Broken PSUs

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ssnyder28

2[H]4U
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May 9, 2012
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Hi my cousin manages to get large shipments of electronics and sometimes he gets pc stuff. Some of the items end up being non-working or components with issues.

He has around 15 or so PSUs that are non-working mainly with either the unit not powering on or with it powering on and immediately shutting down.

My question is what can we do with these? Sometimes if we have broken or partially working electronics we just list them on ebay as as-is auctions. In this case it makes no sense to list on ebay since the weight alone will make it cost too much shipping wise.

Most of these are decent power supplies (Corsair, OCZ, Seasonic) and are in the 500w-900w range. I doubt I could RMA any of them. I also am not an electronics repair expert of any kind.

Any idea what I should do with these? Take them to the scrap yard?
 
Depends on how good you are with electronics and soldering. You can try testing the capacitors, and if there are any bad ones, you can replace them. The other components, I'm not sure it's worth wasting your time testing and trying to fix. Electronics recycling is probably where most of those should go.
 
Look for blown capacitors.

Not really worth fixing anything else in them unless you really know what you are doing.

I always rip the fans out of dead power supplies and save them.

I sometimes save the innards of the power supplies as well if they look like they might have other parts in them that I might use later. The wire usually comes in handy at some point.
 
The most common problem with brand new dud PSUs is bad solder joints, either because metal wasn't cleaned well enough at the factory, or a heavy component, like a transformer, cracked its solder due to rough handling during shipping, often because it wasn't pressed flush against the circuit board before it was soldered. Solder cracks can be almost microscopic and visible only under strong light and a magnifying glass, so some techs always solder the usual suspects -- transformer leads, leads for parts attached to heatsinks.

A new PSU is unlikely to have bad capacitors, unless they got dented. OTOH I have found nuts rattling around inside that were supposed to hold big diodes or transistors against the heatsink. Those nuts could short something and prevent operation or even cause damage. A transistor or diode that's not attached to its heatsink can quickly get really hot even under slight load.

Never open a PSU case except with the AC power cord removed because when plugged in, there's a lot of exposed high voltage inside, sometimes even on one of the big heatsinks. Diagnosis is done visually and also with an multimeter's ohms and diode-check functions.

Don't toss the PSUs like a wasteful, helpless metrosexual. Give them to people who can solder and who want to try fixing them.
 
If you really want to try and fix them, then I would suggest
to re solder all the cold joints first. It is the easiest to repair,
but at the same time. These are also the worse of the solder
points on a board. Just make sure you are using solder with
a high melting point. Some where around 35 to 40 watts.
 
Auburn_Tigers said:
If you really want to try and fix them, then I would suggest to re solder all the cold joints first. It is the easiest to repair, but at the same time. These are also the worse of the solder points on a board. Just make sure you are using solder with a high melting point. Some where around 35 to 40 watts.
Click to expand...
I'm confused because isn't 60% tin/40% lead solder usually considered the best for electronics, and it has one of the lowest melting temperatures?
 
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