Fixing Goontrons warped PSU and main rig.

[goontron]

Alt title: It may not be Windows making your machine slow!

Unfortunately since the HDD i replaced the one in my laptop with has failed as well (used shitsung, don't be surprised) and took all the pictures of this project with it, this thread will be devoid of content....

This is a final update to my main rig, which is years overdue as well as an update to my PSU fixing shenanigans.

it starts years ago when i lived in Colorado.

My main rig had developed some issues with randomly segfaulting. I couldn't trace it to anything! This, of course started right before i began a 3 year "Journey" that made it to where i've lived in the majority of Colorado, ending with me settling down in Wyoming. That's a whole 'nother story in itself, but the reason it took so long... Anyway, on with the post!

So i finally get everything set up to sorta be a desk, and my main rig boots, then freezes. Hmm odd. Reset, now we are taking 2 hours to post. What the hell? I go through the usuals of replacing the HS compound, swapping ram, booting bare metal, still takes years to post. I give up until i came across my o-scope. After hooking it up and finding insane amounts of ripple, 3.3v is good. 5v has .3v of ripple, not so good. I get to the 12v rails and they have .5v of ripple.... HALF A VOLT! I proceed to tare into the thing and find this: https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...postcount=1276

Well, after being convinced to fix it by momaka, and 8 months time, its fixed. It was a real PITA as well, since the caps didn't have datasheets..... I ended up using these caps http://www.mouser.com/ProjectManager...sID=837b826aea and low and behold, the damn thing works like new! I have yet to plug up my o'scope, but the system is no longer segfaulting, the PSU no longer has a slight whine that it did before, it boots a little faster than normal, and i am posting from the machine now!

It would seem that computer systems no longer run till self destruction, but just give up completely and quit booting. I will be posting pictures soon! Thanks for the help all!

[goontron]

Re: Fixing Goontrons warped PSU and main rig.

Alright, pictures!

Let's start with a top-down


New caps


A bit tight


And the mod needed to fit the oversized caps


I lost the plastic sheet that goes between the side of the case and the mains section, so this will do


The usual apprentice marks


And mismatched screws


Something is wrong with this label....


Thats better!


Notice the pic quality? Blackberries are shit... This was taken with my Moto G4.

[eccerr0r]

Re: Fixing Goontrons warped PSU and main rig.

Technically half volt of ripple on 12V is "within specs" though you may not be seeing all of the spikes that may be showing up. But you have that Tek DSO so you should be able to pick up on some of them. Now those spikes are bad.

This sort of reminds me of my PVR box that has bad caps. It initially was fine, then the video would crash and restart once in a while...and happens more and more often until it couldn't stay in graphics mode anymore. The machine was still OK as a compute box.

... until the SATA controller started choking up. The machine needed to retry disk commands and disk accesses got really slow. Eventually RAM started to corrupt and I had to completely take it out of commission.

It wasn't the PSU but rather the onboard VRM caps that went south. It was the 1.2V line that was having trouble, when I first started it had a good 400mV of ripple on it, which would explain why it had so much trouble. I don't have enough good caps in my parts box to fix it but replaced some of them, jury rig others (of which failed too, forcing me to fix those as well again), and got the ripple back down to 150mV alas it's the best I can do until I can get more good caps for it.

150mV is still horrible for a 1.2V line! Alas everything works once more, graphics and all. Probably stressing the good caps on the line but so be it for now until I can get more.

[goontron]

Re: Fixing Goontrons warped PSU and main rig.

^ I've got a question for you, i seem to have a low level switching noise around 100khz on the 5v rail. Nowhere near the amplitude what a the PSU would be putting out, any idea what it could be?

[eccerr0r]

Re: Fixing Goontrons warped PSU and main rig.

You should test the noise separately from the power supply (use resistors or transistor sink). Can't completely rule it out unless you rule it out, but it's possible there are switching power supplies powered from the 5V rail too.

Other than that, if you're measuring like single digit 2mV switching noise, don't rule out noise picked up from CFLs and other noise emitters nearby...

[Stefan Payne]

Re: Fixing Goontrons warped PSU and main rig.

urgh, Topower.
WHy waste any time on THAT?
Although it seems like the newer P6 Plattform...

[goontron]

Re: Fixing Goontrons warped PSU and main rig.

^ No topower ive ever seen...

[pdavid]

Re: Fixing Goontrons warped PSU and main rig.

Looks more like an old Super Flower platform to me. Topower newer used that type of center tapped main transformers of the 39, 41, 44 mm sizes.

[goontron]

Re: Fixing Goontrons warped PSU and main rig.

^ That i agree with. Super Flower is hit or miss, and this one is OK. Pretty good now that i've hat my grubby paws on it.

[Quaddro]

Re: Fixing Goontrons warped PSU and main rig.

Technically half volt of ripple on 12V is "within specs"

Maximum ripple allowed is 120mv.
500mv ripple will cook the motherboard southbridge or any chipset.

I think you mean is voltage regulation, not ripple.

[Stefan Payne]

Re: Fixing Goontrons warped PSU and main rig.

^ No topower ive ever seen...

Yeah, but still feels topowerish.
The Caps were Hermei, were they??

And according to RHTX it's topower...
http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page645.htm

[goontron]

Re: Fixing Goontrons warped PSU and main rig.

^AsiaX

[Quaddro]

Re: Fixing Goontrons warped PSU and main rig.

^AsiaX

This brand always reminds me of asia carrera....

The name that mix between beauty and ferociously..

And yes, i'm old...

[momaka]

Re: Fixing Goontrons warped PSU and main rig.

