Let’s take a look at some piece of garbage this time! It is the Polish Whitenergy ATX-350W (part number 05749). This thing costs just about 330 CZK on local market. That’s slightly over 12 Euro, 13 USD or 19 AUD, of course there is only the 2-year warranty guaranteed by local laws. It comes with only 8cm fan and packed in an actual box, but there is only power cord and some manual inside. It is an ATX 1.3 unit, most likely. You can notice the sticker on the box has been relabeled, it was some kind of ATX 2.x before. Both are ancient versions of the ATX specification, however, despite being labeled 1.3, it actually has 24-pin Main ATX.
This unit claims to provide only 14 A on the +12 V rail, which equals 168 W. Very poor. If we sum all the rails, we get 351 W so you can only get labeled power if you actually load all of them. And you can see the first lie here – the double square symbol. It means the unit is supposed to be double insulated (also called class II). This is nonsense and cannot be trusted, as a high-power SMPS it is definitely class I. It requires grounding and the fully metal casing bears no safety insulation from dangerous voltage. If the grounding path is broken, a possibility with very poor components and platform, voltage will be induced on the casing. I would not be surprised if it was so high it could injure somebody.
This is only the first of many things that may be potentially lethal about this crap so stay tuned. I just hope that my equipment survives this. I have no idea who the OEM is, to me the Whitenergy ATX-350W seems as a Chinese copy of Leadman. Just this fact alone should tell some people what we are dealing with – copy of Leadman. Run if you can…
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