How Power Supplies Are Made (2020) | PSU Factory Tour, ft. Cooler Master
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ต.ค. 2024
- This video shows how a computer power supply is made from start-to-finish, including manufacturing and assembly, testing, and validation of thermals.
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In this factory tour, we'll be walking through the manual assembly and validation process of power supplies in Tainan, Taiwan, at the southern tip of the island. Power supplies go through PCB manufacturing, SMT lines, automatic optical inspection, validation, assembly, and then through testing. 100% of all power supplies made in this factory are thermally burned-in and tested on Chroma machine power supply testers. We also cover some of the packing, warranty, and box building in this tour. We've made a separate video of this factory showing the R&D process, coming up in a future video. PSU manufacturing uses SMT lines, manual assembly lines, Chroma testers, burn-in testing, and more.
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Hello
Have enjoyed all of the series so far, and hope others do as well. I think youtube has been a little unkind to general content promotion as the algorithm shifts due to the malware situation. Hopefully that will improve. The tours were great and should catch more eyeballs.
Love this series
At this rate, when will gamers Nexus have their own branded PC with all gamers nexus components? Instabuy
coolermaster advertisement showing a "warranty void if removed" illegal sticker on their psu.
good one coolermaster :D but hey, if they wanna make advertisement against them, i'm all for it. i know what psu i won't buy.
Very cool. Don't suppose there's any chance we'll ever get to see the binning process for DRAM? That'd be an awesome pipeline to watch in action!
We're trying!
@@GamersNexus A sneak peak at SK Hynix factory, possibly featuring also the upcoming DDR5 memory would be amazing.
I mean they could explain it in a few words . Photolitography and chip design is superduper complicated , there wouldn't be any risk to show something to the (inexistent) competition , also not to mention the crazy expensive machinery .
I was just thinking about how much power this wastes and that they should use it to charge batteries to recycle the power and then I hear that's exactly what they do lmao
@Dave P. "Eco facists"
Winter is only 3-4 months every year, but okay.
@@mjc0961 you forget spring and autumn are also about 3 months of cold also. only about 2 months actually are hot in a year. (meaning you have the heat on most of the year.)
@Dave P. why are you talking about fascists lmao
@@jeeBisOkay he isnt. Hes talking about eco fascists
@Dave P. must be nice to have winter..
Other tech channels: “grassroots tech reviews”
GN: Computer Engineering Majors reviewing tech
Actualy lots of CS people come from Electrical Engineering background.
Does Steve come from an Engineering background? Didn't know that, how great!
@@Zackstrife29 most likely yes. Check GN website under his editor tag along with history
Even with all the human labor involved, it's still amazing that you can get a good quality 500W 80+ PSU for $50 or less.
@COFASA even with Coolermaster MWE 450 white 80 V2? its dirt cheap in Indonesia around 35 US dollar
@COFASA In the Philippines (via Lazada.com) I can get a MWE 550W or a CV550 for $50 or so. You may have it bad due to insane import taxes.
@COFASA Even in Canada $100+ is typically the going rate for a decent PSU. In general we pay way more for computer components, yet they all come from same factory.
This comment aged poorly
@@jamesscott3290 indeed it did
I always wonder how they get these kind of tours..
Subscriber count and viewership numbers, corporations look at things like that and view little bits like a factory tour like this as extremely dirt cheap cost effective advertisement for their products compared to the ridiculous costs of regular things like commercials that literally cost millions upon millions of $$$ to make and air.
How could you say no to GN? 😁
@@CatalystDestiny 12 years in the industry and clout is what gets it. We got this kind of access back when we had 20,000 subscribers because we've been a publication for a long time.
@@SirNickyT How could you say no to Jesus...((-:
@@GamersNexus Fair enough! Keep up the good work!
so great video, I love how are many QC test on single psu....
and this video change my mind about cooler master psu quality.... Good job done GN
While a CPU and GPU may last you for 5 years, I have a seasonic 800 psu still working after 10 years.
The one I'm using is roughly the same age, only thing that has ever failed on it was a SATA power connector. It has 6 such connectors and I use at most 3, so wire snips and but splices to eliminate the faulty one, still working great.
maybe it's just you? I have working 15+ year old cards here.
