I always get concerned when companies make up their own certifications.
90 plus platinum? Not a thing. And if it was, it would probably be platinum colored, not gold,
which makes me wonder how much of anything else on here is actually real. I assume this is real.
It supports 180 to 200 volt AC input, which makes sense. There's no way you'd blow the
circuit before you manage to pull 3000 watts out of a 120 volt circuit. Is it time to open it?
Actually, before we do that, isn't this the icon that means not dishwasher safe?
Yeah, I think so. They're correct.
Technically not wrong. Oh, are you opening up a real power supply?
Yeah, so this is a 1600i. You kind of want two of these to get over 3000 watts.
Yeah. Kyle's our lead creator, warehouse engineer, and he apparently spent the last
few weekends learning about power supplies after being put on the spot last time we opened up
this catchy power supply. So hopefully he's able to provide us a little bit more insight this time
around. We'll see how good his studying skills are. So Kyle, you've already opened this, right?
Yes. Be careful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, right. This is the part of the video where we say,
don't do this. We do not recommend opening up any kind of AC to DC power supply.
There are capacitors in here that will store enough power to throw you back across the room.
Maybe not quite that much. CRT TVs, yes. These maybe not quite so much, but you could die, okay?
Bear, is that fair to say? Yeah. Okay, cool. I wouldn't say, yeah, you're not going to get
heated across the room. With a CRT maybe? We don't have CRTs anymore. Well, some of us do.
That's good for you. I just bought a CRT. David just bought a CRT.
All of the four people here, half of them still have CRTs.
Don't you just use scan lines and butters? Or is it just not the same? No, it's not the same.
Okay. Well, can I try first? Yes. Okay.
And the comments will correct all of us, sir. Yeah. This should kind of be all you need to know,
though, because this is what a quality 1600 watt power supply looks like next to a random
banggood.com 3400 watt power supply. Look at the size of this primary side cap. Okay? Holy bananas.
The size doesn't matter, Linus. Well, capacity does. Generally speaking,
size corresponds to capacity. What is the capacity written on top of this one?
All right. Give me a sec. Give me a sec. Well, yeah, but it's just because it's written on it,
doesn't mean, okay. Uh, 454, 680 microfarads. Okay. 270 each. 270 each. So the size clearly
mattered a little bit. Okay. What are you insecure?
You don't have a witty comeback for that. Let's get a shot of the 270. 270. He doubts me. Hold on.
Go back to wide. Go back to wide. Go back to wide. He doubts me. He's double checking. No, no, no.
You're double checking. Actually, I'm checking something else. So this is Nippon. I'm butchering
the pronunciation of that. Yeah. But that's a good brand. The problem is, so does that,
but it's so fuzzy that I think they just silkscreen whatever the flip they wanted on to the outside.
Because look how clear the silkscreen is on that. Yes. You can tell exactly what the flip that is.
Here it is on this guy, on these primary side caps. Yeah, you can't, like, yeah.
And even the DPI on this is so much higher. Even like the O, like this, this band that you see on
Nippon caps, it's sharp. You see that? On this one, it's super fuzzy. And like,
you could just scratch it off. That's nowhere that says Nippon. It does. It's just really cheap.
I also couldn't help noticing that the definitely genuine Nippon ones have metal tops, and these
have plastic tops, which they might have, they might have other models that have a plastic top or
whatever. But any differences we're seeing here, not great indicators, I think is fair enough to say.
Well, we can already see that it's rated for less than even the secondaries on this bad boy.
These are both, what are they, 470 microfarad each. To give some context for why this capacity
matters, here's Alex with a good power supply. What, you're just putting a spot like that?
Yeah. Oh, well these guys right here, they do your 400 volt stuff. The capacity of them doesn't
matter so much for your system stability as your, like, overall efficiency of the unit.
Okay. The ones down here are the ones that matter for your, like, 12 volt rail, and you're
3090 not shutting your system down. And wait a second. That's all I've got? These little wimpy
boys right here? Okay, we've got 2200 microfarad, 16 volt. How does that compare to Corsair?
Same. Well, I've got five of them per power supply for the 12 volt rail.
I have 16. Now that matters a lot, because when all of a sudden you kick on a game,
your 3080 or your 30, a heck, your 3050 Ti, okay, is going to suddenly draw 12 volt power from the
system. And if you don't have enough of a buffer in these capacitors, well your voltages can drop,
which can cause your system to, well, worst case scenario, it's completely shut off.
Well, or in the case of, like, a 3090, your voltage doesn't drop and it just, your amperage goes to
the moon. Which is bad. Yeah, which is when your power supply goes. I feel like I'm probably
missing some really sketchy stuff, though. Oh, we're missing, we're missing one of these boys
who was supposed to be on the board here. Well, and you just missed the other thing that's missing.
Oh, wait, what is it? What's supposed to be here? Wait, is this just bridged? Are these just wires?
What's supposed to be there? It's something called a common mode choke. Wait, they just,
they just soldered wires across it. Yes, and that's not a common mode choke. I can guarantee that.
