Faulty SuperFlower but I can't prove it - options?

Matmulder

Matmulder

Matmulder

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Bit of a long shot, but thought I'd ask...

My SuperFlower Leadex 550W was shutting my system down under load (gaming) when its 21deg or warmer in my spare room. I've proven this by swapping to some cheap Corsair unit from a mate and my system has been 100% stable.

The SF has 3.5 years warranty remaining, and despite some disagreement between SF and OcUK as to where to send for warranty, OC took it and stress tested it - obviously it passed all tests as I suspected it would.
So I had it back, plugged it in (in some vain attempt at hopefulness) but sure enough, 5 mins into games the PC shuts down. Corsair back in - solid.

I'm not blaming OC here - if it passes their tests there is nothing they can do; but does anyone have any suggestions before I throw £100 worth of PSU in the bin? If I'd have known I'd have been replacing a PSU every year I would have bought a disposable cheap one ;)
 
What case do you have and how is the psu orientated in it (fan up or fan down sucking air through a grid in the bottom of the case)? If it's fan down does the case intake have a dust filter? If so does it make any difference with the filter removed? Do you run it with eco mode enabled or with the fan on all the time? Is there any difference in what happens by switching between modes?
 
Well, different load could cause worser stability.
It's obviously rather different thing of putting PSU to under say 250W load than than some 350W load.

Also different components can have different sensitivity to power quality if it was soft shutdown instead of PSU's voltage monitoring pulling the plug.

Though for temperature's effect do you know if fan rotates normally?


Best would be to ask Super Flower.
Though you might have to send it to them to farther away.
I don't think they have regional offices like Seasonic.
 
Coolermaster aluminum case - It's at the top of the case, fan down. No filters, and it happens both on eco and normal modes. I've even tried running it outside of the case, no difference - still shuts down when gaming.

Super Flower have said I can return it direct to them for testing, but that's in Germany; I've already paid once to send it back to OCUK so reluctant to keep throwing cash at it as they need to prove the fault too. They've also told me it'll operate at upto 40deg ambient before shutting down, but it's not getting anywhere near that, I've felt it and it's barely even warm to the touch - but definitely ambient temp related, as it runs fine during the cooler weather when the house is cooler.

I'm not going to sell it ;) I'm not that much of a jerk. I mean, it'll run as a non-gaming PSU just fine, but I'd rather just keep it as an emergency backup.
 
It could be a bigger demand on the 5v rail depending on what hardware you have in your rig. If the other one you are useing to test it with has a higher amount of amps on the 5 v rail
then this could be the cause. Most new PSU's have more 12v amps and not a lot of 5v amps. But older have much higher amps on the 5v rail. Worth checking the numbers out.
 
Matmulder said:
Coolermaster aluminum case - It's at the top of the case, fan down. No filters, and it happens both on eco and normal modes. I've even tried running it outside of the case, no difference - still shuts down when gaming.

Super Flower have said I can return it direct to them for testing, but that's in Germany
Click to expand...
Well, at least that's inside EU making posting easy without any customs hassles to worry about.

Top position is very stressfull for PSU unless case cooling is really good.
It was designed at time when components used something like 50W while PSUs had so bad efficiencies they might have wasted nearly as much power. (65-70% efficiency PSUs even 15 years ago)
So cooling that small heat load of PC in addition to PSU's own heat wasn't big thing.

What's the particular case model?
From what I remember pictures of some Coolermasters their cooling wasn't that "hot" so if you intend to keep using case would be worth looking how to have best possible cooling in it.
 
System had been running for 12-14 months without an issue.

i5 2500k (no longer overclocked, as I thought that was what was causing the issue originally)
Asrock z68 extreme4 gen 3
8GB RAM
GTX 980
2x 128GB SSD, 1x 2TB HDD

Case is a Coolermaster Wave Master TAC-T01-E1C (which I bought years ago!)

The PSU I'm running now is a Corsair CX600, and that's working fine...it's much cheaper PSU.
 
Matmulder said:
Case is a Coolermaster Wave Master TAC-T01-E1C (which I bought years ago!)
Click to expand...
Worser than I remembered...
While having actual low impedance wire finger guard exhaust fan is 80mm small.
Also intake fans are equally small.

Without swapping that top IO-panel to fan mount heat can't get out from height above PSU's bottom.
80mm fanned PSU with front in-back out airflow would fit better to that by keeping air changing in top of the case.
https://www.bit-tech.net/reviews/tech/cases/wave_master/3/
Modern PSUs just make it worser by slowing down fan speed.

That case is basically fit only for light use web surfing/word processing PC.
Any higher end CPU is going to add big heat load compared to its cooling.
Also graphics card should be reference design which blows heat out from the case and even that is going to radiate some heat into case.
At time of design process of that case graphics card had something like max 50W TDP.
 
OK dident think of this before for some reason. But dust can cause a shorts in the psu and leakage across some pcb tracks.
I think you should blow compressed air into as many holes in the psu as possible to shif any dust and then try it again.
Now if the psu continues to shut off after this, then It could be a capacitor that has dried up or leaked. This would explain why it does it after a few minutes
and not right away. The heating of the capacitor will change its value a bit then shut down when the value is at that point. So go for the air dusting first to see if
that helps as a lot of psu's get this problem over time.
 
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