@@flandrble The point is that those cards, by today's standards, are not that good. The power supply still supplies power.
tbf, GPUs maybe, but Haswell seems to be immortal. I've got a 5820K in my rig that still wrecks games even at stock six years later.
Seasonic. The heart of your system
I am so grateful you're making these tours. Fascinating content!
Quite impressed by the amount of testing they perform, wasn't expecting that.
Looking forwards to part 2! :)
Pretty sure Gigabyte won't be extending an invite back to their factory any time soon, lol.
"PSUs have low failure ratings" - Its amazing how different realities coexist in the world. Im from Brazil, and most PSUs here are absolute crap, I had at least 5 PSUs exploding before I got into tech. Most manufacturers lie about the potency, efficiency,etc.
We even have a group (Teclab) that tests a lot of PSUs and the vast majority is bellow spec, even from reputable brands (in the low end)
That is why you buy from USA. I live in South America too and my entire computer even the case was brought by friends from USA. I have a seasonic 800 modular still working after 10 years
counterfeit parts?
so that is where the units that failed QC finally end up
Not counterfeit, just cheap stuff. From small companies mostly, like c3tech, xigmatek, etc. Also the low end stuff from EVGA for example: they are not THAT bad, but they are not good. My evga 430w went bad after 3-4 years, the 12V rail was varying between 10.9 and 11.4V, so the gpu stopped working properly (but it didnt kill any component)
Any cheap PSU whether from something random like you suggested, c3tech, or from Seasonic, is generally quite bad. If from a major seller they're generally not bad enough to explode (except Thermaltake and it's Litepower / 80+ bronze Smart series), however they still certainly will do dumb things potentially damaging the PC.
There is something different about this factory, it feels like it has a better atmosphere for the workers, and they also seem to care a lot about quality which is great to see.
I have a Cooler Master 1000w Silent Pro Bronze, so far so good after 10 year.
Wow my cooler master PSU has been with me for 6 years and yep its still working till this moment....and i really appreciate the cooler master company.. because they really make stuff that last...👍👍
"Thanks to human malware", what an awesome and funny quote about COVID. Man that got me for a good minute laughing.
Nice to see how much actual QC and manual labor is going into these products.
I'm repeatedly surprised at how manual these processes are - I've always envisioned vast factories with very low numbers of actual people. You'd think (or at least I thought) the order volume for cooler master would warrant more automated manufacture. Love the show Steve.
i've been waiting for the power supply factory tour for so long, thanks for making awesome content!
Love the tours, thanks for the awesome content!
Thank you all again for a new episode of How it's made with Tech Jesus. I absolutely love these , thanks for continuing to do them
I actually had a psu broke on me. It was a 10 (or more) year old Corsair PSU and it popped and then there was a terrible burning smell. Tripped the breakers in my house lol.
Glad they have security to make sure the system itself doesn't fry!
When copper and some electrons love each other a lot...
Also bless you. Perfecly placed sponsor.
I hope you continue to get support from manufacturers for these tours. I feel more satisfied paying for a good power supply now that I understand the QC process. For a long time I've been thinking how over-priced power supplies are. I understand better now, and will be happier to pay the higher price for good quality.
Loved the detailed explanation regarding the process flow. The info about SMT, AOI, Reflow machines in this video is really good!
I love how in every factory tour, they are always sponsored by another company and never the company of the factory
"If you ever think your PSU is dead, try trouble shooting everything else first because it's probably not" I wish this was engraved at the top of every pc forum as almost every issue I've encountered with my system has had one or more people telling me it's probably my PSU dying and it NEVER has been. I hope they all watch this video.
@@tomvarior5328 orange or grey tho? there is a diff i heard?
@@jeremyniels both of them, people dont know how much testing they go trough until they are sold
I'm waiting for the Gigabyte power supply factory tour. I want to see if it goes up in flame whenever they pull a power supply for testing
After applying solder paste in the screen printing machine, there is the SPI machine next (Solder Paste Inspection), to inspect the quality of the solder paste applied on the PCB, then it gets passed to the pick and place machine then straight to the oven, after all that, the AOI (Automated Optical Inspection) machine which inspects the components, solder joints etc
Really interesting detail that burn in is done at the target market utility voltage. All these PSU's will likely support a wide range of voltages, but if you take your computer abroad you may be testing it at a new voltage for the first time.
