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**gonzo0815** · 03-06-2007, 02:53 AM

Re: Aspire PSU with bad caps

I would replace all caps except the bigg 200v ones.
The KXM caps you linked should be fine, the others are not LOW ESR types, wich will not a lasting choice (besides some other problems ).
My suggestion would be to stick with UCC caps, Rubycon or Pnanasonic.

**VisciousSquirrel** · 03-09-2007, 04:37 PM

Re: Aspire PSU with bad caps

I did a careful inspection and all the other capacitors appear to be fine. Would it be worth the trouble to replace them all, or would replacing just the failing ones be ok?

**PeteS in CA** · 03-09-2007, 06:39 PM

Re: Aspire PSU with bad caps

If you really really like Newark, stick with United Chemicon, LXZ, KY, LXY or KZE series in that approximate order of preference (I don't know off the top of my head which of those series Newark carries. otherwise, look into Digi-Key, which carries UCC, all four of those series, Nichicon PW or HE series and Panasonic FC and FM series.

**larrymoencurly** · 03-15-2007, 01:24 PM

Re: Aspire PSU with bad caps

Originally posted by VisciousSquirrel

I did a careful inspection and all the other capacitors appear to be fine.

How did you inspect them? I had a 300W Antec where one of the caps on the +12V rail bulged, but the other one looked and showed low ESR. But a few weeks after I replaced the first cap, the supposedly good cap bulged and its ESR went way up.

**hardwareguy** · 05-05-2007, 01:57 AM

Re: Aspire PSU with bad caps

The caps on that aspire look just like the caps I replaced on a friend's aspire PSU. The PC had the classic bad power symptoms too, spontaneous reboots, odd BSODs, disk corruption, and startup problems.

It works fine now that a nice Rubycon cap has been added in place of a bulging one on the 12V rail.

**B3Nut** · 05-07-2007, 01:20 PM

Re: Aspire PSU with bad caps

If you don't replace the other secondary caps now, you'll replace 'em later. Aspire/Apevia PSU's are loaded with Y.C. and/or Fuhjyyu caps, and they get quite hot and then vent. Young Year is the OEM for their supplies...they're not really known for longevity.

Personally I don't think they're worth the effort to repair, I just recycle-bin 'em when I run into them. But if you want to keep that one around, a recap will at least make it reasonably reliable.

Todd in Cheesecurdistan

**hardwareguy** · 05-07-2007, 09:37 PM

Re: Aspire PSU with bad caps

Originally posted by B3Nut

If you don't replace the other secondary caps now, you'll replace 'em later. Aspire/Apevia PSU's are loaded with Y.C. and/or Fuhjyyu caps, and they get quite hot and then vent. Young Year is the OEM for their supplies...they're not really known for longevity.

Personally I don't think they're worth the effort to repair, I just recycle-bin 'em when I run into them. But if you want to keep that one around, a recap will at least make it reasonably reliable.

Todd in Cheesecurdistan

Total O/P recap will be done on my friend's aspire this summer.... it's one of those slightly short ATX supplies, a full size would be a TIGHT fit in his little aspire "cube" case. Gonna get on Digikey and get some good Matsushita caps for it. I wish we could easily fit a full ATX PSU, but it would be a cable disaster if we did.

I HATE Fuhjyyu!!!!! Although, they have made me a bit of cash, most of them have been in friend's PCs! The most money has been made yanking GSCs..... Gigabyte has been affected quite badly by these, their socket A boards especially. Cap inspection is done as mere routine..... even if the machine seems to be working fine.

**B3Nut** · 05-08-2007, 10:15 AM

Re: Aspire PSU with bad caps

Yup, we have dozens of those Aspire/Apevia cube cases. It's indeed tight installing a standard ATX supply, but the stock short one is so bad it's worth the contortions to install a good one. I have good success with FSP Blue Storm 400's in these, the cables are not too difficult to get out of the way. I've shoved leftover PC Power&Cooling Silencer 410's we have in with good results as well, I have an Aspire cube with a Silencer 410 on my desk at home (it's my Windows Home Server Beta test box).

JonnyGURU tested the shorty that comes with the X-Qpack cubes, although rated at 430 watts it maxed out at 266 watts before the overcurrent protect tripped. Not only are the caps cheap in these, the design is so overrated and underbuilt it's not IMO worth putting anything into. Shoehorning in a standard ATX supply is a bit of a chore (not as much if building from the naked chassis up) but it's worth it just to be rid of the stock supply. Our recycle bin's got a bunch of those Aspire/Apevia shorties piling up in it, and as more that are in service start going south the pile will be growing.

It takes a little creativity, but having a more robustly-built supply is worth the hassle IMHO...YMMV...

Gigabyte's using Fuhjyyu caps on their motherboards? Yikes...we're an all-Intel shop so I don't get to see other manufacturers' boards that often...though I'm contemplating an Asus Socket AM2 board for my own non-work-related tinkerings...

Todd in Cheesecurdistan

**Azurael** · 05-08-2007, 11:56 AM

Re: Aspire PSU with bad caps

Another Youngyear ATX-66B-based PSU then? (joining the ranks of the X-Connect 500W)

Mine has Fuhjyyus though.

**B3Nut** · 05-08-2007, 02:00 PM

Re: Aspire PSU with bad caps

Yup, that looks like an ATX-66B board, I found this interesting article:

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/413

The in-depth analysis starts off with "The design used on this power supply is simply ridiculous." After reading the text, I concur. The same NPN primary transistors and anemic primary rectifier bridge show up in the "430W" short-ATX wreck that comes in the Apevia cube cases. Young Year seems to turn corner-cutting into an art form...a rectifier on the 12V secondary that can only pass 10 amps? No wonder the damn things overheat and toast caps...

