10 year old Cooler Master RS-850-EMBA

[nickb]

I bought this 10 years ago and used it for maybe 6 months before it went into storage. I recently popped it open to clean out the dust and found all caps look to be in good condition (no leaking/bulging). Is it okay to put this back into service or is this something I should toss or attempt to re-cap?

[Stefan Payne]

Re: 10 year old Cooler Master RS-850-EMBA

Storage is actually worse for caps than no use.

What you should do is look in your parts bin for lower powered stuff that you do not care about. Like some Office Core 2 Duo shit or an Atom Board. Something like that.
Important: it should be 12V Heavy.

Put that on, run the PSU for an hour or two with **LOW LOAD** and don't get too far away to see what happened.

After that you look at it again...

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: 10 year old Cooler Master RS-850-EMBA

Storage is actually worse for caps than no use.

What you should do is look in your parts bin for lower powered stuff that you do not care about. Like some Office Core 2 Duo shit or an Atom Board. Something like that.
Important: it should be 12V Heavy.

Put that on, run the PSU for an hour or two with **LOW LOAD** and don't get too far away to see what happened.

After that you look at it again...

Would this be a case where you would want to use the light bulb as a fuse while running it on a light load condition

[nickb]

Re: 10 year old Cooler Master RS-850-EMBA

I've been running it for over an hour plugged into an Atom 330 board. Nothing else is plugged in, it's just sitting on the bios screen where I can monitor temps and voltage.
Voltages look good so far, checked with a meter and am getting 12.2 volts, 3.33 volts, 2.52, and 4.39. The 5 volt rail seems low but will let it run for a while longer and then take a look.

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: 10 year old Cooler Master RS-850-EMBA

Yes you are right that the voltage is a low ( 3.3 volts should more like at minimum 3.00 and the 5.00 should be more like 4.80 minimum)

One note do not go by the voltage readings from the mother board this a lot times are not accurate

Use a volt meter for this

Try this put a 20 watt light bulb on the 5 rail and see if the voltage goes up any

Me personally I like to see the voltages on all rails to a little bit on low side but not this low

I would also recommend that you also run as though you were going to use it

( under the load that this switching power supply is going to see and maybe a little higher than that )

To see if you have any other issues with this power supply

[nickb]

Re: 10 year old Cooler Master RS-850-EMBA

The numbers I posted above were from the bios screen. Here's from the meter:
12v = 12.19
3.3v = 3.33
5v = 4.37

I'll track down a 20v light and try the test you mentioned. Thanks.

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: 10 year old Cooler Master RS-850-EMBA

Those voltage values are pretty good was with the power supply loaded or just the mother board

[nickb]

Re: 10 year old Cooler Master RS-850-EMBA

Just the motherboard, nothing else connected.

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: 10 year old Cooler Master RS-850-EMBA

I would recommend loading the switching power supply and see what voltage you get when it is load

[nickb]

Re: 10 year old Cooler Master RS-850-EMBA

I would recommend loading the switching power supply and see what voltage you get when it is load

Attached a hard drive and now I'm getting the following with my dvm:

12v = 12.17
5v = 5.08
3.3v = 3.39

Looks like it needed a load like you said. Now I'm wondering if I should use as-is or think about re-capping.

Thanks,

Nick

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: 10 year old Cooler Master RS-850-EMBA

The voltages that you have are pretty good values

Me personally I would recommend recap the board except for the main filtering if your plan keeping it for long time and wanting it to be working with out issues for a long time if you are running it 24 hours day 7 days a week 365 days a year