Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Why Cheap Power Supplies Explode”.
Did you know that the modern ATX computer power supply has been around since the mid-1990s? We’Ve had plenty of time to get it right, but like with many things, some companies still find a way to screw it up. So today we’re going to talk about why cheap power supplies tend to fail or more dramatically in some cases blow up. Unsurprisingly, many of the reasons boil down to an effort to cut costs and it might be all right in some situations if the folks that made cheap power supplies came out and told us hey, this thing is cheap, don’t push it too hard, but the problem is That lots of these Bargain Basement units are mislabeled in some way, which is a recipe for disaster. A common point of failure is cheaping out on the capacitors.
These are the water tower, looking things that hold and release electrical charge and smooth out voltages. If you read power supply reviews, cheap capacitors are a main source of frustration for two reasons: one their often build with a resistance. That’S too high lessening how much power they can deliver and two they can be mislabeled with respect to how much voltage they can handle and if that gets exceeded, because the components in the system need extra power, your PSU could go out with a literal bang. Another common way, you’ll see sketchy manufacturers cheap out, is through removal of electrical safeguards that are supposed to protect your power supply. If too much juice is flowing through it, a well-built power supply should have protection circuits that watch for different hazardous conditions, namely too much voltage too much current too much total power or too much heat, as well as a short circuit protection feature that can detect.
If the impedance drops below a certain threshold, the way these protections are supposed to work is that they immediately shut down your power supply if any of these conditions are triggered, and while it sucks to have your computer shut down without warning the power supply. Does this both to protect itself and your components from being fried super low end psus will omit some or all of these protection circuits to cut costs, but it also makes it much more likely that your PSU will die catch fire or blow up now. Obviously, capacitors and protection circuits are inside the power supply, but there are actually things on the outside that you can see and feel and maybe smell that might indicate you’ve got a crappy explosion prone power supply. We’Ll look at these right after we think secret lab for sponsoring this video secret lab chairs are engineered to keep you incredibly comfortable for long hours at work and play, or even both their Titan Evo 2022. Chair keeps you comfortable with its four-way lumbar support and an array of available seat materials. All chairs come with up to a five year, extended warranty and a 49-day return policy so head to the link in the description and check out secret lab today. You’Ll want to take a close look at the cabling, connectors and housing of the PSU before you buy thin, cabling and and connectors simply cannot carry as much power as thicker, higher quality components and if an unscrupulous manufacturer has labeled their power supply as fairly High wattage.
But has used thin cheap cables and connectors there’s a good chance. You won’t get anywhere close to that wattage before it goes coupled this ties into another quick way to tell if you’ve got a p. U PSU! I’M supposed to hold my nose. There stinky the weight power supplies, don’t need to be so heavy that you can use them for power lifting, but an abnormally light unit can mean it was built with low quality components, including cheap fans, and don’t forget about soldering subpar power supplies can have messy soldering That makes short circuits more likely, which is why power supply reviewers routinely call out oems, who aren’t careful with soldering components onto the PCB and if a manufacturer is really sketchy, they’ll even put a fake label on the unit, asserting that it passed a quality or compliance Certification, when the reality is, it was just rushed off the line and shipped out post haste naughty naughty. So what can you do dear viewer to avoid falling victim to an exploding power supply? Fortunately, the answer is quite simple: buy from reputable manufacturers, read reviews from trustworthy sources and exercise a little bit of common sense.
I mean I’d, be very suspicious of a power supply. That says it puts out a thousand watts and is being sold for less than 20 bucks and if you’re gon na go for that, I’ve got a lovely Ocean View House in Saskatchewan to sell you and whether you’re in the plains or the mountains. I thank you for watching this video like it. If you liked it dislike it, if you disliked it check out our other videos, comment below with video suggestions and don’t forget to subscribe and follow.
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