That article was an eye-opener...I see no reason to repair a dead one, even with good caps those undersized rectifiers aren't going to pass anywhere near the rated current. You'll just be shifting the failure points from the electrolytics to something else. I wouldn't connect one of these to any hardware I cared about, but that's me.

TP

**Azurael** · 05-08-2007, 02:15 PM

Re: Aspire PSU with bad caps

I did read that article, much to my distress, but I've never had any trouble running pretty heavily loaded systems off that PSU - it was in my main rig until I built the current C2D system (which needed a 24-pin ATX connector) and I've never seen the +12 line go below about 12.2v...

I even ran a system with a heavily overclocked 6800 Ultra and Northwood 3.06 & 3.5GHz off of it and it didn't flinch under load, so either not all ATX-66B PSUs are built with the same, under-specced components or I am one very lucky person to get a 10A rectifier that has no trouble passing a lot more than that.

**hardwareguy** · 06-10-2007, 12:54 AM

Re: Aspire PSU with bad caps

Ok.... crap! I have been given a budget of 15 bucks to fix this puppy! That of course means no nice Seasonic PSU going in this guy's PC. The PSU is a hunk of garbage, but at least it's better than those Deer units!

Here's how I am going to "repair" the PSU:

All the Fuhjyyu caps are being desoldered and thrown out.... my friend may get a little fun time with the hammer if he so desires.

I changed out a couple of the caps that were bad, but I ran out of caps so as soon as the next batch comes in, it's being totally recapped.

The input caps are undersized with just 330 uF capacitance. He now has a nice set of 820uF caps, now it doesn't reboot when the momentary brownouts hit.

The 12V rectifier is being changed out. There IS space for a nice fat TO247 package rectifier on the board...... and guess what I just happen to have in pristine condition on the shop bench.... a nice TO247 30A rectifier. I'll put this in at the next recap.

The tiny MOV across hot and neutral will be replaced by a fat 130J unit. I will probably put in a Littlefuse TMOV unit.... these have thermal cutouts integrated into them to prevent fires. As it stands now, the MOV has no thermal cutout placed in series with it or even a simple fuse. UL would be pissed if they saw that! (I suspect the Fire Marshall would be a bit peeved too!)

When he gets some cash, he may replace the PSU but right now he's a bit strapped. I just told him that he needs to put a new set of pads and rotors on his Jeep.... 90K miles on the original pads and the rotors are warped. Yikes!

**kc8adu** · 06-10-2007, 05:26 AM

Re: Aspire PSU with bad caps

had one of those in here yesterday.had a hole burned in the board.
maybee assfire is a more fitting name?

**BigTroll** · 09-30-2010, 11:09 PM

Re: Aspire PSU with bad caps

I also have a 66b pcb power supply labed ATX-AS500W its aspire brand. that hardware secrets review doesn't reflect all the models, mine has a thermistor and the second ferrite thing my heatsinks look alot beefier too. i bought mine used from my friend back in 2007 and have run it 24/7 for months at a time, it had no problem powering a e8400 cpu and a 8800 GTS 320meg

anyways i tryed to include in the pic the two fuhjyyus that are leaking 1 is a 1000uf 10v and the other a 2200uf 10v, i was thinking of buying some samxon replacements for those two caps from this site? do you think they would work?

also on the second pic theres some weird upright thing that seems to have its casing split in the middle its not a capacitor so iam not sure what it is.

Attached Files

**370forlife** · 10-01-2010, 04:10 AM

Re: Aspire PSU with bad caps

Samxon will work just fine. Generally most power supplies have 2 16v caps on the 12v rail, 2 10v on the 5v, and two 10v or 6.3v on the 3.3v rail. Could you confirm this? If this is right, you could just get two of these (https://www.badcaps.net/store/produc...products_id=56) for the 12v rail, and four of these (https://www.badcaps.net/store/produc...products_id=57) for the 5v and 3.3v rail. Then it would also be wise to replace the caps on the 5vsb filter.

And whatever the second pick is looks it's screwed to the heatsink. Is it? If so it might be a primary switcher, but you would have to desolder the heatsink and take it out to get the part number and install a new one. Either that or it's the rubber sleeving getting ripped up or burnt off on those big resistors in the primary sections of power supplies.

**BigTroll** · 10-01-2010, 12:04 PM

Re: Aspire PSU with bad caps

yeah it looks like a rubber sleeve and the top and bottom parts are still there just not the middle as some of the sleeving flaked off, its not attached to the heatsink, oh yeah this power supply still works.

**BigTroll** · 04-30-2012, 07:32 AM

Re: Aspire PSU with bad caps

okay after letting it sit a few years i finally took it apart and replaced both leaking caps 1 with a used 2200uf 10v nichicon from a 1999 athlon xp and the other a rubycon 10v 1000uf from a 2004 hp p4 board. now the power supply is working great again. and has manual fan control which keeps the old fuhjyyus cool voltages are great and its powering a athlon xp rig with bloated GSC capacitors all over it. i figuere shit should power shit.

**BigTroll** · 10-12-2012, 01:32 PM

Re: Aspire PSU with bad caps

this power supply is still working great ive upped the anti and now have it powering 6 cold cathodes, led programable fans 8800GTS 320MEG G80, 2.4Ghz AMD OPTERON 180 and do long gaming sessions of the new black mesa at 1600x1200 max everything.

**BigTroll** · 10-12-2012, 01:33 PM

Re: Aspire PSU with bad caps

THEM BIG 820UF 200v FUHJYYU JUST CHANGED MY LIFE they KEEP ON GOING FUHJYYU FOREVER! MAKIN LIFE BETTER AND BETTER.

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