Re: Newb Question: What is that white compound?

Thanks for the replies everyone. It was very informative.

Sounds like the silicone doesn't do much for the heat in the caps, so it's probably good that we're deciding to get a replacement PSU (We didn't have a replacement fan of that size anyway). The fan had gone bad and the computer was shutting down from overheating (and there's no temp sensor inside the PSU), so I imagine the caps were getting pretty hot.

I recently opened up a PSU from a "popular computer manufacturer" because the fan had gone bad.

I noticed that most (maybe all) of the caps had a hard white compound on top of them. It looked like epoxy to me, but one of my coworkers said it keeps the caps cool.

I find that hard to believe since I've never seen it before, and in one spot the top of a transistor (mounted sideways) was connected to the side of a large cap with the stuff. That was the only spot where the compound wasn't just a standalone glob on top of a cap.

If it does keep...