Tagan TG330 Power Supply

[robert]

Guess thats the reason for my PC crashing sometimes...
Tagan TG330-UD1 full of Jenpo Crapacitors , done after 3 years in a 2,8Ghz pentium 4.
Cause it is very silent (surprisingly the cheap trash sleeve bearing fans still run smoothly) and it was alreayd modified (230V outlet switched by a relay to power a water pump) i decided to repair it instead of throwing it straight away. I didnt buy any parts but used what was laying around anyway

I didnt take any "before" pics, sorry.
Thats what was left:

While its not easily visible, most of them are somewhat bulged.
Since i didnt have all the right capacitors around, some squeezing was needed, where necessary isolation in the form of clear heatshrink was added for safety.

12V rail: 2200µ 16V 10mm *2 replaced by 2200µ/16V 12mm Nichicon PW
5V: 3300µF/10V, 2200µF/10V 10mm replaced by 3900µF/6.3V 12mm Nichicon PM, 2200µF/6.3V 10mm Chemicon KZG
3.3V: same as 5V
2 470µ/16V 8mm replaced by 470µ/25V Rubycon ZL
2 more 1000µ/10V 8mm replaced by 1000µ/10V 8mm Chemicon KY
22µ 400V on PFC board replaced by 68µ 400V KMX

both 330µ/200V on primary side test ok.
these are marked with "Tk", anyone knows what brand this is?




Tagan seems not to give a shit about cleaning their boards after soldering by the way
Unless you want to have it blow up soon (the pcb layout is a catastrophe, very little clearance on some high voltage traces, the PFC board being the worst by far), really clean it.
Here, the primary side is already cleaned, the secondary side shows how it looked like before:


All cleaned, dryed and treated with high-voltage isolating laquer:


Put back together:



PC back online, working perfectly again.

[i4004]

>All cleaned, dryed and treated with high-voltage isolating laquer

looks nice..what did you use to clean it?

[robert]

Im using De-Flux 160 for cleaning PCBs and Plastic-Seal 65 for isolating, both sold by Servisol.
Both stinks like hell but its effective and not very expensive.

[370forlife]

Ya, topower has always kind of been iffy. Usually just their higher end models have terrible soldering like this.

[i4004]

>Usually just their higher end models have terrible soldering like this.

but what happens to low end if this is their high end?
<smile>
one wonders would it kill them to clean after they're done....

[PCBONEZ]

The unit is Tagan.
Tagan OEM's to Topower for some of their models.

[370forlife]

Almost all their units use to be topower, thank god they have not switched over to enermax and possibly some ATNG, can't hardly tell because everyone has their own UL number nowadays.

[robert]

Well, at least my experience with enermax is good.
Im still running an old 460W (one of the first ones that came with that rather rigid, silver-screened MB cable, probably from 2003 or so), with no trouble and no recapping.I transplanted it into a case from some really cheap (LC-Power iirc) "550W" PSU (W/120mm fan) that blew up when plugged in first, together with a EBM/Papst 120mm fan (very silent).
It served in my P4 until about 3 years ago, when it was moved in my new main box (athlon x2, Geforce 6600), where it runs about 10 hours a day.
Really surprising the jP c(r)apacitors still are okay and output ripple is well in spec.
Seems as if the jP used by enermax at that time are not that bad compared to the huge crap (OST, GSC, Ltec, Jenpo, Chhsi, Fu**yu) used by most others...

Also sold quite a few (mostly smaller) Enermax back at that time, none came back yet.
Fortrons did, so did most cheaper ones (Chieftech, Deer).

Tagan was said to be good quality back then by most tech mags, but yeah, it sucks.
Is there ANY brand of PSU that does use only good capacitors? All Astec PSU i ever saw did (Rubycon/Nichicon/Chemicon, nothing else), but these are really hard to get.

[i4004]

yes, we concluded enermax was cool enough not to blow jpce...
i have 350w model and it's in working order after 5-6 years in use....

i would use it on new hardware too if it wasn't lacking those 4 pins that new atx power connectors have...

>Fortrons did, so did most cheaper ones (Chieftech, Deer).

what caps did fortron have in that time?

corsair has all decent caps, but not cheap...should be easy to get, though...
newegg has them, and jonnyguru and "hardware secrets" have reviews where you can see their guts...

[robert]

Fortron: Mostly F****you and Ltec. Sometimes with a few G-Luxon or even GSC in between.
If these didnt blow right away, the large resistor on the secondary side (getting hot and sleeved to keep it even hotter) burned up and caused the entire PSU to blow up, often taking the PC with it.
Or, in one case, half of the standby supply burned out, vaporising its switching FET (without blowing the fuse) and spraying copper fragments all over the pri side.
I really hate Fortron and Seasonic (similar crap most of the time).
Most of these no-names that come together with a cheap case are even worse, several of these came with a mains lead not having a earth conductor and having way too small (~0.1mm²) wire!