Hardware Insights Forum

Looks like it's recall time for Silverstone…

Extras like gold-plating…

It's actually bad to mate gold-plated with tin-plated connectors, as explained here (granted, power connectors aren't nearly as sensitive as RAM, but if there's nothing to gain…). (I've never seen a mainboard or a PATA HDD with a gold-plated power input. Gold plating on the PSU end of modular cables should be all well and good.)

The 5VSB rail is a two-transistor circuit, which is a very dated design these days.

There's a tiny 6-pin IC on the back of the PCB, which is clearly what drives the 2N60L (there's no second transistor in sight). (I've seen a similar design in Macron's MPT-4012.)

By the way, those connectors between the mains wires and the PCB look a bit dodgy to me (not that this is anything new or unique). (Even for the single-insulated wires, they're a bit on the small side.)

Seems like you are right, it is probably one of those tiny cheap drivers which emerge in low-power wall adapters these days. So than it is single-transistor forward.

As for the plating, I am quite sure nickel and similar metals are used for plating on iron or brass. Tin has no way the physical and chemical endurance needed.

Behemot wrote:As for the plating, I am quite sure nickel and similar metals are used for plating on iron or brass. Tin has no way the physical and chemical endurance needed.

Take a look at Digi-Key > Connectors, Interconnects > Rectangular Connectors - Contacts (most of the power connectors inside the PC are from that category). Plenty of tin as well as gold contacts, but almost nothing with nickel. (I know that nickel is common for external connectors.)

I still think it's less of a waste of gold than jewellery is, though.

BTW, I don't think 250W through that PCIe power cable is enough current to melt the wires. The voltage drop will be a bit on the high side, sure, and I agree that 16AWG wiring should be used — but a loss of perhaps 3~4W along the length of the cable (spread across all 6 wires) hardly seems like the end of the world to me.

Well some of the morons making these miners pull 250 W of a single connector. I am housing one, after the Platimax 1,5kW inside it burned modular connectors twice I than made it fixed-cables, as soon there won't be any cables remaining. So you have 500 W over a single cable…almost 14 A per wire, that's already over the cable limits. Sure that usually nothing as close is in there but if even just for lowering voltage drop and increasing efficiency…it's not that much of a problem using 16AWG.

Here is the evaluation methodology, hopefully it will make things more clear: http://diit.cz/clanek/power-supply-eval ... ethodology read carefully

The plating cannot be tin, not pure for sure. Not sure if you have ever seen pure tin, but it is very like lead. It is soft, very easy to rub and both oxidate hapily with air. Everything makes it unusable for any connector which must be strong and chemically stable. These pins have very hard and resistant coating. I know something about it, I have the very pins used in ATX connectors on stock…

btw, I don't think that single transistor, IC driven 5VSB circuits are prone to the same "12VSB" problem that you can get on two-transistor circuits. when the caps go bad on those, I'm pretty sure they just stop working. That said, though, I still think that using Su'Scon on the output deserves 2 points off.

Ouch...That thing performed terribly. At first glance it looks like a good PSU minus the caps.

c_hegge wrote:btw, I don't think that single transistor, IC driven 5VSB circuits are prone to the same "12VSB" problem that you can get on two-transistor circuits. when the caps go bad on those, I'm pretty sure they just stop working. That said, though, I still think that using Su'Scon on the output deserves 2 points off.

I think if the output capacitors fail that it can still have the same effect. I believe you need actual protection on the output to preclude that (like what Hipro use in some of their very old units, a crowbar protection circuit, same with Bestec), not just on the input.