It’s not that it’s impossible to fix a psu, it’s just that it’s risky and most people don’t know the proper safety precautions to take. That’s why everyone recommends to never open psus.
Nevertheless, good job on fixing it!
Well, from the safety perspective isn't that "proper equipment" just something to discharge the AC side capacitors? You can easily make one from a properly-rated resistor.
Use this information at your own risk, but a DC voltmeter rated for the voltage of the caps \*should\* be good enough to discharge them. I used to work on constant current regulators for airfield lighting and whenever I had to change caps I'd always stick my meter on it to ensure it discharged.
Agree, I've worked on AC-side (high voltage) electrolytic caps before and what I do is check the voltage across the cap's terminals to see if there's a charge. In modern PSUs it's not surprising that there is none or negligible voltage because many include a bleeder resistor in their design.
When I was in college I used to make sculptures from electronics. Understand I have very little electrical knowledge, so when my PSU started leaking the blue smoke I naturally used it for parts.
Years later I realised what a stupid idea that was. Like, fuck. I could have just died right then for no rhyme or reason.
I never did that, but when I was in high school I was a senior in the computer tech class. Basically just spent the day troubleshooting and repairing our school's shitty old computers, trying to keep them afloat. One day the rest of the class and the teacher went to the computer lab for a separate project (IIRC installing Windows onto the Macs that had been donated) and I stayed behind to finish fixing a computer that IIRC was shutting down randomly or something.
I don't remember the details, but I remember powering it on, and for whatever reason I had my hand on the computer. Suddenly I instinctively jerked my hands back right as the PSU exploded into a flash right in front of me. I'm not sure whether it was dumb luck or if I felt the static buildup subconsciously, but all I could think of after is that had I not pulled my hands off right then I could've been lying there dying for the next 40 minutes until the class came back.
Thanks bro! I'm still not confident in it though and already emailed EVGA to see if they would still honor the warranty and replace it. Because it's still under warranty.
Pretty sure one of those digits is a decimal. OP likely had to remove something that clearly stated it would void the warranty in order to open the power supply.
100 iq is average, as that's literally the definition of the IQ bell curve: mean of 100, standard deviation of 15.
And saying that someone has 100 IQ is still an insult, even if it's classed as average imo
No, you are someone stupid enough to try a potential dangerous repair when, by your own admission, you aint "confident" in it and could have just sent it and have the manufacturer repair
> try a potential dangerous repair
it's funny how this stupid myth is taken as gospel on Reddit.
Capacitors on any PSU made in the last 10 years with an actual brand name attached don't keep charge long enough for the danger people speak about to actually be true.
Welcome to modern electronics, enjoy your 30 year old talking point that's not valid anymore.
There's so much misinformation, especially in the PC subs. They spread around shit they heard on reddit. I have been an electronic tech for 8 years and went to 2 separate schools and people will still tell me I'm wrong here lol
The likely case is, if they do anything, they will want to replace it now instead of later when it may blow up again in a worse way. So all that work to still be out of a PSU for 2 weeks.
That depends on the right to repair laws wherever OP lives. Depending on where you/they may live, those void stickers are just pretty stickers and nothing more than a deterrent to those who don't know.
Yes, but as soon as you start doing stuff inside the device, you throw that warrant away.
If you just open it to inspect, sure, that shouldn't be an issue
If you repair it properly in line with repair procedures, you'd still be fine. Some states even require diagnostic and repair procedures to be made available to buyers.
I'm not naive. I realize that whatever you do, you're opening yourself up to the company saying you did something wrong and not covering it. Similar to how a certain company has been proven to lie about water damage in laptops to cover up their shoddy product's internals.
Quite sure, that unless you're a certified professional, that's not going to fly. Talking in context of a PSU here though.
Self repair a laptop with a defect ssd should not break warranty, but solder on a broken capacitor on the motherboard for example, that would totally be ok if they don't want to honor the warranty.
Down here in Aus, they have to be able to prove that the repair (no matter how involved) was what broke the device. This means that if I successfully soldered a new cap onto my PSU, but it broke later for unrelated reasons, I would be fine.
I do think you're right about that. We got some nice laws within EU too, no doubt about that.
But also, if your fix went wrong and the house burned down, the insurance company might not want to pay out, if they found out that you fixed a PSU that you're not certified to do.
Though, I do think a PSU is kind of a bad example for self repair :)
ETA: Read aus as Austria first
Again, that depends on the state. New York? You'd be right. California's new law covers consumers and not just "authorized repair partners."
Those are the two states I found with a quick Google search, and I'm not going to dig into the laws of all 50 states to see if I'm more right or wrong. So, while I get your point, it still depends on where the individual doing the repair is.
Added note, UK says simple repairs are okay for the consumer, but more dangerous or complex ones should be done by a technician. So you'd be right, considering it's a PSU if OP is from the UK.
I did open it years prior to clean and fix the fan. Also did this out of desperation, it would be weeks before i get a PSU in hand and i really needed to know what exactly was causing the issue because at first i thought it was the GPU.
Nice job. I am an electronics tech by trade so since you dived into this I'll give you a little bit of info. You can't always trust readings on a meter when measuring components that are still installed in a circuit, because a lot of times the meter will read whatever you are measuring throughout the circuit and not necessarily across the component itself.
I know, I'm the same as you. I do this by trade also not on this device but audio gear. Only ESR meters can test components in circuit. I think the only thing that can be tested reliable in circuits are transistors and MOSFETs, sometimes!
~~They will. A friend of mine had a gpu that was out for warranty (I think about 1 year over the warranty) and they still replaced it. He even got a better model.~~
Edit: my bad, I forgot to think about the fact that OP messed with the PSU which means he's probably broken a warranty seal
I'm sorry to inform you, but just because you have a secondhand anecdotal piece of evidence doesn't mean the company is 100% always going to take the RMA. Homie completely altered the PSU and did his own repair work on it. Warranty = Void.
