Monthly Archive for January, 2009

How not to start your day, from the all-hardware-sucks department.

For years, I’ve been struggling to keep my machines quiet. I’ve miserably failed for years, and pretty much gave up once I realised that the quiet parts I was looking for just did not exist. Last year, I finally found what I was looking for:

• big, heavy, quiet case from Chieftec (with room for 8 HDD and their own dedicated 90mm fans (up to 3) and room for 2 120mm case fans);
• über-engineered fans from Noctua (finally some guys took a shot at engineering fans, happiness \o/);
• fanless (except for the emergency fan) PSU from Antec (Phantom 500).

I’ve been very happy with this hardware for both my workstation and my filer. Well, until today. No need to mention that this hardware is not exactly cheap, but the price is right for the quality.

So, wake up today, do random things, grab my TomTom, unplug it from the workstation it’s sucking its power from, do things, plug it back in the USB port so it won’t draw its battery. This is how it went:

• plug TomTom into USB port;
• notice the LED is blinking, and it should not;
• erupt a mental “WTF?” and simultaneously hear *clac* *pffzziiouuuu*;
• unplug TomTom;
• replug TomTom, notice the LED is blinking again;
• look at the machine, notice it’s gone down;
• check the PSU and erupt a verbal “WTF?!” noticing the LED on the PSU is not lit.

Check machine temp, PSU temp, attempt to restart PSU, check UPS, check cables, replace power cable and bypass UPS. Admit defeat for this round and accept the PSU as dead. Pull out the machine, rip out the fscking damn PSU.

Grab the tools, crack the PSU open. Notice bulging and leaking capacitors.

Yes, this PSU is anything but cheap, yet it uses el-cheapo chinese capacitors. Antec, you suck, big time. For the past decade everybody in the industry has known that el-cheapo chinese capacitors manufactured after 1999 are total crap, using an electrolyte that isn’t actually one because its formula was stolen by industrial spies who got totally PWNED and ended up stealing a bad formula.

(If you need a reference, google for “singing capacitors”. Note that singing capacitors can also happen with good parts used in a crappy electronic design. Like that 100 Mbps D-Link switch over there, or that Sony-Ericsson mobile phone charger. Hmm. Not everybody can hear it, I do.)

A healthy, young capacitor should not bulge nor leak. A capacitor that leaks, bulges or sings is a crappy capacitor and needs to be replaced with a quality part ASAP. I’ve been routinely replacing such capacitors on my older motherboards (manufactured between 1999 and 2001) in the past years. I’ve not had the problem in ANY of my el-cheapo PSU, and did not replace any capacitor in any of them to date.

Fortunately, the machine did not suffer any further damage, nor did the TomTom. Everything is up and running again with a spare PSU. I’m now going to replace the fscking capacitors on this PSU, replace the fuse, probably R&R a couple of high-voltage transistors too (they have a tendency to fry before the fuse blows out) and get it back up and running.

Then I’ll do the same with the other PSU in the filer, because that machine has 8 disks attached, so draws more power and hence is much more vulnerable. Fuck you Antec.