What the hell? That's a good one. That's a good one. It's a rare hollow foil. It's a rare mode
To be clear, it's not unheard of for a PCB to have solder points that go unused. For example,
many GPU PCBs, if they're designed for use in both consumer cards and server cards,
will have solder points for power connectors, both on the top for the gaming variants,
and at the back for the server variants, since most servers are either 3U or 4U and won't
accommodate this power nonsense sticking out the top of them. But this is not that.
This is missing components.
Okay, does it get worse or does it get better? It would still probably work. I mean, all it does
is stop common mode current, which is basically current flowing in the same direction, both on
live and neutral. So, referred to as live and return. So, neutral is generally where your
current returns, and you don't want current going opposite to where it should be going,
returning to. So, the common mode choke stops there from happening. Is the simplest way to
explain it without going into too much detail? So, probably it'll work, but it's not good.
It means half your EMI filter is just not there. Got it, cool. That one has one, at least one,
and probably more X and Y class capacitors. Yeah, right, okay. I think this is the bare minimum
needed to make it turn on. Cool. Is there anything else that really jumped out at us?
Not really. I mean, from there, we go into a standard full bridge rectifier,
then we go into just a regular smoothing capacitor, and then this is pretty interesting.
So, we got this wrong the last time we reviewed a power supply. It's an NTC, but it doesn't do
anything with temperature. It's actually an inrush current limiter. Cool. So, it's when you
plug this in, you don't trip your breaker by charging these caps. Oh, that's pretty cool.
Yeah, right. So, as it heats up, it loads its resistance. So, after the inrush event has happened,
its resistance lowers down to something where it's, in theory, negligible, but they have this relay
here because it's actually not once you run enough current through it. Okay. So, this relay,
once the inrush current event is over, actually pulls this out of the circuit.
Got it, cool. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Well, I'm good to go then. Yeah. Let's power up some 3080s.
Your resistor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We can't, so, we can't do anything right now until we take
this board and resolder this resistor over here. Wait, what, why? Because it's not connected.
It's not soldered properly. Oh. And that's one half of a current sensing resistor needed to
actually make the power factor correction work properly. Oh my god, it's not soldered. Yeah.
It's just completely not soldered. So, I know, yeah, that's one thing I noticed.
Well, how many other things are not soldered? I do not know. That's the only one I saw.
It don't work without the broken resistor.
Anyway, did we swap the connectors for the fans? You reassembled this. Did you switch the fan
connector? This looks almost certainly like it's supposed to be here for how much slack is on it.
So, the funny thing was this whole fan arrangement is pretty janky.
In what way? You got two fans per power supply. You got two fan connectors per power supply,
seems pretty good to me. Yes, just for some reason, when I took this apart, I remember
one of these fans, the case fans, was plugged into this location. And the other one was plugged
into another one. I don't know if it matters. Probably doesn't. But there's a lot of things that
are a bit weird when you try and like put two power supplies together.
Look, Mom, I found a zip tie. Oh, yeah, that was me. I cut that off because I needed to pull the
board up. Okay, we ready? Yeah. Okay, let's pull the board up. I think we should teamwork this.
Alex, can you support the power supply at this angle? You're going to need to do it from that
side because David's got a film. Oh, boy. Right into the solder iron. Okay. So, Alex, if I don't
have to support the power supply, that would be amazing. If I can just hold the board, you got it?
No, no, just the power supply, the outer housing. Oh, yeah. Got that. Okay. And then we can just
tuck this boy away. See you later. Okay, and then I will just push the resistors down. So,
when the solder on the back is molten, I'm going to stick the leg through the hole,
and then it should just grab on. Okay, so you ready? Okay. This one, this one, this one. Should we do
this one first? Yeah, we can do the top one first. One sec. Oh, I mean, I'm just going to heat up the
solder and hope to heck that this freaking solder iron has enough power to do it. Oh, oh, oh, oh!
Oh, I see it. Yes! Yes, Terran! Yes! Okay, it's crowning. Can we post that? Okay, did it go through?
Yeah. Do we have full penetration? Yes, we do. Okay. All right, just like clean it up. I'm doing
the one next to it. Let's go. Okay, sure. Just hold it there. The one below it is already molten.
I'll see you in five minutes. No, no, this one will be... Oh, yeah! It's already good. Periltration!
Given it a little... Okay. For the nation. Okay, all right. Okay? Yes. Oh, no, the resistors the wrong
way around. Shut up, it is not. And if it was, you wouldn't know it. The resistors the wrong way around.
