Pretty cool alternative to modular PSU's

Pagan Wizard

Pagan Wizard

2[H]4U
Joined
Jan 12, 2002
Messages
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I have been wanting one of those modular power supplies but really couldn't afford one. I just came across this PSU mod in a recent mailing from SVC. They even come in several different colors to go with your theme. I just ordered one in blue.

Sorry if this is a repost
 
Think I could handle doing it? Im a little worried bout doing it on my TT Butterfly though...Heres the main question..once the powers off can I still get shocked?
 
1st Sgt. Burke said:
Think I could handle doing it? Im a little worried bout doing it on my TT Butterfly though...Heres the main question..once the powers off can I still get shocked?
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Yes, but after a few times you get used to it. The twitching takes a while to get rid of though.
 
Well maybe Ill stay away from it for now....I dont wanna fry. Done it once before w/ a breadboard and a led...
 
i know this may sound kinda stupid to you guys, but since the last post, ive been wondering...wats a modular psu?
 
oOo sam lee oOo said:
i know this may sound kinda stupid to you guys, but since the last post, ive been wondering...wats a modular psu?
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It is a power supply that allows you to detatch and reattatch the different cables coming out of it so you just have the cables you need.
 
and when speaking of modular psu's the Ultra X-Connect, Super Flower PLUG-N and Antec Neopower come to mind......

incase you wanted to see some.
 
1st Sgt. Burke said:
Think I could handle doing it? Im a little worried bout doing it on my TT Butterfly though...Heres the main question..once the powers off can I still get shocked?
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to get rid of the charge in teh capacitators, unplug the computer and hit the power button a few times. that should pretty effectivly get rid of all charge left in teh power supply

pretty cool mod. id consider doing it if i ihadnt already hidden all my wires...:p
 
lithium726 said:
to get rid of the charge in teh capacitators, unplug the computer and hit the power button a few times. that should pretty effectivly get rid of all charge left in teh power supply

pretty cool mod. id consider doing it if i ihadnt already hidden all my wires...:p
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ROFL! Do NOT be fooled. This will NOT get rid of the charge in the capacitors... An effective, simple way to discharge them is to use a wire and a screwdriver. But, do not do this unless you know what you're doing. If you're worried, you can always take it into a hobby shop and have them discharge it for you.
 
Maximus825 said:
If you're worried, you can always take it into a hobby shop and have them discharge it for you.
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This is probably THE safest way to go, a TV/VCR repair shop can also do it for you. You can expect to have to pay about $5 for the peace of mind.
 
Maximus825 said:
ROFL! Do NOT be fooled. This will NOT get rid of the charge in the capacitors... An effective, simple way to discharge them is to use a wire and a screwdriver. But, do not do this unless you know what you're doing. If you're worried, you can always take it into a hobby shop and have them discharge it for you.
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someone on here told me that would work... so why wont it?
 
Just playing devil's advocate here, but if your gonna hack up your psu to get the wires you want like that...why not just wire it the way you want from the start. Seems like that would be easier to do it that way even if you had to add a few more wires in the future. And it would be free.
 
PawNtheSandman said:
Honestly, I just think that kit is waiting for a lawsuit. Too many stupid people out there.
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Agreed, but for curiosity sake, of all the people here has anyone discharged the caps into them by accident (and presumably lived) or known someone who has. Of all the good advice floating around on the forums here I'm kinda shocked (no pun ment) that no one has posted and personal horror stories to deter people. Thats said I did dicharge a disposable camera flash in me once. Fuckin' hurt, at a psu level I could definatly understand why not to do it.
 
Come on guys. It's only 110V AC for a split second. Surely you guys have been shocked before when unscrewing a light bulb or plugging in an extension cord. It's just gonna be a small shock that you'll feel, and it might possibly make your arm jerk when it happens, but its nowhere near gonna kill you.

Now if you wanna mess with some seriously high voltages, grab ahold of that big suction cup thing on the top of the tube inside a monitor. Now THAT could kill you.
 
SarverSystems said:
Now if you wanna mess with some seriously high voltages, grab ahold of that big suction cup thing on the top of the tube inside a monitor. Now THAT could kill you.
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been there done that, I work in the IT Field, and we were working on a monitor that another tech had supposedly discharged and allowed to sit for a day, so we discharded one of the caps and it had nothing, so we assumed he had done them all, I get to one of those links, my arm jearks, punching the guy beside me, carrying the arc, and knocking us both out... it was a great "learning" experiance, been shocked by PSUs too many times to count.