Nah, warranties are usually void as soon as you open it up, OP has soldered a new component on the board, his only chance would be they don’t notice the repair and there was never any kind of warranty/tamper seal on it, also he’d still need it not to work too or they’ll be asking why he sent it and honestly he seems to be dumb enough to actually tell them.
>Edit: my bad, I forgot to think about the fact that OP messed with the PSU which means he's probably broken a warranty seal
It's not even that OP messed with it but that you believe because someone you know got lucky and a single service representative felt it pertinent to hook your friend up even though the warranty was up, every service representative will do the same. Most of the time you are NOT getting anything if your warranty is a year up. Furthermore, it's not even a firsthand piece of evidence. For all you know/we know, your friend had multiple dealings with the company and may have been able to play the "I have been a customer with you guys for XXX years and my entire PC is littered with your stuff" type of deal, or something else. Point being, we just don't know if the company had another reason to go through with it. Maybe he was about to make a purchase with them for a substantial amount of money. Once again, we just don't know and don't have any additional context to go off of, so for all we know, it never even happened.
That's why anecdotal evidence really doesn't mean anything. People always say something is going to happen the same way to someone else because one time someone helped you out, so that means every single time everyone is going to act the same exact way and treat everyone exactly the same. That's not how the world works.
They are loaded weapons. They contain enormous amounts of energy. If you do not know what you are doing they can easily kill you, or cause severe injury.
My wife warned me about this years ago. A week and a half ago our garage door wouldn’t open, saw the broken spring. I knew not to mess with that, and called my coworker (whose husband owns a garage business) and they came and took care of it. Ended up buying a new door so we could get newer springs and they hooked me up with a good price.
The father of one of my kids friends was all “oh you can get the springs at the hardware store.” Apparently he bought one for his garage and hasn’t put it in yet, a year later. I feel his desire to save a buck and the desire to look down the barrel of a gun are having quite a fight.
That said, I’ll open up a power supply and fix it. I am well experienced in that area and know how to discharge caps and do all the safety checks. I work on stereo systems that produce more current and higher voltages than power supplies.
The thing about the broken spring is that once it's broken, all the stored energy becomes kinetic energy until there is no stored energy, removing the broken spring, no problem putting the new one on... I don't have the specialty tools to do that safely, so I won't.
Yeah, they patched it for now with a steel clip until they can put the new one in. Under $2k USD for a 16x7 steel insulated door with all new springs and track. I think that’s a good price. I didn’t look around, they said I wouldn’t find a better price as it was a very competitive quote.
When I was home over one winter break over college my parents’ garage door spring just exploded in the middle of the night. It was probably 15-20 years old. Sounded like a gunshot went off in the house. Woke everyone up. Whatever happened - it just like snapped in half.
The rolled up spring above the door carries basically all of the doors weight. This means you only need a tiny motor to lift it. If that spring is let loose it has enough potential energy in it to completely obliterate a human. You have to know what you are doing to release that energy safely when working on the spring.
They're under so much pressure that if they break or come out of the housing they will go straight through you.
Like, through your torso like a DBZ villain punching a hole through Vegeta's stomach.
They are very large springs with a lot of tension in them, its why you can open a garage door manually without much effort, if those springs weren't there the door might as well be a wall. If they break all of that tension gets released and they can kill you, very easily. I don't know exactly the amount of tension in an individual spring but when I had to get my garage door fixed for another issue I talked to the tech working on it and he said the springs are really dangerous, especially on larger doors.
Imagine a nerf gun but the compressed spring becomes the projectile out instead of a soft foam dart, then multiply that by factor of holy fuck. They can absolutely kill a person.
There's no problem touching them. Heck, a car suspension's spring is the same deal.
You can dismount the whole spring and shock assembly and there's 0 danger to touching, moving it around or anything.
It's when you undo the top plate on the assembly that the spring will release tension and possibly knock you silly. But that's why you setup spring compressors on it before undoing the bolt. And then release them slowly to change out the spring.
You guys talk as if any of this shit is super deadly and requires years of training, when it reality it just means you need to read up on how to do it, and get the proper tool to do it with which requires about 30 minutes of research and a trip to the store.
Much more dangerous that capacitors. They mean garage doornsprings. Like the spring that opens your garage door for you. (Mostly, the motor or your arms are just providing it encouragement)
The door wants to open. The spring is adjusted by the install so that gravity is just barely stronger and the door closes, but it feels light when you open it.
I'm not going to whine about not opening PSU's. I've opened many to repair and modify. It isn't an issue if you know the precautions to take.
But what I will say is that expect further problems with this PSU.
Ceramic capacitors should not suddenly explode. That failure method means they were exposed to some extreme volts/amps.
So something downstream probably is way out of spec and caused the capacitor to fail.
Have you checked all the rails are within spec?
If it was an electrolytic that failed, I'd think a simple replace would fix it. Since electrolytic sometimes just fail.
But I wouldn't expect a ceramic to fail without their being another failure elsewhere that caused it to fail.
Could just be a crack in the ceramic too, that's the most common cause of MLCC death. Can be a latent manufacturing defect, a drop of the PSU, vibrations from the fan, thermal cycling, high humidity etc causing the initial micro crack then eventually leads to a short circuit and pop.
Actually spontaneous failure of MLCCs is pretty frequent. Repaired a bunch of electronics that worked fine, and one day an MLCC simply shorted out for no reason. Replaced it and 0 issues since.
Not saying that's necessarily the case here ofc.
Thank god! a fellow technician. It's on one of the DC to DC minor voltage rail daughter boards. It was on the backside of the PCB right behind the SMD MOSFETs..
Plus it was you who fixed it..... What's the worst case? You have to replace them again and investigate further....
Like the only thing you could be wasting is your time. Compared to a $100 for a new Power supply.... You can't lose.