That was awesome. I can't believe that you managed to save this thing before we actually
powered it on, because otherwise this wouldn't have been much of a video, would it? It would have
slowed out probably. Unless it did. I don't know. Not having a resistor somewhere seems like the
resistor is probably there for a reason. I don't know. I mean, it's used, it's used to current
sense, right? So it's a very low resistance resistor. This coil looking thing at the end,
yeah, is... I forgot what the thing is called. But, oh, it's a gate driver. It's a gate driving
transformer basically. There's a whole bunch of cables wound together, and then there's a thin
cable. So I think that thin cable is the signal driver and induces a voltage in there and then
like makes that same voltage go across all these other lines. Right. These copper windings are
supposed to be laminated so they don't touch each other. The lamination is broken on a couple of
these. I don't know if that's a problem. Okay. Eh. Good luck everybody. Oh, we need to do one more
sketchy thing. Oh, one more sketchy thing. I want to power this thing on you guys. You're
killing me here. In order to know how much the power supply is drawing, normally you'd use
something like this. Unfortunately, those only work for 110 volts. So I bought this thing right
here. It's a, it was what, like 20 bucks? Kind of sketchy. Wait, you just put the cable through
here and then you get a readout. It's sort of, yeah. But wait, how do you get this around the
cable? Well, that's the sketchy thing that we have to do. Oh my god, you're just going to cut it.
Yeah. I don't even object. Now viewers, I'm sorry that this is what we're doing, but there is a
good reason. We're buying cheap crap like this because we bought a very expensive tester that's
going to be arriving soon, but not super soon because shortage is. So we don't want to blow a
bunch of money on something that we're just going to replace like immediately. Well, this is the
part of the video where we tell you not to do this. This is the second part of the job. Yeah,
this is the, yeah, don't do this. Oh, your power supply isn't that bad compared to this.
Oh, you already cut it, never mind. Yeah, I just got a lot of electrical tape.
Yeah, we'll need a lot of electrical tape. If something bad happens, it's going to be a fire.
So standing there isn't really going to help you much. Are you proud of it, Linus? No.
For the record, don't you? Yeah, don't do this. Yeah, really though. A lot of the time we say
don't do this. This is like, for realsies, do not do this. This is 240 volt with just like
bare ass marettes. Well, that doesn't matter. It doesn't. The electricity doesn't
fucking care what cable it's going through. Okay, which ones do I put this in?
We should frame this. This is horrible. Then we spliced in these leads. Okay,
this thing's terrifying. This is horrible. Where's all that electrical tape at? Do we have it?
We have electrical tape. Okay, I want electrical tape over this.
Well, it's not going anywhere, is it? Look, it's a little doggie. Oh, yeah, it is.
Okay, are we filming? I suggest using a foot power meter for the record.
Yeah, after we'd already done this. That ship's saved. Well, who needs this
chumptastic, pinner, little power supply now that I have this boy?
It's the famously terrible C-Sonic platinum. Yes.
Oh my god, it fits. Is this heavier than that? Oh, probably. For all the cables hanging off of
it, this is not a heavy power supply. Okay, here's your GPU power connectors.
Oh, take her back out. Take her back out. Yeah, go back out.
You want it like that. Yeah, we'll put this through. Okay, nice.
Oh no, okay. This is scary. Okay, go ahead and plug it in. You need to come get closer if you're
going to be part of the shot. Why me? Oh, I was talking to him, but sure, go for it. Okay. I'm so
eager. Okay, this thing powered up, so that's good. Nice. 209 volts, so we're like right smack on
the 208 volts we're supposed to have in here. Zero watts, which makes sense because it's not
doing anything right now. Okay, you might say this puppy has a lot of energy.
Good luck, everybody. This power supply powers on the system. Here's my RGB. Even when the switch
is powered off because it's not wired up right. It works. Well, yeah. Well, what do you mean of
course it does? We had to solder a resistor back into it. Here we go. Man, that's annoying and loud.
What's our load to stress this thing? Blender. Blender. Okay. That worked best for the Camino.
Are we at 275 watts already according to this?
192. Yeah, I guess so. I forgot. This is old Intel ATDT. This thing is a juicy boy.
Yes. Okay. Sorry, not idle. I am surprised that at idle it is doing like 200 watts.
I'm not. It's a lot. This is probably not that efficient. Yeah, it's probably not that efficient.
Oh, you're right. And the efficiency curve of this thing at only a couple hundred watts
is going to be like freaking terrible. There we go. Now all the fans are spinning.
Feeling fine.
Yeah, but I need this one. I need this little cable tie here to keep this riser out of that fan.
Even at idle, doing nothing. This is drawing 330 watts from the wall.
Doing absolutely nothing. So does it work? I mean, we haven't made it to 3450 necessarily,
but we sure as heck got to 2500. We also don't know exactly what the efficiency of this is.
So 2500 from the wall, sure, according to this thing, but it's clear that we need some more
sophisticated equipment in order to really put this thing through its paces. Now tell me,
can our power supply tester do this kind of load? Yes. Really? So we got the good one.
I got 3500. So like 50 watts more than what this can do is our limit.
Can we just appreciate how much heat has come off of this? Yeah, it has warmed this room. I literally said that like two minutes ago.
It has warmed the room, guys. Wow. This is like sitting around the campfire.
You guys got some marshmallows? I'm just waiting for this thing to blow up.