Be Quiet Straight Power E7 700W revision

[Majestyk]

Last week one of my PSUs in a workstation startet to fail. Not a big surprise, since it has 36° centigrade in downtown Frankfurt at the moment.

It´s a 700W Be Quiet Straight Power of the "E7" series that I purchased around 2009. Sometimes it wouldn´t start, sometimes it would give some weird noises as if popcorn was being made inside of it.
Before there was any serious trouble, i opened it, blew out the dust and had a closer look.

The power switch turned out to be the reason for the noises, the contacts had loose connections. So I replaced the switch first.

When further examining the capacitors I found an "OST" as primary filter, two "Teapos" for 12V standby and all the secondary filter caps to be strictly "Capxon" except for three "OST".
I couldn´t convince myself to leave all the Capxons in there and so - for continued stability - I did a complete recap.

Now everything is fine again and ready for the next couple of years.

The 4700µ hanging loose at the side has been replaced by a panasonic of course.

Here come some Pictures before and after:

[Pentium4]

Re: Be Quiet Straight Power E7 700W revision

Looks like FSP.

Nice job! It looks really good It will last a long time especially with Rubycon on the primary now. How was the health of the fan? Was it a Yate Loon?

Crazy that they suspended the capacitor like that. I wonder how much that would increase the ESR.

I've worked on a unit that was very similar. I found it very hard to solder on, being two layer. Did you have any trouble clearing the holes on this unit?

[Majestyk]

Re: Be Quiet Straight Power E7 700W revision

With the E7 Series Be Quiet switched from Topower to FSP.

Yes, it´s a dual layer PCB and I had to do some "needlework" to clear two or three holes where a lot of wires were soldered nearby.

There is generally far too little space for the secondary caps in this series. Panasonic, Rubycon or Nichicon don´t offer long life, low impendace 105° caps with the required capacity and voltage in these form factors at all. Probably because it´s not compatible with the laws of physics. CapXon and Fuhiyyu seem to not care about physics...

[Stefan Payne]

Re: Be Quiet Straight Power E7 700W revision

With the E7 Series Be Quiet switched from Topower to FSP.

No, P7 Series, the P-Series was the only one, that came from Topower...
All of the E-Series are from FSP.

[Majestyk]

Re: Be Quiet Straight Power E7 700W revision

Thanks for putting this right, Stefan!

(I hadn´t seen the insides of older E-models for quite a while.)