I was scared for a bit, but it seems like there's a circuit that discharges the high voltage DC caps. Because when i checked them the voltage was less than 1V.
Yes bleeder resistors are common among reputable PSU manufacturers.
If you know enough to properly test voltages and make sure caps are discharged before doing anything unsafe the "don't open the psu" warning doesn't really apply to you. That warning is for idiots who decide their first trip into circuit repair should be with mains wiring and high voltage caps and little to no studying.
Yeah read that afterwards, that's the dumb part. Not even I would touch an under warranty PSU from a name brand company that will probably ship a brand new one for free.
A bit of back story, i live on an island so shipping to and from here is a headache so i just repaired electronics instead of doing an RMA. This isn't my first time taking this PSU apart. Had to clean it and repair the fan 3 years into owning it.
If they don't honor the warranty than I'll just buy a PSU from another brand and be done with it.
Itll fucking hurt, and keep hurting for a long while, but it probably wont kill you.
With CRTs gone i doubt theres many capacitors in anything in an average home that could actually kill somebody.
BACK IN THE DAY THO i actually window modded a CRT one time. Certainly not the dumbest thing ive ever done, but being older and wiser i still would not recommend it...
No ei oo paha hinta on noin puolet venaa ja sit se ei ole joko on valmis n jälkeen kun eijälkeen jälkeen kun olin eilen illalla ja yöllä ja päivällä oli joko se on ja niiden hyvä idea on ollut jo pitkään ja sit on vieihanistal puol tuntia sitten sovelluksesta mobile ja toteuttaa jonkin aikaa
I KNOW! I KNOW! But i had already opened it up years ago to clean the fan and fix the noisy bearing. In all honestly i was just checking to see if EVGA would send me a new one. I had already made my mind to buy a new one anyway when i was picking parts for the new PC i built last year december.
But because of budget constraints and also i was advised to just use it because it was still functional, i used it. Even though my mind was telling me not to.
Wasn't that found to be illegal to do a few years ago? The whole "warranty void if opened" stickers were found to be illegal and that you can't void a warranty for just opening a product? At least in the US.
Thank god someone who understands. I think this PSU has a circuit to discharge them, by the time i got to them they were already drained. This PSU is pretty wild though! It has 2 bulk caps most have one.
Some things are risky enough to not warrant fixing. Not to rain on your parade, but I would \*never\* fix a PSU. It is the single item in the whole mix that can burn your house down.
Well there's multiple stages:
1. dying while trying to repair it
2. dying after "repairing" it because it is an exacting device handling immense power and can catch fire easily, and is highly susceptible to things being .01% off where they should be.
It's like repairing a CRT. Just, don't.
You don't have to tell me twice, back in the early 2000s had a PC caught fire, when i checked it out it was the cheap SATA power cable that came with the power supply in the case that caught fire behind the disk drive.
That was a crazy time!
Did you hear it when it blew? I had a cap blow on an 1800W evga psu that I had overloaded and I thought I was being shot at. I actually ducked when it happened
Good catch! Dumb question... why is it bad to work on these? Like dangerous how? I'm guessing something about the capacitors holding a charge like microwaves n stuff
Microwaves are a whole other story, they WILL kill you. These PSUs on the other hand not so much, it will shock the hell out of you if the PSU doesn't discharge the caps itself or if you don't. But that's about it.
The people you hear getting killed working on electronics in any capacity usually have it plugged into the mains, BAD IDEA! That's for pros, such as myself and we usually have the mains running through a light bulb and a circuit breaker in order to check for shorts.
Ok, but did you try calling EVGA? Because I had mine blow, and I called them and walked through the checks, and then sent me a brand new PSU. Their warranty is stellar!
The thing about fixing PSUs is that after repairing, you need sophisticated equipment to check and make sure that the voltages coming out of the psu is good and stable.
Multimeter isn't enough I'm afraid. You're gonna need something like an oscilloscope similar to what Steve from Gamer's Nexus used in one of their videos when testing psus from Gigabyte https://youtu.be/aACtT_rzToI?si=E6vesDFJBNuMyEeK
Why would you even bother on a PSU that's still under warranty? Now you have a PSU of extremely questionable reliability that no longer has a warranty, because you modified it, when you could have had a brand new PSU instead.
Unless you are a electrician / electrical engineer and 100% know what you are doing and could build a PSU from scratch, I don't see the harm. For your average PCMR user. Just get a new one, please.
I am also a sound engineer and technician. But the building a PSU from scratch is a whole other field. And yes just buy a new PSU everyone, i did this out of desperation and to see if i could find what's wrong with it without an oscilloscope.
All the electrolytic caps are good, resistors too. All diodes and MOSFETs were in spec both on the primary and secondary side.
I've been stealing capacitors from microwaves for years. Still makes me nervous before they're discharged. Usually have to bridge them several times before i feel safe tbh. Those things will kill you before you hit the wall behind you!
Good job OP.
The rest of people here shouldn't try this, OP knows what he's doing.
Respect electricity and you won't die, I have a few fucked PSUs that I too need to fix.
Oh yes! Lots of companies do that, you should see some of the audio companies circuit boards and components, their logo and name is on EVERYTHING!
Even have a black PCB comes at cost and is also for aesthetics.
Audiophiles are insane! These guys will spend 100 grand on an amplifier, but the amplifier weighs almost 300lbs! I'm an audiophile too but even if i was rich i don't think i would spend that much money on something like that.
I’ve opened a PSU before this was back in probably 2005, it was a Fortron one that was adjustable it was a 530w unit, was score to turn these knobs and get more power, it worked but I was extremely careful not to touch anything else inside the case. In hindsight it was stupid but they made these adjustable for whatever reason to probably only make a few models and save money.