Just watched your old video on PSU voltage ripple. Awesome content!!
GN is featuring a CM MasterWatt 650W Bronze unit. If I had to make an educated guess (based on reviews and the LTT PSU tier list) I would say that this is HEC's factory. They're based in Tainan TW. HEC's no Delta, SeaSonic or FSP, but they're a decent OEM.
This video makes realize more than ever that the old "Made in China" stigma/label has no relationship to the quality these companies put into these parts.
When you think about it, pretty much everything nowadays is made there after all. There's also price points in everything, and many times the part dimension/choice is the failing point instead of being badly made, so the costs have been cut even before it went to the factory.
Wait aren't they in Taiwan...
@@julianangell4535 sorry, I'm an idiot. HOWEVER, some of the components were made in China, so I'm only partially an idiot.
@@51rwyatt No judgement
@@julianangell4535 well the iphones are made in china too .. a friend of mine who works/worked with chinese factory´s said ... its all about the money, they can produce you a product for 10 cents or 10$ ...you decide what you want ..
The factory efficiency is impressive.
super footage
Wow very interesting. Nice to see so much care is taken with QC
"Supply chain disruptions caused by human malware" hahahahaha! Funny ass shit!
The gatling gun is nice!
I was very surprise of the automation
And its RGB! @ 5:30
airlink2142 did not event notice, can we get one fro Amazon? Lol
“Our Factory Tours are getting increasingly low level”
Soon: Gamers Nexus teams up with Dr. Emmitt Brown in a Delorean to travel 4.5 Billion years in the past to show the origin and distribution of all the Iron used to make Power Supply Shrouds.
I like the burn in testing.
Really making sure the gustomer gets a good working unit 👍
Thank you, it's very interesting to see parts being made.
I had no idea it was this in depth.
Good ol' Windows XP
jank
You'd be surprised how many industrial machines use older OS as the machines that they run, are expensive and once the company is done producing the machines they never make updates for software.
@@FerrumBellator Hospitals too. My hospital has tons of NT4 stuff. Medical software tends to be super proprietary and made by fly by night companies. Once the company no longer exists there is no support or upgrade path but yet the hospital relies heavily on it. They refuse to use open source stuff "because we need support" but yet they don't have support, nor any ability to upgrade it because it's closed source.
@@redsquirrelftw You own a hospital?! damn you must be very rich!
It really shouldn’t have been mentioned. That’s a big security problem to have that published. (Even though the factory has not been named, we have been told detailed information about them which if invested in it, shouldn’t be too difficult to trace)
I love these episodes. It's like extended versions of How It's Made or Modern Marvels!
It's a shame other companies didn't want it revealed that they use the same factory. After watching how awesome the QC is I am more likely to buy a PSU knowing it came from this factory.
Great video. I really like content like this. Looking forward to the R&D episode.
The soldering machine you show at 4:15 is performing a process called "wave" soldering. A large amount of solder is melted in a tray where the boards are dipped into it. This is for through hole components. You describe it well.
Reflow soldering happens in a totally enclosed oven. This is the process that occurs directly after pick and place. The heat is ramped up to an initial plateau to activate the flux and then ramped again to about 250 C to melt the solder. This is for SMDs.
Both are essential for a board using both through hole and SMT. The boards first have the SMDs placed and reflow soldered, and then the through hole components are placed and wave soldered. Once caveat is if you have a dual technology board, to utilize wave soldering there must be surface mount components only on the top side. Otherwise the wave soldering process would melt the solder attaching the bottom layer SMT components and they would be removed from the PCB. Notice at 4:40 the bottom of the board has no SMDs.
Your description of the RMAs at about 16:15 is literally the same story as the history of how the term software "bug" was coined.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug#History
A Be Quiet PSU advert on a video sponsored by cooler master giving you a tour of their PSU factory. The balls!
Great video, but one thing to notice is that footage from MSI Factory is not SMT reflow oven but a wave soldering machine for THT mounting (through hole technology)
30 qc steps is a lot more then i anticipated. good to know that my usual testing process is either ignoring the PSU or checking that last. except, of course, when the symptoms explicitly point towards it, like breakers ripping, the unit sparking and smoking or the system being reproducably unstable when loading multiple power hungry components simultaneously...
be quiet! is the loudest Power Supply I even have owned :P
17:48 I like the choice of colors for the warnings:
Green: ok everything looks fine
Yellow: Careful, we might have forgot a cable, maybe we should check.
