neo he 550w, motherboard no longer likes it

[cashkennedy]

I have been using a antec neo he 550w psu with this board for a few years, but now it basically wont provide the standby current to the motherboard acceptably is my guess since it wont even light up the LED on the motherboard or start the diagnostic LED's which should display 0.0 when the PC is off, but has power. A cheap chinese power supply tester , and a paper clip can both start the psu though, and the power supply tester says everything but -5 is good (which i take with a grain of salt since the power supply tester im sure just makes sure theyre over a certain voltage minimum)

I took it appart and if you look at the picture i found 1 OST brand cap 3300uf 10v buldged, right next to a crazy slanted diode soldered onto a heatsink or some deal.

Gonna replace that and see if it was the problem (gotta wait for a 3300uf to come in since i dont stock those...). Anyone have any experience with similar issues from one of these?

[selldoor]

Re: neo he 550w, motherboard no longer likes it

seen this?
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...ight=antec+neo

[cashkennedy]

Re: neo he 550w, motherboard no longer likes it

No I didnt see that thread since it was listed with he550, lots of spelling variations you can do with neohe 550 / neo he 550, so on...

Mine doesnt look quite as bad as his, The plastic peice that protects the transmformer (very close to the bad cap) is in perfect condition on mine, and the plastic peice that protects the coils on the secondary is also perfect. There is a tiny brown spot near a zener on the bottom (the zener is very close to the bad caps position), there isnt any noticeable damage. Mine didnt have that much dust in it, and ive been running it for 5 years now 24/7 a lot of that time with a fairly low power graphics card so around 350w load even when gaming, but i have something stronger in there now and might be going as high as 450w load when gaming, 250w at idle.

Since this psu still does "work" it could be that my motherboard (abit ab9pro) is just very picky and stoped the psu before it got too bad. And perhaps just replacing the cap will save it before anything else is hurt from the bad cap.

[selldoor]

Re: neo he 550w, motherboard no longer likes it

Any other "poor name" caps in there -easier to do now than do it all again in a month or so?

[cashkennedy]

Re: neo he 550w, motherboard no longer likes it

Yeah i know the drill, I dont usually work on power supplies though, and this one is packed with parts, so replacing all the caps on the secondary would be a serious pain, and for me 1 hr of labor isnt worth it for this, although to buy a new 550w power supply of decent quality would probably be at least $40, if not $60, so monetarily it probably would be worth it.

Most of the secondary is OST caps though so probably would be wise to just recap the whole secondary, if you wanted another 3-5 years out of it.

Im curious if pentium 4 ever got his working again though, as i'm not in dire needs of any other parts right now, so id be paying 10 dollars for a mouser order for just this one psu.

[cashkennedy]

Re: neo he 550w, motherboard no longer likes it

I only replaced the 3300 uf and it works for now, would be a good idea to replace all the caps if you wanted it to be sure it wont go bad again.

Luckily the 3300uf is the easiest to replace, and you can get away with a larger cap, cause its on the edge of the board and there is space in the case on that side of the board. Replacing the rest of the caps would be a serious chore since its an extremly crowded design and height / space clearances.

[c_hegge]

Re: neo he 550w, motherboard no longer likes it

I recently recapped a NeoHE 500W, which has a very similar layout, and I don't remember there being any issues with size. Definitely replace all of the others, as OST often go bad without bulging.