Conundrum
 
people have by killed by about 1/10th of 110v, all depends on how/where you get shocked. i was told if you unplug your PSU and leave it for 3+ days, the capacitators should be mostly if not completely discharged. that could also be untrue though :confused:
 
If you haven't got a shorting probe, then get a screwdriver, with a rubber or otherwise insulated grip and attach a wire from the blade to the case (metal) and touch the leads on all the caps with the blade, that ought to do it. I used to work on radars in the Navy and had a shorting probe essentially a metal rod with an insulated handle and a wire attached to the metal rod with an alligator clip for attaching to the case. I don't think this is an extremely dangerous operation.
 
Caps hold a DC charge and I highly doubt any of the caps in a PSU holds a charge with enough amperage to cause someone serious harm(unless your hands are wet of course). If your too scared, just work with 1 hand in the PSU so any shorts that occur will only send the voltage through your one hand and not your entire body.

I've had caps much bigger than the ones in a PSU (bigger in size and farad rating) fully charged and never received any kind of jolt from it.

I say if your interested in the mod, go for it. Just use common sense.
 
capacitors supposedly can hold a charge for months at a time.

as for being killed by less than 120v: they would have to get shocked at somewhere MUCH closer to the heart than their hand. nuff said

ive been shocked by disposable cameras capacitors too..that hurt.

been shocked by the input line(from the wall) in a PSU when i forgot to unplug it (i know i know) and i touched the hot(hot as in carries voltage) lead from the socket that the power cord plugs into. surprisingly the camera capacitor hurt more to me :confused:

moral of the story: dont get shocked

ps. DAMN conundrum, THAT musta hurt
 
4b5eN+EE said:
capacitors supposedly can hold a charge for months at a time.

as for being killed by less than 120v: they would have to get shocked at somewhere MUCH closer to the heart than their hand. nuff said

ive been shocked by disposable cameras capacitors too..that hurt.

been shocked by the input line(from the wall) in a PSU when i forgot to unplug it (i know i know) and i touched the hot(hot as in carries voltage) lead from the socket that the power cord plugs into. surprisingly the camera capacitor hurt more to me :confused:

moral of the story: dont get shocked

ps. DAMN conundrum, THAT musta hurt
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I got hit with a 50k volt stun gun as well (heh, bunch of us guys playing around) and for whatever reason that didn't hurt nearly as bad as that damn camera.
 
Umm.... God I hope you're not trying to discharge a monitor by leaving it unplugged for 3 days. Capacitors in monitors hold their charge for YEARS, I thought !
 
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This is my custom config, I no longer have 12v/5v cables from the power supply!!
 
you really shouldent short caps with a screwdriver also, its bad for the dielectric iirc...

but ya usually just unplugging your pc and hitting the powerbutton will discharge your PSU, but not always...
 
Why bother with modular psus...

Everyone ive ever seen has had all the connectors in use anyway it looks far messier... just learn to manage your cables and stash the excess ones somewhere they wont be seen.
 
Please take no offense. I mean no harm.

"I see the works of gifted hands, that grace this strange and wondrous land."

Rush is the best rock band ever!!
 
Camera - Been hit by that charge
PSU - Been hit by that charge
110v Wall socket - Been hit by that charge
The Worst I think I have ever been hit by is a Car Starter... I lost a finger nail.
 
Well now I'm an EE student and the obvious thing to me would be to wear rubber gloves while doing it. Like surgical gloves, you know, the ones you blow up to look like a chicken and stick on your head. Yes the voltage in a PSU (even after a few days) is enough to hurt you, but like another poster said, it's the current that matters. 4ma to your heart will kill you in seconds while a 100KV shock from a stun gun will probly only disable you for a while. That's because your heart beats with the equivalent of a 4ma current powering it. So do be careful, and always use rubber gloves, or better yet, run it to the hobby shop as mentioned earlier.
 
Xyrax said:
Caps hold a DC charge and I highly doubt any of the caps in a PSU holds a charge with enough amperage to cause someone serious harm
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Think again. It only takes a few milliamps to make your muscles contract hard. Its unlikely that a PSU capacitor will kill you from electric shock, but more likely to cause bodily harm from your arms flying around, getting caught on metal...

My teachers friend passed out from blood loss. His hands were in a tv, and was shocked from the CRT. Its about 20kV, but very low current. Its enough current to make your arms pull inward. He tore the shit out of his arm and wrist, when he got caught on the metal chassis. And the metal inside appliances is rarely filed smooth, its almost always a sharp edge from when it was cut.

