Fanless Silverstone ST30NF / Etasis EFN-300 caps busted

[cheater]

Re: Fanless Silverstone ST30NF / Etasis EFN-300 caps busted

Fanless Silverstone ST30NF, also known as Etasis EFN-300, doesn't power up anymore. Was working 24/7 for about seven years until it switched off itself.

This thing is massive, even with the thick aluminum case removed. Components squeezed into every corner. Three daughter boards.

There's 3 KMG 400V 150 uF on primary. And a KMG 50V 1uF close to it.

On secondary four of five black Teapo C3 10V 3300uF are blown.
There's a green Teapo C1 16V 2200uF.
A bunch of other caps are hiding below the heatsinks. One is bulged. Can't really identify them, looking at the sleeve color and at the top vent I'd say it's all Teapo C1 ones.

In standby temperature LED shows green ("ok"), fault LED shows orange/amber, it turns red when trying to switch it on. Power supply make one "click" noise for each power up attempt. +5VSB is available and stable.

I'm not sure if I wanna invest the time to disassemble this beast, just recapping secondary probably won't fix it, I guess. Any ideas?

Have you ended up recapping yours? I have a similar unit (450W) and am debating it. Same symptoms. Visual inspection (without pulling the board out) shows one capacitor is bad, but I haven't looked under UV yet (leaked electrolyte glows in UV). The insides look somewhat different to yours, slightly different sizes and configurations of passives, but it's all variations on a theme.

What is a current good capacitor line to use in a "hot pocket" on the secondary side? Someone mentioned non-aqueous. What do I get? I think I only have to replace a handful, so I can afford to splurge on something that isn't crap.

[cheater]

Re: Fanless Silverstone ST30NF / Etasis EFN-300 caps busted

Have you ended up recapping yours? I have a similar unit (450W) and am debating it. Same symptoms. Visual inspection (without pulling the board out) shows one capacitor is bad, but I haven't looked under UV yet (leaked electrolyte glows in UV). The insides look somewhat different to yours, slightly different sizes and configurations of passives, but it's all variations on a theme.

What is a current good capacitor line to use in a "hot pocket" on the secondary side? Someone mentioned non-aqueous. What do I get? I think I only have to replace a handful, so I can afford to splurge on something that isn't crap.

(PS sorry about necroing this for those who feel offended by my actions )

[Behemot]

Re: Fanless Silverstone ST30NF / Etasis EFN-300 caps busted

Not sure about this particular unit, but the fanless FSP ones I had in my hands always got busted caps. So it's worth at least trying to recap it IMO.

[Exim]

Re: Fanless Silverstone ST30NF / Etasis EFN-300 caps busted

Sorry for bringing this back up. Just realized I never gave feedback

I didn't recap it. There were too many reasons against it, as already written in this thread: Unefficient design, compared to other PSUs it was already not-so-efficient when it was new (the machine it was in puts just 1/3 load on it), no airflow, caps pocketed so new caps would cook as well, lots of time and effort to dis-/reassemble the whole thing stuffed with components and heatpipe and whatever. Also in case more components died and recapping wouldn't be enough: I don't have the knowledge to test and fix a whole ATX PSU of this caliber.

Around here Silverstone PSUs with active cooling have a solid reputation. But from what you can read the fanless 300W and 450W ones just seem to have died, all of them, and fanless ones from other companies/brands weren't any better. Dunno about current models.

Yes, it was expensive when it was new. But to me that's the price paid to learn: No more fanless ATX PSU, never ever again.

I replaced it with the most efficient 300W-active-cooling-PSU-from-a-trustworthy-company I could find, turned out to be a FSP, 12cm fan, basically inaudible, less than half the price. Chances are high at 1/3 load it will survive more than 7 years.

[Behemot]

Re: Fanless Silverstone ST30NF / Etasis EFN-300 caps busted

Not really but that's your choice