Power supply EXPLOSION

"Peter Hucker" wrote in message news:opsbpeo6tdaiowgp@blue...

I was wrong about your power supply being made by Fortron-Source
because a search at www.ul.com shows that its registration number,
E158036, is for Achme Corp., www.achme.com.tw, a company I've never
heard of. Any passive PFC coil in a Fortron-Source is bolted to the
side, not on the top or bottom.

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 13:59:43 +0100, "Peter Hucker"
put finger to keyboard and composed:

Ok, maybe watercooling the power supply was not a good idea.

Agreed, but you might want to have a look at this effort:
http://www.webx.dk/oz2cpu/pcmod/water-psu.htm


- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 's' from my address when replying by email.

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 04:22:40 GMT, kony wrote:

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 03:17:19 +0100, "Peter Hucker"
wrote:

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 01:33:52 GMT, kony wrote:

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 01:13:54 +0100, "Peter Hucker"
wrote:


Who said you'd be entitled to a refund? Check your warranty
statements, if you have one (otherwise you may be SOL) and see if
there is a money-back guarantee.

That's irrelevant, I'm going by LAW.

Perhaps, I can't speculate what effort you'd have to go though,
but I find it likely that it would be about principle, not $38,
as your time spent collecting would easily be worth more than
$38.

What is this with people liking time to money? If I had an infinite supply of paid jobs, that would be true.

Even without a supply of paid jobs, is not your free time worth
something... I mean, if you had work and work and then more work
with no time to do anything else... Sure it can seem like that
happens to most of us, but that would make free time ever more
valuable, not less so, wouldn't it?

How does a phonecall of complaint (which is nice to relieve stress)take up any more time than ordering another power supply?

but as I mentioned previously
Sparkle makes multiple grades of PSU, the "suntek" is not their
high-end AFAIK.

Suntek is a sparkle?

Based on the two points of evidence presented so far it seems
likely, but as mentioned I have not seen that PSU in person. All
of the PSU on their website (http://www.suntekgroup.com/atxa.htm)
looks like old designs that correspond to same wattage Sparkles,
nor do any of their pictures look like Sparkles but pictures
might be near a decade old, it is rather odd for a manufacturer's
highest rated (300W) offering to have only 140W 3V+5V combined
rating, that was about right for the Pentium I era.

This is a supply that came with a full tower case I bought about 2 years ago. The case is no longer manufactured.

Ahh, now I"m beginning to understand, Suntek simply contracted
out the cheapst PSU that could get to include with cases and
Sparkle being a major manufacturer, could do it cost-effectively.
Not suprisingly, many generic labels are made by large
manufacturers, yet I don't consider them "name-brand", as the
manufacturer's name isn't on the label. Switching power supplies
are not difficult for a company to make fairly well, rather the
cost is constrained.

I see.

This wattage is getting insane - in 10 years computers will consume a kilowatt at this rate.

We see a practical limit with air-cooling of CPU/GPU and so Intel
and AMD now develop dual-core CPUs

This is cooler?

Your memory is more of an
anomoly, usually memory is only mildly warm. It might be more of
a motherboard "issue" than anything else.

Wrong voltage? It's a high end dual athlon server board. I'd expect it to get the voltage correct. Nevermind, I've got a 5V fan blowing stright at it and it's 30C now :-)

Likewise, once your
generic is past it's max point, it too will have to drop voltage
every time it's amperage capacity is exceeded, else it'll shut
off, (or both).

What would happen if I connected all the rails of TWO PSUs in parallel? I'll ask you first rather than get a double firework display :-) Just wondering if one would try to keep at 5.05 volts and one at 4.95 volts and both fight like crazy or something.

I'd expect the one with the higher voltage to keep running but
the other one to shut down, due to it trying to reduce voltage to
what it "though" was right. I could be wrong though, I don't
parallel PSU outputs and if I were to try I'd probalby use
isolation diodes.

Wouldn't you lower the voltages too much with diodes?

Yes there would be voltage drop, but too much is relative only to
initial voltage, and heat generation (waste). Many PSU have
voltage adjustment POTs. Even so, if a redundant current sharing
PSU is desired they are of course available ready-made.

Never looked into that - I always thought one was "waiting" until needed. Are these more expensive?


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On 25 Jul 2004 22:11:17 -0700, do_not_spam_me wrote:

"Peter Hucker" wrote in message news:opsbpeo6tdaiowgp@blue...
On 25 Jul 2004 00:17:43 -0700, do_not_spam_me wrote:

while the heatsink attached to the low voltage components
poses no shock hazard, my concern here was over the heatsink
attached to the high voltage transistors because even if
it measures 0V, as I believe it does in most Fortron-Source
supplies, it's not safe to water cool it or allow it to
have any chassis or external contact. This is because its
electrical insulation is very thin, and good safety practices
call for using much better insulation for such high voltages.