Just take the right saftey precations. Short out the caps lead with a screwdriver, and you will be fine. You dont even need to have your paws on the underside of the PSU anyways to add in that modular thing, you can cut the wires to about 3" long off the PSU board, and solder the right ones together to fit on the modular connector. Ive done this before with something I made myself, its not a big scary project.
 
I think the point should be that if you don't work with electronics don't do it. Don't be doing this as your first mod. Discharging a cap into yourself can f you up. If you want modular that bad, just sell the PSU you have and buy one.
 
Lucidguy_3000 said:
people have by killed by about 1/10th of 110v, all depends on how/where you get shocked. i was told if you unplug your PSU and leave it for 3+ days, the capacitators should be mostly if not completely discharged. that could also be untrue though :confused:
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Yep. Amps kill not volts.

redhalo said:
Just playing devil's advocate here, but if your gonna hack up your psu to get the wires you want like that...why not just wire it the way you want from the start. Seems like that would be easier to do it that way even if you had to add a few more wires in the future. And it would be free.
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I'm with redhalo on that one.
 
Maximus825 said:
ROFL! Do NOT be fooled. This will NOT get rid of the charge in the capacitors... An effective, simple way to discharge them is to use a wire and a screwdriver. But, do not do this unless you know what you're doing. If you're worried, you can always take it into a hobby shop and have them discharge it for you.
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Or you can cut th power, unplug the thing from the wall and wait a few minutes for the caps to discharge on their own.
 
Moose777 said:
Or you can cut th power, unplug the thing from the wall and wait a few minutes for the caps to discharge on their own.
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Are you trying to get people to hurt themselves?
 
Come on guys. It's only 110V AC for a split second.
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Uhh, are you insane? the amount of charge delivered to your from those caps at 110V is probably enough to injur you. Best way to discharge the capacitor is to simply short it out. For anyone who doesn't know how capacitors work, it is basically 2 pieces of material seperates from eachother by a dialectric (some sort of substance between the 2 pieces of material). The two pieces of material are charged oppositely with some voltage. The energy is actually stored inside an electric field, but I'm not gonna sit here and teach Electric Field Theory to you :p. Anyway, shorting the capacitor causes the positive and negative side to become neutral with respect to one another.
 
upriverpaddler said:
Please take no offense. I mean no harm.

"I see the works of gifted hands, that grace this strange and wondrous land."

Rush is the best rock band ever!!
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I intended my sig to end with "I see the works of gifted hands" kinda as a tribute to the people who have been on this forum modding thier cases over the years. I also knew the words and have no clue how the wrong words got added, cuz I sure didn't do it, but it has been fixed. Thanks for pointing it out though.
 
Maximus825 said:
Are you trying to get people to hurt themselves?
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There's quite a bit of misinformation going around on here.

Caps discharge themselves over a period of time. A capacitor can not "store" a charge for a long period of time indeffinitely.

A large capacitor will discharge 50% of it's charge within 15 minutes without a constant power source. A TV's capacitors are usually around 20kV and can sometimes hold a charge for 72 hours.

You can make a capacitor "hold" it's charge longer by packing it in oil, moving the plates farther apart or making them larger, placing it in a vacuum, using insulating wire, or keeping it in a less humid area. But it will not stop the capacitor from loosing it's charge to the air, just slow it down.

It is also IMPOSSIBLE to make a capacitor that can hold a charge for years. A capacitor is like a battery. The only difference is that a battery is designed to store a charge and release it slowly (remember, batterys have a shelf life and if the energy isn't used in the time alloted that enrgy is lost hence the term "dead battery"). A capacitor is designed to store a charge and release it in about a second. a capacitor consists of two conducting plates separated by an insulator, which could be solid, liquid, air or even a vacuum. A vacuum sealed capacitor (usually made of glass) will hold it's charge the longest. But again, without a constant flow of electricity going to it it will lose it's charge within a few hours.

So, by cutting the power to the power supply for your computer (disconnecting the cord from the wall would be sufficient) and then waiting 15-30 minutes later the caps would be discharged. A capacitor on a power supply is usually packed with a paper insulator betweent he plates. So it isn't going to hold a charge for anymore than 15 minutes or so.

If you'd like to experiement you can make your own capacitor out of aluminum foil, and some paper. Connect it to a battery, it will discharge the battery very quickly then it will store the energy from teh battery for a short period of time, usually enough to illuminate a light bulb for a second or so. If you use a 9v battery on the capacitor the capacitor will hold 9v's worth of energy.
 
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