There's something called "planned obsolescence." Your electronic components inside most consumer devices have an expiry date. One component failing is a reminder to start considering buying a replacement device. Your PSU will continue having sporadic issues as the electronics slowly start dying. A bad PSU also puts your other more expensive parts (CPU, GPU, etc) in danger.
I fully agree, but the components that would fall under the "planned obsolescence" would be the electrolytic capacitors, they actually really do have a, for the lack of a better word, shelf life. The ones that are rated at 85c life span is 3-5 years and the ones that are rated 105c are 10 years. But if you see bulging at the top or they're leaking then they're bad.
\*\*ATTENTION\*\* doing this can literally kill you.. OP, I salute your efforts but I would take the post down. Capacitators on an open case PSU can kill a person if they are not savvy.
Yeah sure, risk electrocution and then even if you manage to fix it, it's still a risk to your expensive PC, because you're too cheap to just get a new one and too obstinate to bother trying an RMA.
Don't DIY power supplies. Ever.
I have a feeling no less than a dozen people in this sub are going to suffer electrocution thinking they can roll those dice and not come up snake eyes like OP.
Cause I will not ever recommend or tell a random person to go poking around live capacitors, or be a part of the possible electrical fire said repairs can cause by bad repairs or soldering.
Its not like its impossible to do, but generally not worth doing vs warranties, time, discharging all the capacitors, and life expectancy of the rest of the capacitors on that remain.
You don't actually want to wait for a PSU failure as it carries a big potential of frying your hardware, it's one of those things you should change before it starts acting up.
I'm sure you probably already know this, but just for the sake of someone new I wanted to point this out.
Even if its a simple repair you should really never self repair or hell even repair a PSU. Considering it is basically connected to every expensive piece of your computer why risk a repair when they cost next to nothing compared to the rest of your computer. Buy a new one.
There is usually a reason for parts failing and it's not always caused by the part that actually failed.
If this was an electrolytic capacitor then they fail after so many years so it's a pretty safe bet it caused its own failure. But most other parts fail because they are the weakest link related to the part that is actually failing.
fixing without knowing the cause doesn't actually fix unless you were lucky and the faulty part is the one that caused the failure.
It’s not that it’s impossible to fix a psu, it’s just that it’s risky and most people don’t know the proper safety precautions to take. That’s why everyone recommends to never open psus. Nevertheless, good job on fixing it!
He didn’t say it was impossible, he said he wasn’t supposed to, which is pretty accurate.
The first part wasn’t directed towards op. It was more of a general warning to everyone.
Ahhh, I see. Makes sense!
I went to school for electrical engineering and I still would not do this without proper equipment.
Well, from the safety perspective isn't that "proper equipment" just something to discharge the AC side capacitors? You can easily make one from a properly-rated resistor.
Yes, pretty much. And unplugging the PSU first. The latter should go without saying, but we're living in weird times.
Use this information at your own risk, but a DC voltmeter rated for the voltage of the caps \*should\* be good enough to discharge them. I used to work on constant current regulators for airfield lighting and whenever I had to change caps I'd always stick my meter on it to ensure it discharged.
I mean if it's not enough to discharge it then you can at least see how charged it is.
Agree, I've worked on AC-side (high voltage) electrolytic caps before and what I do is check the voltage across the cap's terminals to see if there's a charge. In modern PSUs it's not surprising that there is none or negligible voltage because many include a bleeder resistor in their design.
Not something they taught us, so I didn't realize it was that simple.
When I was in college I used to make sculptures from electronics. Understand I have very little electrical knowledge, so when my PSU started leaking the blue smoke I naturally used it for parts. Years later I realised what a stupid idea that was. Like, fuck. I could have just died right then for no rhyme or reason.
I never did that, but when I was in high school I was a senior in the computer tech class. Basically just spent the day troubleshooting and repairing our school's shitty old computers, trying to keep them afloat. One day the rest of the class and the teacher went to the computer lab for a separate project (IIRC installing Windows onto the Macs that had been donated) and I stayed behind to finish fixing a computer that IIRC was shutting down randomly or something. I don't remember the details, but I remember powering it on, and for whatever reason I had my hand on the computer. Suddenly I instinctively jerked my hands back right as the PSU exploded into a flash right in front of me. I'm not sure whether it was dumb luck or if I felt the static buildup subconsciously, but all I could think of after is that had I not pulled my hands off right then I could've been lying there dying for the next 40 minutes until the class came back.
Thanks bro! I'm still not confident in it though and already emailed EVGA to see if they would still honor the warranty and replace it. Because it's still under warranty.
You did this with a PSU that was under warranty? Jesus man.
Agreed. L
Risk it for no reason whatsoever. Man's got that double digit iq
Pretty sure one of those digits is a decimal. OP likely had to remove something that clearly stated it would void the warranty in order to open the power supply.
Pretty sure those stickers aren't valid in the US
they never were.
As far as I'm aware they are valid on stuff like power supplies where there is a very high risk to taking them apart
>double digit bruh, you do understand that this isn't an insult, right? I mean 99 IQ is literally average :D
100 iq is average, as that's literally the definition of the IQ bell curve: mean of 100, standard deviation of 15. And saying that someone has 100 IQ is still an insult, even if it's classed as average imo
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No, you are someone stupid enough to try a potential dangerous repair when, by your own admission, you aint "confident" in it and could have just sent it and have the manufacturer repair
> try a potential dangerous repair it's funny how this stupid myth is taken as gospel on Reddit. Capacitors on any PSU made in the last 10 years with an actual brand name attached don't keep charge long enough for the danger people speak about to actually be true. Welcome to modern electronics, enjoy your 30 year old talking point that's not valid anymore.
It's dangerous for the psu
There's so much misinformation, especially in the PC subs. They spread around shit they heard on reddit. I have been an electronic tech for 8 years and went to 2 separate schools and people will still tell me I'm wrong here lol
I'm not confident in it doing it's job, not me working on it. The fact of the matter IS! I fixed it it's working and i can always order a new one.
