Preventive recapping "be quiet! Pure Power L7"

[sebr]

Hello guys,

today I cleaned my PC from dust and quickly decided to have a look inside the PSU: be quiet! Pure Power L7 530W. Warranty is over anyways so nothing can stop me
When I opened it up I was surprised - in a bad way. CAPXON and TEAPO everywhere, on primary and secondary side Not even a single reliable cap.
So far the PSU works fine and the caps do look fine too. But I seriously think about recapping the whole thing.
What surprises me even more is the fact this (at least here in germany) very popular PSU seems to fail very rare! Only a few forum posts can be found about issues that could be related to bad caps. Also here in this forum nothing about the Pure Power L7 series. From my own experience I recapped many network switches with bad Teapo's and also Capxon - but why here they seem to do so well?!
What do you guys think: doing a recap or leave it like it is now?

[mariushm]

Re: Preventive recapping "be quiet! Pure Power L7"

Decent heatsinks + good fan + good efficiency (low heat generated) makes for lower failure rate.

I wouldn't recap the Teapo in such psu.... they should last at least 1-2 years. Capxon... don't trust them.

[OniJon]

Re: Preventive recapping "be quiet! Pure Power L7"

I recapped a failed Zalman one with teapos and capxons in it, now rubys and nichis. It works, but judging by jonnyguru tests, recapping increases ripple ALOT.

You can read the whole thing from the start, but here's a summary and measurements of the ripple values.
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php...ory4&ndar_id=8

So all in all, don't buy BS PSU's. Just throw them out of the window and buy a decent one like SuperFlower, Corsair (some series), Sesonic (some series are BS), Antec, Enermax, XFX.

[c_hegge]

Re: Preventive recapping "be quiet! Pure Power L7"

It works, but judging by jonnyguru tests, recapping increases ripple ALOT.

Not necessarily. If you research your specs (ie, ripple tolerance and ESR) and use replacement caps with identical specs to the originals, it won't increase the ripple at all. Wolf did not do this for the experiment

Also, some designs are far more tolerant to differently spec'd capacitors than others. I've tried poly-modding a few PSUs, and polies have VERY different charactaristics to lytics. It worked on one, but it didn't work on others.

[sebr]

Re: Preventive recapping "be quiet! Pure Power L7"

@OniJon: I have read the article and yes, in this particular case the ripple/noise increases - but i wouldn't call it alot, the pics are 0.01V/div. And in computers no critical circuitry is directly fed from the PSU, they all have their own buck converters or voltage regulators. And anyways my primary goal for recapping this PSU would be reliability and durability.

@c_hegge: getting a replacement cap for the original one with almost identical specs is of course the best solution. But I have serious doubts if the known crappy caps even meet the specs written in their datasheet or at least keep it over their lifetime within the specified range. And so far with PUS's i was never wrong using Panasonic FM/FC series (sometimes also FR).