Well, after being convinced to fix it by momaka, and 8 months time, its fixed. It was a real PITA as well, since the caps didn't have datasheets..... I ended up using these caps http://www.mouser.com/ProjectManager...sID=837b826aea and low and behold, the damn thing works like new! I have yet to plug up my o'scope, but the system is no longer segfaulting, the PSU no longer has a slight whine that it did before, it boots a little faster than normal, and i am posting from the machine now!

Yay! You did it!

At least now you don't have to worry about it anymore.

I lost the plastic sheet that goes between the side of the case and the mains section, so this will do
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1507329032

Is that a nylon bag?
Probably won't cause any issues... but nylon is not exactly frame-resistant and also melts at fairly a low temperature. I would have just gone with layers of electrical tape on the metal case (with some glue on the edges of the electrical tape, of course, as it has the tendency to peel away and fall off after a few years).

Technically half volt of ripple on 12V is "within specs"

Woot?
Half a volt = 500 mV. ATX spec allows for a maximum of 120 mV. So half a volt is more than 4 times over that. I'd be worried!

Yeah, but still feels topowerish.
The Caps were Hermei, were they??

AsiaX.
Not that it makes any difference really.

WHy waste any time on THAT?

Component-wise, it doesn't look that bad. And it also looks like it collected enough dust to be worthy of a recap - a good sign that the PSU has actually made it through a few years of use without trouble.

[eccerr0r]

Re: Fixing Goontrons warped PSU and main rig.

Maximum ripple allowed is 120mv.
500mv ripple will cook the motherboard southbridge or any chipset.

One thing is specification and another thing is actually observing things.

How will it "cook"?
500mV ripple = +/- 250mV.

There are other downstream SMPS to feed the s/b or chipset, they surely don't take 12V, and they better be able to handle +11.75V to +12.25V. This is less than 5% and won't increase power draw significantly unlike having the center average voltage off.

There is no question this is noise that can be translated onto signals, but ideally the power supply rejection ratio of the circuitry is sufficient that a mere 2% voltage instability - especially at speeds much slower than clock speeds - shouldn't cause problems. Yes there's a risk of downstream SMPS getting confused but as long as they don't run at a harmonic of each other, other than that, it's not much different than regulation being off. I've been running a lot of machines with a lot of ripple just fine, it simply depends on the circuitry consuming the power. But then, because ripple is a symptom of capacitors not having low enough ESR, problems are mostly caused by sudden power draws from the code stream that cause the power line to droop or spike due to that resistance, then causing improper operation. This is more of a problem than the actual ripple.

I measured 150mV on one of my motherboard's southbridge 1.2V line after a half a%%ed repair, yes I would rather want 12mV (1%), but it actually still works with 150mV ripple. For sure, 400mV was not acceptable on that 1.2V line, which was how bad it was prior to any repair.

[Quaddro]

Re: Fixing Goontrons warped PSU and main rig.

One thing is specification and another thing is actually observing things.

How will it "cook"?
500mV ripple = +/- 250mV.

There are other downstream SMPS to feed the s/b or chipset, they surely don't take 12V, and they better be able to handle +11.75V to +12.25V. This is less than 5% and won't increase power draw significantly unlike having the center average voltage off.

Technically half volt of ripple on 12V is "within specs"

What kind of specs did you mean..?

Do you exactly know the differences between voltage regulation and ripple..?

and yes, if you put 500mv ripple to your chipset, it'll damage for sure.
i didnt talking about 12v rail.

I measured 150mV on one of my motherboard's southbridge 1.2V line after a half a%%ed repair, yes I would rather want 12mV (1%), but it actually still works with 150mV ripple. For sure, 400mV was not acceptable on that 1.2V line, which was how bad it was prior to any repair.

150mv in 1.2v?
Wow..
Works but with no durability is useless.
What's the point repairing something if couple days again it will fail again?

[eccerr0r]

Re: Fixing Goontrons warped PSU and main rig.

I put it in "quotes" because it's pushing the envelope on definition of "specs" and yes it's the regulation specification.

You were implying that you're worried about 500mV on 12V rail, that is not damaging voltage, it's just noise that could cause invalid operation depending on how the downstream circuit was designed.

And yes, it's 150mV ripple on 1.2V and it still works (measured with a 'scope of course). It is horrible, but it's called "jury rig" "get things working" when you don't have all the stuff needed to make a proper repair. Happens a lot when on the battlefield among other situations, it's a calculated risk, but for a machine you just want it to work NOW and not be dead in the water, it's sufficient.

[goontron]

Re: Fixing Goontrons warped PSU and main rig.

Just an update -- Its dead.... The rig, not the PSU. That's still working wonderfully.

A few months ago it quit seeing 1 memory bank, reporting just 8Gb out of 16Gb installed, today it just quit in the middle of backing up the degraded RAID 1 array..

One drive with a working copy of my data, and its a WD Green.... This will not end well. Im just going to pull a disk image of the sole working drive and hope.

[Topcat]

Re: Fixing Goontrons warped PSU and main rig.

hmm...I never knew Mushkin made PSU's......I've always associated Mushkin with RAM back in the olden days.

[dmill89]

Re: Fixing Goontrons warped PSU and main rig.

hmm...I never knew Mushkin made PSU's......I've always associated Mushkin with RAM back in the olden days.

It seems like everyone (at least somewhat well known hardware brands) is slapping there name on a PSU these days, I've several PSUs in the last few years branded by hardware brands not traditionally known for PSUs (I think EVGA and Corsair started this "trend" and everyone else has "jumped on the bandwagon").