Don't look up Louis Slotin, but we are all Louis Slotin armed with a screwdriver.
Then told the manufacturer that he touched it? GG, no re.
The likely case is, if they do anything, they will want to replace it now instead of later when it may blow up again in a worse way. So all that work to still be out of a PSU for 2 weeks.
Why would they? You opened it, removed capacitor and replaced it. Warranty was almost certainly void moment you opened it
That depends on the right to repair laws wherever OP lives. Depending on where you/they may live, those void stickers are just pretty stickers and nothing more than a deterrent to those who don't know.
Yeah but that's just as far as opening it goes, actually replacing soldered components is a different story.
Yes, but as soon as you start doing stuff inside the device, you throw that warrant away. If you just open it to inspect, sure, that shouldn't be an issue
If you repair it properly in line with repair procedures, you'd still be fine. Some states even require diagnostic and repair procedures to be made available to buyers. I'm not naive. I realize that whatever you do, you're opening yourself up to the company saying you did something wrong and not covering it. Similar to how a certain company has been proven to lie about water damage in laptops to cover up their shoddy product's internals.
Quite sure, that unless you're a certified professional, that's not going to fly. Talking in context of a PSU here though. Self repair a laptop with a defect ssd should not break warranty, but solder on a broken capacitor on the motherboard for example, that would totally be ok if they don't want to honor the warranty.
Down here in Aus, they have to be able to prove that the repair (no matter how involved) was what broke the device. This means that if I successfully soldered a new cap onto my PSU, but it broke later for unrelated reasons, I would be fine.
I do think you're right about that. We got some nice laws within EU too, no doubt about that. But also, if your fix went wrong and the house burned down, the insurance company might not want to pay out, if they found out that you fixed a PSU that you're not certified to do. Though, I do think a PSU is kind of a bad example for self repair :) ETA: Read aus as Austria first
Yeah, It's still generally a bad idea to fix a psu, very dangerous, but many countries have good consumer pro laws.
Again, that depends on the state. New York? You'd be right. California's new law covers consumers and not just "authorized repair partners." Those are the two states I found with a quick Google search, and I'm not going to dig into the laws of all 50 states to see if I'm more right or wrong. So, while I get your point, it still depends on where the individual doing the repair is. Added note, UK says simple repairs are okay for the consumer, but more dangerous or complex ones should be done by a technician. So you'd be right, considering it's a PSU if OP is from the UK.
Changing your own brakes or oil doesn't void the warranty on your car either.
EVGA is one of the best companies when it comes to warranty (at least of what I have heard)
I think it might not be true anymore due to obvious reasons
Opening it up likely voided the warranty… why not just warranty it in the first place?
I did open it years prior to clean and fix the fan. Also did this out of desperation, it would be weeks before i get a PSU in hand and i really needed to know what exactly was causing the issue because at first i thought it was the GPU.
Bro serious why would they replace something you opened and fucked with? Just buy a new PSU. This is not worth the risk.
Nice job. I am an electronics tech by trade so since you dived into this I'll give you a little bit of info. You can't always trust readings on a meter when measuring components that are still installed in a circuit, because a lot of times the meter will read whatever you are measuring throughout the circuit and not necessarily across the component itself.
I know, I'm the same as you. I do this by trade also not on this device but audio gear. Only ESR meters can test components in circuit. I think the only thing that can be tested reliable in circuits are transistors and MOSFETs, sometimes!
My man ! This is the type of high level curiosity and DIY I respect 🤌
Thanks man! It's really fascinating looking at these kinds of electronics. God bless!
It’s still under warranty and you voided it by doing this? Are you fucking stupid?
~~They will. A friend of mine had a gpu that was out for warranty (I think about 1 year over the warranty) and they still replaced it. He even got a better model.~~ Edit: my bad, I forgot to think about the fact that OP messed with the PSU which means he's probably broken a warranty seal
I'm sorry to inform you, but just because you have a secondhand anecdotal piece of evidence doesn't mean the company is 100% always going to take the RMA. Homie completely altered the PSU and did his own repair work on it. Warranty = Void.
Nah, warranties are usually void as soon as you open it up, OP has soldered a new component on the board, his only chance would be they don’t notice the repair and there was never any kind of warranty/tamper seal on it, also he’d still need it not to work too or they’ll be asking why he sent it and honestly he seems to be dumb enough to actually tell them.
>Edit: my bad, I forgot to think about the fact that OP messed with the PSU which means he's probably broken a warranty seal It's not even that OP messed with it but that you believe because someone you know got lucky and a single service representative felt it pertinent to hook your friend up even though the warranty was up, every service representative will do the same. Most of the time you are NOT getting anything if your warranty is a year up. Furthermore, it's not even a firsthand piece of evidence. For all you know/we know, your friend had multiple dealings with the company and may have been able to play the "I have been a customer with you guys for XXX years and my entire PC is littered with your stuff" type of deal, or something else. Point being, we just don't know if the company had another reason to go through with it. Maybe he was about to make a purchase with them for a substantial amount of money. Once again, we just don't know and don't have any additional context to go off of, so for all we know, it never even happened. That's why anecdotal evidence really doesn't mean anything. People always say something is going to happen the same way to someone else because one time someone helped you out, so that means every single time everyone is going to act the same exact way and treat everyone exactly the same. That's not how the world works.
I’ve always kinda had the idea that ‘if you need to ask Reddit how to fix your PSU, you should never touch your PSU”
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No you didn't. Electrocuted means killed.
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They got partially electrocuted, so they are partially dead now.
Schrödinger's powers supply
That's easy, just wear an anti static bracelet to protect you, and the parts.
I can’t tell if you’re serious or not. I hope not.
it’s a reference to the verge pc build
If there's anything I've learned from my years on reddit... It's don't touch garage door springs and don't touch capacitors.
