSU tier list: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/1116640-psu-tier-list-40-rev-103/

 

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Posted

You should've been more careful opening it up. The caps could potentially shock you.

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30 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Badly by the looks of it. ;)

Hey Alex, I thought already about that, my mistake was not isolate the contact between case and PCB's metallic contacts. Surely a lesson to learn today. That's the good thing about not knowing everything and having people to talk about it. Thanks.

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Posted (edited)
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1 hour ago, seon123 said:

How did you fix it?

Funny thing, it worked better than before. I desoldered the 2 tiny transformers which were beside the big one, and soldered them back as tight as I could. And Voila! No noise, at least most of the time, switching on and off the I/O buton the noise stopped, most of the time. What leads to the question, did I really fix it? Well, certainly the screen and hearing noise had diminished a lot. But after that overclocking night... It died.

 

1 hour ago, OrionFOTL said:

The photo would tell us much more if it showed the upper side of the PCB. Most likely a blown primary switcher based on the burn location. 

And as far as I can see, nothing looks damaged on the top of the PCB. Posting picture...15373181298651491087285.thumb.jpg.4e174c434f31ab6844b4d957594bd017.jpg

15373182473951450326353.jpg

Edited by [Walter/RGP]
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50 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

You should've been more careful opening it up. The caps could potentially shock you.

I'm very careful about it. I already study it, I'm qualified to do it. Don't worry. I use to discharge CRT tubes containing from 22000 to 45000 volts, those were really dangerous ones. :D

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1 hour ago, Brink2Three said:

This is why you don't use CHEAP power supplies. Even a CM500 or old EVGA 500B or 430W would have been better. 

 

I can imagine that, but I'm in a very tight budget now, and as I mentioned earlier, it was my best one around. And this is also my own rig. Is a lesson to learn: between charged surfaces use isolation, unless you want them to touch each other. I hope the motherboard and the rest of the parts to be good to go again with another PSU. Thanks for your reply.

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Posted

Seems likely you just left a bit too much solder on and the surge from power up caused it to arc to the grounded case.

Good PSUs usually are plastic lined or at least have a much bigger gap between the PCB and the case.

Router:  Intel N100 (pfSense) WiFi6: Zyxel NWA210AX (1.7Gbit peak at 160Mhz)
WiFi5: Ubiquiti NanoHD OpenWRT (~500Mbit at 80Mhz) Switches: Netgear MS510TXUP, MS510TXPP, GS110EMX
ISPs: Zen Full Fibre 900 (~930Mbit down, 115Mbit up) + Three 5G (~800Mbit down, 115Mbit up)
Upgrading Laptop/Desktop CNVIo WiFi 5 cards to PCIe WiFi6e/7

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3 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Seems likely you just left a bit too much solder on and the surge from power up caused it to arc to the grounded case.

Good PSUs usually are plastic lined or at least have a much bigger gap between the PCB and the case.

Yes, that gap was the problem. And no plastic protection in between. I usually solder with just the enough solder. I think that's not the matter. I think... Thanks for your contribution.

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Posted
8 hours ago, [Walter/RGP] said:

And as far as I can see, nothing looks damaged on the top of the PCB. Posting picture...

That's a trainwreck of PSU.

Hope that it didn't kill anything its the worst thing that can happen.

Get a good one, not one for like 5€ on eBay...

 

So do something good for the rig and replace the PSU with a better quality one.

 

You would also save on power as the efficiency should go up from ~60% to 80-85%...

"Hell is full of good meanings, but Heaven is full of good works"

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2 hours ago, Stefan Payne said:

That's a trainwreck of PSU.

Hope that it didn't kill anything its the worst thing that can happen.

Get a good one, not one for like 5€ on eBay...

 

So do something good for the rig and replace the PSU with a better quality one.

 

You would also save on power as the efficiency should go up from ~60% to 80-85%...

I could do it, but I live in Paraguay. My budget and my interest of getting a new one are just null. I have old hardware as you read in the beginning of the thread, it was a "backup" system, I still have my Athlon II Dual-Core M300 in a CQ61 notebook. Not a monster machine, but it works twice as good as the rig with the burned PSU. I could raise funds with Patreon. But it needs people's interest to do it effectively. By now, I'm raising value & credibility as a Computer tech/builder. Thanks for your reply.

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6 hours ago, Dttocs said:

Didn't you use the insulation pads under the psu to stop it from shorting on the chassis ;)

Yes! That's the thing! But it didn't had one. Bad mine.

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