Is dead psu repairable?

MadMatty · 18 Jul 2015 at 17:53

So my psu on my older amd system decided to explode today. Nice bright flash and a loud bang with a not so nice aroma.

Its an OCZ Modstream 700w. I took it apart expecting one of the larger caps to have blown but instead it looks like it was some kind of controller chip that exploded. Thankfully the rest of the system is safe and now powered by an old Tagan modular 550w.

Some bad pics from the ole iPhone3gs

Just wonder if these things are repairable assuming I can find out what the chip is and it hasn't caused any other issues inside the psu.

Doogles · 18 Jul 2015 at 18:51

That looks totally fried and after that I wouldn't even want to try and use it, get yourself a decent unit before you damage your PC, next time you might not be so lucky!

Quartz · 18 Jul 2015 at 19:06

And next time give your PSU an occasional clean!

ScoTTyBEEE · 18 Jul 2015 at 21:30

Quartz said:
And next time give your PSU an occasional clean!

who cleans psu's?

Quartz · 18 Jul 2015 at 22:57

ScoTTyBEEE said:
who cleans psu's?

People who don't want their PSUs to go bang. All you need to do is give it a blast of air once in a while.

new boy · 18 Jul 2015 at 23:26

Trouble is you can't open a lot of them without breaking warranty stickers, and trying to blow clumps of dust through mesh kinda sucks.

MadMatty · 19 Jul 2015 at 10:21

It hadn't done bad for 6 year old psu. The odd vacuum trying to get surface dust out but without opening you cant get to the fine stuff. You think enough had built up to cause a short?

Dave2150 · 19 Jul 2015 at 23:53

MadMatty said:
It hadn't done bad for 6 year old psu. The odd vacuum trying to get surface dust out but without opening you cant get to the fine stuff. You think enough had built up to cause a short?

Dust is just bad in general. Best to let it not enter your case in the first place. Dust filters on your intake fans go a long way to stop dust dead in it's tracks.

DarkFulgore · 20 Jul 2015 at 03:36

Even if you could, I still wouldn't trust it in the long run. A new PSU is probably the best router.

Having said that, We had an old PSU a good few years back in a P3 and my dad managed to find some place that was able to fix it for pretty cheap. It had basically just blown. I would assume nowadays if anything goes wrong with a PSU, a new one is in order.

Remember, it can take all of your other components with it if it goes. although unlikely, it is possible.

mattoxx · 22 Jul 2015 at 00:10

If you know what you doing you can repair PSU easily. it may be even stronger than before if you replace ****** cap with a better one

Tealc · 22 Jul 2015 at 07:39

Well you could try replacing the blown chip if you could identify what it is, and find a source to buy one. You'd then need to replace any capacitors in the area that may have caused the issue. You'd then need to consider replacing all the capacitors, with perhaps the exception of the primary capacitor. At the end of all this you could find the problem is further back than this and it'll just blow your replacement chips.