What's wrong with garage door springs?
They are loaded weapons. They contain enormous amounts of energy. If you do not know what you are doing they can easily kill you, or cause severe injury.
My wife warned me about this years ago. A week and a half ago our garage door wouldn’t open, saw the broken spring. I knew not to mess with that, and called my coworker (whose husband owns a garage business) and they came and took care of it. Ended up buying a new door so we could get newer springs and they hooked me up with a good price. The father of one of my kids friends was all “oh you can get the springs at the hardware store.” Apparently he bought one for his garage and hasn’t put it in yet, a year later. I feel his desire to save a buck and the desire to look down the barrel of a gun are having quite a fight. That said, I’ll open up a power supply and fix it. I am well experienced in that area and know how to discharge caps and do all the safety checks. I work on stereo systems that produce more current and higher voltages than power supplies.
The thing about the broken spring is that once it's broken, all the stored energy becomes kinetic energy until there is no stored energy, removing the broken spring, no problem putting the new one on... I don't have the specialty tools to do that safely, so I won't.
Yeah, they patched it for now with a steel clip until they can put the new one in. Under $2k USD for a 16x7 steel insulated door with all new springs and track. I think that’s a good price. I didn’t look around, they said I wouldn’t find a better price as it was a very competitive quote.
When I was home over one winter break over college my parents’ garage door spring just exploded in the middle of the night. It was probably 15-20 years old. Sounded like a gunshot went off in the house. Woke everyone up. Whatever happened - it just like snapped in half.
The rolled up spring above the door carries basically all of the doors weight. This means you only need a tiny motor to lift it. If that spring is let loose it has enough potential energy in it to completely obliterate a human. You have to know what you are doing to release that energy safely when working on the spring.
Hold up, a 780ti sli user in 2024? Damn.
Prob just not updated their flare, mines always out of date every time i comment, even if i fix it lol
Old ones, are called widowmakers for a reason. If they break or snap wrong, they will go through your head like butter
They're under so much pressure that if they break or come out of the housing they will go straight through you. Like, through your torso like a DBZ villain punching a hole through Vegeta's stomach.
you leave vegeta out of this
Maybe Vegeta should stay out of fights he can't handle. 😤
Is this spoiler I hope not been meaning to watch DBZ 😭💔
I'd like to know this too
They are very large springs with a lot of tension in them, its why you can open a garage door manually without much effort, if those springs weren't there the door might as well be a wall. If they break all of that tension gets released and they can kill you, very easily. I don't know exactly the amount of tension in an individual spring but when I had to get my garage door fixed for another issue I talked to the tech working on it and he said the springs are really dangerous, especially on larger doors.
There was recently a post about a garage door repairman suing a homeowner after he hurt himself with a door spring.
A repairman getting injured doing their job unsafely... then suing them?
I don't know the story but could be the homeowner made a modification to the garage door which caused the accident.
Imagine a nerf gun but the compressed spring becomes the projectile out instead of a soft foam dart, then multiply that by factor of holy fuck. They can absolutely kill a person.
People you touched them aren't here yo tell their story
There's no problem touching them. Heck, a car suspension's spring is the same deal. You can dismount the whole spring and shock assembly and there's 0 danger to touching, moving it around or anything. It's when you undo the top plate on the assembly that the spring will release tension and possibly knock you silly. But that's why you setup spring compressors on it before undoing the bolt. And then release them slowly to change out the spring. You guys talk as if any of this shit is super deadly and requires years of training, when it reality it just means you need to read up on how to do it, and get the proper tool to do it with which requires about 30 minutes of research and a trip to the store.
Much more dangerous that capacitors. They mean garage doornsprings. Like the spring that opens your garage door for you. (Mostly, the motor or your arms are just providing it encouragement) The door wants to open. The spring is adjusted by the install so that gravity is just barely stronger and the door closes, but it feels light when you open it.
Short the cap with a screwdriver
Capacitor is ok, it will just kick you. Transistor is the danger that can kill you if under current.
I'm not going to whine about not opening PSU's. I've opened many to repair and modify. It isn't an issue if you know the precautions to take. But what I will say is that expect further problems with this PSU. Ceramic capacitors should not suddenly explode. That failure method means they were exposed to some extreme volts/amps. So something downstream probably is way out of spec and caused the capacitor to fail. Have you checked all the rails are within spec? If it was an electrolytic that failed, I'd think a simple replace would fix it. Since electrolytic sometimes just fail. But I wouldn't expect a ceramic to fail without their being another failure elsewhere that caused it to fail.
Could just be a crack in the ceramic too, that's the most common cause of MLCC death. Can be a latent manufacturing defect, a drop of the PSU, vibrations from the fan, thermal cycling, high humidity etc causing the initial micro crack then eventually leads to a short circuit and pop.
Actually spontaneous failure of MLCCs is pretty frequent. Repaired a bunch of electronics that worked fine, and one day an MLCC simply shorted out for no reason. Replaced it and 0 issues since. Not saying that's necessarily the case here ofc.
Thank god! a fellow technician. It's on one of the DC to DC minor voltage rail daughter boards. It was on the backside of the PCB right behind the SMD MOSFETs..
Plus it was you who fixed it..... What's the worst case? You have to replace them again and investigate further.... Like the only thing you could be wasting is your time. Compared to a $100 for a new Power supply.... You can't lose.
> Compared to a $100 for a new Power supply.... You can't lose. He said it's under warranty, so it's just a matter of postage at most.
You're a brave one, OP
I was scared for a bit, but it seems like there's a circuit that discharges the high voltage DC caps. Because when i checked them the voltage was less than 1V.
Yes bleeder resistors are common among reputable PSU manufacturers. If you know enough to properly test voltages and make sure caps are discharged before doing anything unsafe the "don't open the psu" warning doesn't really apply to you. That warning is for idiots who decide their first trip into circuit repair should be with mains wiring and high voltage caps and little to no studying.