You have made a mistake. You are assuming I am safe.

I don't understand what you mean, but I assume you want to be safe.

It's not high on my list of priorities. Until recently I was driving a car at 110mph which had a hole in the floor under the drivers seat. But we have this bloody thing called MOT in the UK, which I needed to get the tax disk, which they have detector cameras for.

I got it for a fiver!

And now it's worth nothing. You should have experimented on
one of your worse supplies because a 300W Fortron-Source
will outperform many 350W and even some 400W units.

Worse? That WAS the worse one. I didn't want to break my gold
plated dual fan 600 watt thing. The 300W one I broke was
absolutely terrible - 10% voltage accuracy?! **** that. This
600 watt one is 2%. And what's Fortron-Source? A make or a design?

Fortron-Source, www.fsp-group.com, is one of the largest makers of
power supplies and sells its products under several brand names,
including Fortron, Sparkle, Powerman, and Trend, and they're also used
by many large PC makers. Most but not all FSP products have model
numbers that start with "FSP". They also provide the basic boards
used by other power supply companies, including PC Power & Cooling
(not all -- some others are from Zippy), Q-Technology (not to be
confused with Q-Tec),

Q-Tec is one which smoked when I plugged a modem into a 64bit PCI (which it should have worked in - it had the right grooves in the connector). I blame the modem though, as it also blew the 64bit bus on the motherbaord. Nevertheless a PSU should not break due to a short??

and Zalman. In tests for maximum output
capacity, Fortron-based supplies have tended to perform among the
best, so I don't see how your 300W Fortron's output fluctuated by 10%
with just a 200W load (probably an accurate estimate).

Low wattage for some rails - see reply by Kony.

In contrast,
that "600W" gold plated supply is probably inferior to a 400W Fortron
or 380W or 430W Antec Truepower, and very few high quality supplies
exist that are both gold plated and contain lighted fans.

It's certainly doing very well at 200 watts, which is all I need - it's a high end desktop - not a server with 20 HDDs.

The thing was very hot without a heatsink, and cool with one,
so I assumed that the heat was getting to the oiutre casing just fine.

Unlikely. The steel laminated core doesn't conduct heat very well,
and its steel or aluminum cover probably doesn't fit tightly against
it. The choke's DC resistance is roughly 20 ohms, making it dissipate
roughly 35W with a 200W load.

"Whoops!"



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On 25 Jul 2004 22:37:31 -0700, do_not_spam_me wrote:

"Peter Hucker" wrote in message news:opsbpeo6tdaiowgp@blue...

I was wrong about your power supply being made by Fortron-Source
because a search at www.ul.com shows that its registration number,
E158036, is for Achme Corp., www.achme.com.tw, a company I've never
heard of. Any passive PFC coil in a Fortron-Source is bolted to the
side, not on the top or bottom.

Ah, cheap crap then.


--
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Served from a pentawatercooled dual silent Athlon 2.8 with terrabyte raid

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On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 18:41:35 +1000, Franc Zabkar wrote:

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 13:59:43 +0100, "Peter Hucker"
put finger to keyboard and composed:

Ok, maybe watercooling the power supply was not a good idea.

Agreed, but you might want to have a look at this effort:
http://www.webx.dk/oz2cpu/pcmod/water-psu.htm

Bloody hell! He goes to some lengths!

Oh my god, a TWO HUNDRED WATT soldering iron!? Never knew they existed! I assumed from the picture he had welded it.

GARDEN HOSE! "See the hose is not in the way, nobody will fall over it."

Could someone explain "This little ugly thing is the PFC coil, it will be removed due to the fact that it increase power loss and makes a loud humm noise."? I thought PFC was to SAVE power? So I can just remove those things?


--
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93 silly video clips http://www.insanevideoclips.com
1259 digital photos http://www.petersphotos.com
Served from a pentawatercooled dual silent Athlon 2.8 with terrabyte raid

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On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 09:26:42 GMT, rstlne wrote:


"Peter Hucker" wrote in message
newspsbp3a50baiowgp@blue...
On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 01:33:52 GMT, kony wrote:

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 01:13:54 +0100, "Peter Hucker"
wrote:


Who said you'd be entitled to a refund? Check your warranty
statements, if you have one (otherwise you may be SOL) and see if
there is a money-back guarantee.

