• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Need tips repairing PSU

G

grandpatzer

Gawd
Joined
Feb 24, 2010
Messages
641
Recently I replaced fan in the PSU, The fan molex pressed the green pcb card and made it move.
My suspicion is either soldering got loose on powerplug or a component on that green PCB got damaged.

I have a soldering Iron + multimeter, I'm going to disassemble the PSU.

Now I need suggestions what to look for, can I make some multimeter measurements to figure out if a soldering is broken or some component on that PCB card?
From wall using the Black/Green power on Trick I get following:
Power OFF: 0.0watt, Power ON: around 0.6 - 0.7 watt, I live in Sweden and we have 230volt system here.

If a component is damaged my guess would be it's one of the ones on top right corner on this picture, this image is from jonnyguru review of this PSU:
DSCF2089.JPG


These 2 images are on my PSU and show the molex fan.
1000


1000
 
Only thing you can do is look for anything out of the ordinary. I wouldn't really recommend doing a power supply repair unless it's easy to do.
 
Tinkering inside a PSU is a good way to get yourself seriously hurt or killed unless you know what you're doing.
 
Short answer: resolder all the pins on the fan controller board, both the pins where the fan plugs in and the pins at the bottom of the controller that attach it to the big main circuit board. Do NOT run the PSU except with its cover completely reinstalled (all screws tightened) and with a 3-prong, grounded AC outlet; there's lots of exposed high voltage inside a PSU, often even on one of the big heatsinks.

But be very careful when soldering the fan controller pins that go into the main board because a lot of times those pins share the same small copper pads as tiny surface mount resistors or capacitors, and those components can easily fall off when the solder for the pins melts. So wait at least 5 seconds after soldering each pin there.

I can't see where the Molex plugs into the fan controller, so I can't tell if the design is bad and doesn't allow adequate clearance, But could the problem have been due to the fan controller sitting about 1-2 mm above the main circuit board, rather than flush against it? Sometimes the clearance prevents shorts between the boards, but I don't think shorts can be a problem here because the fan board is 2-layer and has a border with no copper at the very edge (I can't be sure because I can't see the back side of the fan controller).
 
Last edited:
Here's the best tip, Don't try. As others have already said unless you really know what you are doing you will get either a nasty shock or worse.

Not worth it IMHO, get a new one and leave the fan alone.
 
Like others have said, unless the problem is blatantly obvious its not worth messing with. Though you would be hard pressed to kill yourself. Probably just purchase a new unit with fresh electronics. If the psu lasted long enough for the fan to bite the dust you probably got some decent use out of it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top