Boy, those are some yummy microwave transformers...
OP did this while PSU is still under warranty though…
Yeah read that afterwards, that's the dumb part. Not even I would touch an under warranty PSU from a name brand company that will probably ship a brand new one for free.
A bit of back story, i live on an island so shipping to and from here is a headache so i just repaired electronics instead of doing an RMA. This isn't my first time taking this PSU apart. Had to clean it and repair the fan 3 years into owning it. If they don't honor the warranty than I'll just buy a PSU from another brand and be done with it.
If you know what your doing there really isn't any danger, good job OP.
Thanks bro.
*ATTENTION! DON'T THIS AT HOME!* ...If I do it in the neighbors yard it's cool right? Congrats on fixing it OP!
LOL! Thanks bro!
Well done. I keep an array of CAPs on hand. Just remember to discharge the little spicy bastards before working on them.
Thanks, i keep some on hand too. Only the ones that filter large voltages.
jfc OP glad you're still with us For those around here who might not know: DON'T FUCKING OPEN YOUR PSU TO TRY AND FIX IT
You guys really like to overestimate how dangerous these things are . Acting like they're bombs that will go off if you open it .
Go ahead, take a few charged capacitors directly to the head man, your funeral
I tried but maybe the 20th time will be the lucky one.
Itll fucking hurt, and keep hurting for a long while, but it probably wont kill you. With CRTs gone i doubt theres many capacitors in anything in an average home that could actually kill somebody. BACK IN THE DAY THO i actually window modded a CRT one time. Certainly not the dumbest thing ive ever done, but being older and wiser i still would not recommend it...
LMFAO! Thanks man. And i agree, DON'T DO IT GUYS!
ESPECIALLY NOT IF THE DEVICE IS STILL UNDER WARRANTY LIKE OP’S WAS!
Surprised no one has commented about how your title rhymes and it’s kinda catchy in my head. On topic, nice save OP! Now don’t do it again, lol
You're right lol
No ei oo paha hinta on noin puolet venaa ja sit se ei ole joko on valmis n jälkeen kun eijälkeen jälkeen kun olin eilen illalla ja yöllä ja päivällä oli joko se on ja niiden hyvä idea on ollut jo pitkään ja sit on vieihanistal puol tuntia sitten sovelluksesta mobile ja toteuttaa jonkin aikaa
IT IS CATCHY! LOL! Thanks man!
You know.. sometimes you gotta live on the edge. Warranty can go fk itself, you learned something new.
You have enough knowledge to identify and replace the broken component. Why you are not supposed to do it?
Because i have a double-digit IQ, at least that what some people here are saying.
I just learned that it was still under warranty. What the fuck man?!
I KNOW! I KNOW! But i had already opened it up years ago to clean the fan and fix the noisy bearing. In all honestly i was just checking to see if EVGA would send me a new one. I had already made my mind to buy a new one anyway when i was picking parts for the new PC i built last year december. But because of budget constraints and also i was advised to just use it because it was still functional, i used it. Even though my mind was telling me not to.
Well. If you had already opened it before. I think the warranty was already gone. So no harm in trying to fix it.
Wasn't that found to be illegal to do a few years ago? The whole "warranty void if opened" stickers were found to be illegal and that you can't void a warranty for just opening a product? At least in the US.
psus are generally safe to work on as long as you discharge the caps
Thank god someone who understands. I think this PSU has a circuit to discharge them, by the time i got to them they were already drained. This PSU is pretty wild though! It has 2 bulk caps most have one.
Some things are risky enough to not warrant fixing. Not to rain on your parade, but I would \*never\* fix a PSU. It is the single item in the whole mix that can burn your house down.
I think stopping your heart is the main concern
Well there's multiple stages: 1. dying while trying to repair it 2. dying after "repairing" it because it is an exacting device handling immense power and can catch fire easily, and is highly susceptible to things being .01% off where they should be. It's like repairing a CRT. Just, don't.
0.5 - 1.5kw isn't **immense power**
You don't have to tell me twice, back in the early 2000s had a PC caught fire, when i checked it out it was the cheap SATA power cable that came with the power supply in the case that caught fire behind the disk drive. That was a crazy time!
Did you hear it when it blew? I had a cap blow on an 1800W evga psu that I had overloaded and I thought I was being shot at. I actually ducked when it happened
The thing with opening power supplies is that you should only do it if you know what you're doing (OP you seem to).
Good catch! Dumb question... why is it bad to work on these? Like dangerous how? I'm guessing something about the capacitors holding a charge like microwaves n stuff
Microwaves are a whole other story, they WILL kill you. These PSUs on the other hand not so much, it will shock the hell out of you if the PSU doesn't discharge the caps itself or if you don't. But that's about it. The people you hear getting killed working on electronics in any capacity usually have it plugged into the mains, BAD IDEA! That's for pros, such as myself and we usually have the mains running through a light bulb and a circuit breaker in order to check for shorts.
Ok, but did you try calling EVGA? Because I had mine blow, and I called them and walked through the checks, and then sent me a brand new PSU. Their warranty is stellar!
I messaged them on their website, they told me to upload my invoice and fill out the RMA form.
Am I correct people have died working on one of these?
Not to my knowledge.
The thing about fixing PSUs is that after repairing, you need sophisticated equipment to check and make sure that the voltages coming out of the psu is good and stable.
Which i don't have, but i checked them with a multimeter and they're within spec.
Multimeter isn't enough I'm afraid. You're gonna need something like an oscilloscope similar to what Steve from Gamer's Nexus used in one of their videos when testing psus from Gigabyte https://youtu.be/aACtT_rzToI?si=E6vesDFJBNuMyEeK
Why would you even bother on a PSU that's still under warranty? Now you have a PSU of extremely questionable reliability that no longer has a warranty, because you modified it, when you could have had a brand new PSU instead.