That's irrelevant, I'm going by LAW.

Perhaps, I can't speculate what effort you'd have to go though,
but I find it likely that it would be about principle, not $38,
as your time spent collecting would easily be worth more than
$38.

What is this with people liking time to money? If I had an infinite
supply of paid jobs, that would be true.


It's how americans justify being lazy and fat..

I think I understand. Wasting time on something other than eating can't be good for your health :-)


--
*****TWO BABY CONURES***** 15 parrots and increasing http://www.petersparrots.com
93 silly video clips http://www.insanevideoclips.com
1259 digital photos http://www.petersphotos.com
Served from a pentawatercooled dual silent Athlon 2.8 with terrabyte raid

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"Peter Hucker" wrote in message
newspsbp3a50baiowgp@blue...
On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 01:33:52 GMT, kony wrote:

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 01:13:54 +0100, "Peter Hucker"
wrote:


Who said you'd be entitled to a refund? Check your warranty
statements, if you have one (otherwise you may be SOL) and see if
there is a money-back guarantee.

That's irrelevant, I'm going by LAW.

Perhaps, I can't speculate what effort you'd have to go though,
but I find it likely that it would be about principle, not $38,
as your time spent collecting would easily be worth more than
$38.

What is this with people liking time to money? If I had an infinite
supply of paid jobs, that would be true.


It's how americans justify being lazy and fat..

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 10:16:34 +0100, "Peter Hucker"
wrote:

Could someone explain "This little ugly thing is the PFC coil, it will be removed due to the fact that it increase power loss and makes a loud humm noise."? I thought PFC was to SAVE power? So I can just remove those things?

Me too - on this one
BoroLad

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 09:57:09 +0100, "Peter Hucker"
wrote:


Even without a supply of paid jobs, is not your free time worth
something... I mean, if you had work and work and then more work
with no time to do anything else... Sure it can seem like that
happens to most of us, but that would make free time ever more
valuable, not less so, wouldn't it?

How does a phonecall of complaint (which is nice to relieve stress)take up any more time than ordering another power supply?


But what good would the complaint do unless you followed though
till the resolution is realized?

You are a very lucky man if you've never been put on hold, over
and over again. Will you have the correct phone number
presented, so you can just call and be taken care of as easily as
ordering a pizza out of the phone book? Maybe it is relatively
easy to find phone number (don't count on it), or be forwarded,
but it takes at least a little time, then more time to pack the
PSU, shipping incl. postage, and possibly followup. You may be
on hold long-distance for quite a while. This still ignores
system downtime if you don't have a spare.

I can go online and purchase exact make/model PSU I want in under
1 minute. If you can get one RMA authorized, packed and shipped
in a minute you are amazing. Some companies make it easier than
others to get replacement parts, but unless you've dealt with
that company before it may be a large assumption that it's
time-effective to pursue it for a replacement PSU that's same as
the one that has failed already.

Personally, I'd not want to use same model PSU again unless I
could confirm it was a specific isolated flaw, and not having
money-back policies beyond the brief reseller period, I'd have to
wonder if it's not even more difficult to get money back than a
replacement PSU.... maybe it is that easy in the UK?


We see a practical limit with air-cooling of CPU/GPU and so Intel
and AMD now develop dual-core CPUs

This is cooler?

Potentially lower thermal density, plus that thermal density was
making it "more' difficult to ramp clock speed of a single CPU,
so two somewhat lower speed CPUs (also ramping up in speed) seems
like a natural stop-gap measure.... or I could just be full of
it, a year ago it looked like P4 was going to hit at least 6 GHz
from what I recall.


Your memory is more of an
anomoly, usually memory is only mildly warm. It might be more of
a motherboard "issue" than anything else.

Wrong voltage? It's a high end dual athlon server board. I'd expect it to get the voltage correct. Nevermind, I've got a 5V fan blowing stright at it and it's 30C now :-)

Well it would help to explain the temps, if the board was running
memory as well or better than other boards, why not same temps?
Could be the lack of fans in system previously, though I don't
recall if you made it clear, whether memory temp would be/is as
high with a fan or two somewhere in the system.



Yes there would be voltage drop, but too much is relative only to
initial voltage, and heat generation (waste). Many PSU have
voltage adjustment POTs. Even so, if a redundant current sharing
PSU is desired they are of course available ready-made.

Never looked into that - I always thought one was "waiting" until needed. Are these more expensive?

Yes, more expensive... you're probably looking at around $250+
for 400W pair, though it's USD, adjust $ per UK market.