And this is our Chicony built power supply. Know what? I'm not going to be able to do much as far as disassembly today. Why? I'll show you in a minute.
Meantime, just getting the mainboard out of here is a nightmare. While this unit does use the case as a partial heatsink, there is a separate metal plate that goes between the housing and the plastic insulation. This metal plate is good friends with the housing, and good friends with the mainboard thanks to two large thermal pads.
Here's a peek at those pads now.
Boardwork and solder quality is, as I expect from Chicony, excellent. It's not at Delta "you can eat off this thing" levels of quality, but real close.
I mean, look over at the right side of the board. For Pete's sake, they actually engineered notches into the board so those standoff screws would fit properly!!!
Line filtering starts with two Y capacitors.
The main filter cap. This was the only part I was willing to remove. Why? I told you... in a minute! You guys are so impatient...
More line filtering here with two X caps, two Y caps, a TVS diode, and two coils. Good work, Chicony.
This is why I'm not pulling heatsinks out. We're looking at one of the four switching MOSFETs. Chicony has decided to not bother bolting the parts to the heatsinks... instead, they are relying on the adhesive action of the thermal insulators alone. This approach works well enough, but if I start pulling these out I'll never get them back in without drilling and tapping holes for bolts. Once I break the seal on these things, they won't seal anymore.
I have to make sure these are still worth money when I get them back together, or I can't afford to review power supplies. It's just that simple.
Gag. Most of the output filtering on this unit uses Ltec capacitors. That's not tier one or even tier two for me... that's just about bottom rung. Remember that great big deal about ten years ago where some company started using a flawed electrolyte formula, and they started failing left and right? That was Ltec, right in the middle of it. Now, they have improved since then, so it's not like we're dealing with the old days when Fuhjyyu equipped Antecs often meant you'd be buying a new power supply in a year. Chicony knows their business well enough to make even crap capacitors last forever. Heck, they're just like Delta in that regard, who also uses Ltec a lot.
Even so, my scoring methodology is clear - I gotta score against it.
All output parts are on this daughterboard. I am not even going to try to remove it. 12V output is done using six 028N06NS parts.
The only two Japanese capacitors I found on the output side are these here Nichicons. One of which has burns from a soldering iron on the case. That'll be a scoring deduction too, just to be extra picky. Chicony isn't a company known for rookie mistakes like that, and I want to hold their feet to the fire on it.
I was not able to get a part number on the PWM controller, but I did identify the PFC parts as being three 6R190E6s and one diode.
On the modular board, more Ltecs.
On the back of the modular board, more flawless soldering.
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