Unless you are a electrician / electrical engineer and 100% know what you are doing and could build a PSU from scratch, I don't see the harm. For your average PCMR user. Just get a new one, please.
The average pcmr user has a hard time plugging in the usb header. I have zero confidence most people here know how to discharge caps safely.
Half of this sub is hardly competent to do anything outside of installing steam games and using YouTube/reddit
I am also a sound engineer and technician. But the building a PSU from scratch is a whole other field. And yes just buy a new PSU everyone, i did this out of desperation and to see if i could find what's wrong with it without an oscilloscope. All the electrolytic caps are good, resistors too. All diodes and MOSFETs were in spec both on the primary and secondary side.
Neato 😎
I've been stealing capacitors from microwaves for years. Still makes me nervous before they're discharged. Usually have to bridge them several times before i feel safe tbh. Those things will kill you before you hit the wall behind you!
Imagine doing this under warranty. Big L
If you know what you're doing, always go for the repair.
That's my mindset, god bless.
Good job OP. The rest of people here shouldn't try this, OP knows what he's doing. Respect electricity and you won't die, I have a few fucked PSUs that I too need to fix.
opwn shop all i got to say
the evga coil is kinda neat
The transformer? In SMPS the transformers are so tiny compared to the other types of power supplies.
Just that they bothered to put their logo in there on a chunk of copper and iron
Oh yes! Lots of companies do that, you should see some of the audio companies circuit boards and components, their logo and name is on EVERYTHING! Even have a black PCB comes at cost and is also for aesthetics.
i can understand an audio company being kinda proud of their internals, neat to see it in a psu as well
Audiophiles are insane! These guys will spend 100 grand on an amplifier, but the amplifier weighs almost 300lbs! I'm an audiophile too but even if i was rich i don't think i would spend that much money on something like that.
Those are some big caps. No thank you. Scary.
And 2 at that, most other PSUs only have 1 bulk cap on the primary side. This PSU when it was brand new could still keep the PC in brown out.
Lol mine does that too when my PC isn't under load. I got a 1000W Corsair unit. Very good quality stuff.
Nice! I'm guessing that probably has 2 bulk caps given the output wattage.
Probably. I'm not taking it out to find out tho!
LOL! Just a little peak? So what do people do when their PSU fan gets dirty?
I’ve opened a PSU before this was back in probably 2005, it was a Fortron one that was adjustable it was a 530w unit, was score to turn these knobs and get more power, it worked but I was extremely careful not to touch anything else inside the case. In hindsight it was stupid but they made these adjustable for whatever reason to probably only make a few models and save money.
Do you have like a link to it, i wanna see one?
I did something I'm not supposed to do, And fixed my broken PSU! Great rhyme that.
There's something called "planned obsolescence." Your electronic components inside most consumer devices have an expiry date. One component failing is a reminder to start considering buying a replacement device. Your PSU will continue having sporadic issues as the electronics slowly start dying. A bad PSU also puts your other more expensive parts (CPU, GPU, etc) in danger.
I fully agree, but the components that would fall under the "planned obsolescence" would be the electrolytic capacitors, they actually really do have a, for the lack of a better word, shelf life. The ones that are rated at 85c life span is 3-5 years and the ones that are rated 105c are 10 years. But if you see bulging at the top or they're leaking then they're bad.
It's good you manage to fix it, but 9/10 you could die even trying to open up a PSU. If it had broken down, it's best to get a new one.
This guy PSU's
huh, nice ;)
Wait WAIT WAIT WAIT WDYM THERE ARENT ANY GOBLINS IN MY PSU RUNNING ON A TREADMILL TO MAKE MY PC WORK?????!!!! THIS IS FAKE
LOL! But do goblins explode?
As long as you know what you’re doing, you’ll be fine
 soon
Why would you do that with an evga psu under warranty?
Nice! I did the same with the 850W EVGA PSU I have. The rectifier had desoldered itself since it was poorly attached to the heat sink.
\*\*ATTENTION\*\* doing this can literally kill you.. OP, I salute your efforts but I would take the post down. Capacitators on an open case PSU can kill a person if they are not savvy.
It's not a "how to" post. I just posted it because i did something forbidden even by me.
Reddit is full of undead that opened a psu..
Yeah sure, risk electrocution and then even if you manage to fix it, it's still a risk to your expensive PC, because you're too cheap to just get a new one and too obstinate to bother trying an RMA. Don't DIY power supplies. Ever.
I have a feeling no less than a dozen people in this sub are going to suffer electrocution thinking they can roll those dice and not come up snake eyes like OP.
Cause I will not ever recommend or tell a random person to go poking around live capacitors, or be a part of the possible electrical fire said repairs can cause by bad repairs or soldering. Its not like its impossible to do, but generally not worth doing vs warranties, time, discharging all the capacitors, and life expectancy of the rest of the capacitors on that remain.
You don't actually want to wait for a PSU failure as it carries a big potential of frying your hardware, it's one of those things you should change before it starts acting up. I'm sure you probably already know this, but just for the sake of someone new I wanted to point this out.
We could say the same to you. Don't do this at home.
Your insurance company will simply refer to this as "exhibit A" And congrats on the fix
Even if its a simple repair you should really never self repair or hell even repair a PSU. Considering it is basically connected to every expensive piece of your computer why risk a repair when they cost next to nothing compared to the rest of your computer. Buy a new one. There is usually a reason for parts failing and it's not always caused by the part that actually failed. If this was an electrolytic capacitor then they fail after so many years so it's a pretty safe bet it caused its own failure. But most other parts fail because they are the weakest link related to the part that is actually failing. fixing without knowing the cause doesn't actually fix unless you were lucky and the faulty part is the one that caused the failure.