Hardware Insights Forum

While the Antec SmartPower and TruePower series were priced like top-quality power supplies, and while they were high-quality units otherwise, they did suffer ffrom a few design issues. The first issue was the use of low quality Fuhjyyu (I hope I spelled that right) capacitors. They were unreliable and very sensitive to heat. To add to the use of these heat-sensitive capacitors, these powerful, hot-running power supplies had temperature-controlled fan(s), for quieter operation. The fans would run faster when the power supply was hot, and either run very slowly or not at all when the power supply was under low load. The problem with that is that the temperature was measured at a certain point on one of the power supplies' internal heatsinks, so even if other component got hot, the fans wouldn't speed up. Also, even though Antec did use high-quality primary capacitors in some of the models (it seems to vary) they only use 85c parts, so the capacitors would still fail.

Of course you could argue that it wasn't Antec's fault that the OEM (the company that actually made the power supplies) they chose, Channel Well Tech, also known as CWT, used these faulty parts and was responsible for other problems. I spoke to a very nice Antec representative, and he told me that Antec was one of the only power supply manufacturers whose engineers worked closely with the OEM, (Delta, Seasonic, CWT), to design the power supplies, instead of simply choosing, for example, a Seasonic X-Series power supply, and painting it a different color and sticking an Antec logo on it. Whether is is true, this seems to simply push the blame more toward Antec.

There were many different models of Antec power supplies that had these problems. These are the ones I can think of off the top of my head:
-SmartPower
-SmartPower 2.0
-SmartPower Blue

-True
-TruePower
-TruePower Blue
-TruePower 2.0

or any other variants. All wattages from 300-550w (as far as I can tell) were affected. Some common model number prefixes were SLxxx, SPxxx, TPxxx.

These power supplies can damage your computer. The power supplies can have voltages either too high or too low or have out-of-spec ripple and noise, damaging other components in your PC along with damaging the capacitors on your motherboard as well.

If you have one of these, I suggest you take it out of service or replace the capacitors immediately.

Please note that I am NOT affiliated with Antec or any of its competitors in any way!

Why isn't this thread sticky???

It is now

Once recapped I think they are usable

Yes, they are. I usually add a 2.2-2.5K resistor in parallel with the fan control thermistor, which makes the fans run a little faster, so it doesn't kill the caps. I'll edit the 1st post

That's not a bad idea I will have to try that. Every single one I've seen come into work had bad caps and/or fried 5vsb circuit

I'm working on a True 380S right now, and on the secondary there is a 1µF 50V non polar Fuhjyyu cap. But the slot it's in is polarized. Think it'd be okay?

The rest of the Fuhjyyu's are toasted, with most in the 5VSB area reading over 40Ω of ESR. The 5VSB was reading 8.3V

Pentium wrote:I'm working on a True 380S right now, and on the secondary there is a 1µF 50V non polar Fuhjyyu cap. But the slot it's in is polarized. Think it'd be okay?

Replace it if you want. I don't know what part of a PSU would demand a bipolar electrolytic.

I was thinking the same thing. I wonder if a normal 1µF 50V nichicon PW would work there

It should work fine.