Interview with Alvin Chan from Antec

[TELVM]

KitGuru - Exclusive interview with Alvin Chan from Antec

The guy has this to say about caps (attention: breaking news ahead ):

KG: PSU vendors often emphasise the usage of Japanese capacitors – what makes these better than others?

AC: Japan is the leading nation for capacitor manufacturing and material technology. In addition, Japan makes the best aluminum foil in the world, but refuses to sell that foil to Taiwan or China. The reason is simple, because Japan wants to protect its own industry.

At the same time, the quality of Japanese capacitor manufacturers is unmatched, because they are very strict when it comes to ensuring specifications are matched. You can always trust that they will deliver. In order of quality, the capacitors call into these groups: Tantalum > Solid > Japanese Electrolytic > Taiwanese Electrolytic >>>>> Chinese Electrolytic.

I didn't know about the aluminium foil touch, interesting.

[Wester547]

Re: Interview with Alvin Chan from Antec

Yes. The aluminum foil mined in China and Taiwan is below the minimum purity stated by DAPO (97.5% versus the 99.1% from Japanese foil... might seem like a small difference but it isn't), in accordance with this study:

However, I believe, as the study concluded, that there is something more to it, besides the fact that the electrolyte has a negative chemical reaction to the poor raw materials as evidenced possibly by the presence of aluminum in the electrolyte from the bulged Taiwanese capacitors in the study in question. Some capacitors have such unstable formulas that they will eventually vent right on the shelf; all it takes is time. This has been observed with NCC KZGs and KZJs (problem seems to be worse without a voltage being applied to them in order to restore or thicken the oxide layer and when heat is involved as well as humidity). The formula probably has to be designed in such a way so as to achieve the lower ESR and good performance needed for motherboard VRM output circuits. Seeing as how lytics don't exist in grades superior to HZ/MFZ ESR wise (both of which were discontinued years ago), I think lytics are simply being pushed too far in that respect, which is why polymers are the future. I wouldn't be surprised if the bad manufacturers don't get their formulas right either (some OSTs and 8mm Teapos have been observed to fail right on the shelf).

[retiredcaps]

Re: Interview with Alvin Chan from Antec

I'm not much of a PSU person, mainly because I use and fix dead ones and tend to use whatever is handy at the moment even in my main systems, but I found this interesting ...

" That's a huge advantage and really helped us deliver annual revenues over $200 million. Right now, our products are hand-assembled"

Running a $200 million business with reputation on the line with hand assembly process.

PS. The used and fixed ones in my systems would make the regulars here cringe at what I'm running sometimes with original factory installed capacitors.