I have an AOpen 550W (labeled as such) running a XBMC box (Palomino 1.66, HD2400 AGP, 2 old drives, CD). Two days ago I started smelling what seemed like burning plastic - not overwhelming (less than when I've touched wire insulation with my soldering iron).
OPened it up and the big secondary coil is absolutely black. When powered on there is a LOT of heat emanating from that location.
Background: This PSU was in service for ~3 years in a P3 before I removed the machine from service. Before reusing it, I completely recapped it with Samxon (from Topcat)/Panasonic FM/Nichicon PW (all caps on board but retaining original values). Used Thermal epoxy to 'expand' current heat sinks (cutting a mac g3 cpu heatsink in half and applying to both primary & secondary sinks). 120mm fan is good. Bridge rectifier replaced 4 diodes. Before this incident, ran fine for 6-9 months.
Not attached to this thing but my concern is that it's a high draw 5V CPU and going out and buying a new P/S is going to be built to accommodate the 12V line. I replaced with a Seasonic 300W unit and a no-name rebuild but something was incompatible in that both of these caused the MS-6380 motherboard to lose the ability to set the FSB to 133 (there's a screen in the BIOS for this and the latter 2 PSUs would hard lock when entering this screen). Thus my use of this particular PSU and it's importance to me.
Also, since it's in my bedroom, a massively loud replacement is undesirable - not looking for a silent P/S (though that would be nice) but a wind tunnel is unacceptable.
Any suggestions appreciated.
OPened it up and the big secondary coil is absolutely black. When powered on there is a LOT of heat emanating from that location.
Background: This PSU was in service for ~3 years in a P3 before I removed the machine from service. Before reusing it, I completely recapped it with Samxon (from Topcat)/Panasonic FM/Nichicon PW (all caps on board but retaining original values). Used Thermal epoxy to 'expand' current heat sinks (cutting a mac g3 cpu heatsink in half and applying to both primary & secondary sinks). 120mm fan is good. Bridge rectifier replaced 4 diodes. Before this incident, ran fine for 6-9 months.
Not attached to this thing but my concern is that it's a high draw 5V CPU and going out and buying a new P/S is going to be built to accommodate the 12V line. I replaced with a Seasonic 300W unit and a no-name rebuild but something was incompatible in that both of these caused the MS-6380 motherboard to lose the ability to set the FSB to 133 (there's a screen in the BIOS for this and the latter 2 PSUs would hard lock when entering this screen). Thus my use of this particular PSU and it's importance to me.
Also, since it's in my bedroom, a massively loud replacement is undesirable - not looking for a silent P/S (though that would be nice) but a wind tunnel is unacceptable.
Any suggestions appreciated.
Attached Files
Half of the computer problems is caused by bad contacts 
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