Hardware Insights Forum

Came with a Dell Latitude E6430S from eBay seller "zgxzjy"

Well, we've seen some pretty depressingly bad PSUs — but this could very well be the Epic Fail Award winner of the year. Surprisingly, the parts look like they could actually handle the specified 90W (the bridge rectifier is a KBL406, the switcher is a 12N60, and the secondary rectifiers are 2 × MBR20150CT in parallel). But the capacitors are cheap crap, as expected — the primary capacitor is from JCAP (RA series), the output capacitors from "HD" (allegedly low ESR but no series given), and the 10µF 50V capacitor in the switching circuit is from HUAHONG (CD110 series).

Mind you, it included another counterfeit mains cord, and the inlet is absurdly tight when mated with a real cord.

Oh, and by the way, I have a suggestion for how you could apply the Epic Fail Award (without resorting to negative scores): Simply apply it to which PSU you think is the year's worst.

LOL! Leaving a fuse out and forgetting to jumper it. Although given the other mistake with the heatsink, it's probably a good thing that it won't work.

Well, there is a fuse — you can see it (identified on the PCB as F2) in the second picture, wrapped in heatshrink, and installed in a very strange way.

Although, jumpering F1 still wouldn't make the unit work, as it just puts active/line on a trace that, in the absence of the filter choke LF1, itself goes nowhere.

(I hate the way these supplies are permanently sealed, so that you can't get the case open without damage. )

Yeah, I saw the other fuse. But really, that is two jumpers (or components) that they forgot to install. Unbelievable...

LongRunner wrote:Well, there is a fuse — you can see it (identified on the PCB as F2) in the second picture, wrapped in heatshrink, and installed in a very strange way.

Although, jumpering F1 still wouldn't make the unit work, as it just puts active/line on a trace that, in the absence of the filter choke LF1, itself goes nowhere.

(I hate the way these supplies are permanently sealed, so that you can't get the case open without damage. )

Most times you can crack it with screwdriver and glue it back with instant glue or similar stuff while having it in grip (is that the right word?).