RED: WTF!! SOMEONE MUSH HAVE SLIPPED AN EXTRA 1$ CABLE IN THERE!!!
I'm sure they wanted to get low-level with you when they brought you to the screw factory ;)
Lovely to see my exact PSU made :D
I really love factory tour play list. As I remember I had similar comment on last factory tour video.
Love how coolermaster is sneaky regarding psu failures.
A very common issue on lower end units is the voltage going out of specs on specific loads. Technically the psu "works", it just kills some of the connected hardware.
You made me think about how many PSUs I have dealt with in the past 15 years and how many of them failed due to fabrication process. None. They all died by dirt, overheat, and me using 110V on 220V outlets.
The stamping portion reminds me of how they showed us how various larger parts keep getting stamped out in my auto oem. It keeps cutting various pieces off in a huge row of machines. The funny thing is with the geology of our area, they had to dig out a huge chunk of earth and pour huge support foundations for the stamping, otherwise the machines would literally pound themselves into the ground.
As far as part level/supplier electrical things i've dealt with are high level and don't come close to component level most of the time. Its mostly tier 1 and not much lower than that, but there are exceptions. Yay quality world!
Very nice! Coolermaster hosts this tour. This video is brought to you by Bequiet hahahha
Steve officially dropped the "g" at the end of each and every verb he says.
"It was quieter than usual during our visit, because of supply-chain issued from human malware."
Well, thats one way to put it...
I love these videos, so interesting and different from what I usually see
To me, power supply is the most fascinating part of a pc. If it's any good, quality wise, It should give stable and proper power as the need is constantly fluctuating , it should protect it from many threats (power surge, other components failure etc). All these matters are critical for the ecosystem. It's very underrated compared to other parts.
Love how Be Quiet sponsors a Cooler Master factory tour
Been a couple of years since you promised more PSU content, It's finally happening folks!
"Our hearts go out to the RMA team dealing with ... that" :D
Cooler Master assembly video with a Be Quiet sponsor, this could only be a Seasonic re branding factory.
Great wall power ! :D they should sell directly so get better prices
Awesome. Having spent time in R&D, I love to see that there is no "hidden magic" with work like this. More QC, less headaches. Thanks for the series.
This is the coolest video series and I missed it when LinusTechTips used to do factory tours too.
"The host for today's tour is Cooler Master" few seconds later "Sponsor of this video Be Quiet". Top 10 anime betrayals.
Cooler master MWE v2 will be the PSU for my next PC build
as always, great video! i am up to 1.3 million folding points for gamer's nexus !!!! lets go !!!! also could you include the sounds of some of the machines in the videos for the next one maybe?
Great video, as usual these are some of my favorite. I'm curious if perhaps you'd get the chance to interview one of the workers one day. Maybe learn a little about them, how much they work, are they in school, etc etc.
So it's either Super Flower, FSP, or Seasonic right? Honestly, they're all pretty good.
Hmm, that assembly line at about 8:30 almost looks like a "showcase" line only operated for visitors' eyes while the true commercial bulk assembly takes place in some dirtier and more cramped space :)
I actually experienced malfunction on brand new PSU. It took me whole month until i figured out and said well yes it must be it... PSU was suspicious but only PSU and RAM were brand new pieces HW. All other components where bought as a used. It was tough one. If you don't have spare parts and you just can't change few things until it is working again.
"PSU's have the lowest actual failure rates"
X to doubt, I've gone through a great deal of quality power supplies when building new systems.
4:06 That is a wave soldering machine and not a reflow oven. Thanks for the interesting tour!
And that poor thing needs to be dedrossed desperately!
Indeed. A reflow oven is like a long conveyor pizza oven. You can't see inside as windows wouldn't be sufficiently insulated for accurate temperature zone control.
Kinda ironic seing Coolermaster invite you but Be Quiet! sponsoring you. ;)
FSP Group more than likely.
Could also be Enermax or Seasonic.
LOL be quiet Psu ad on Cooler master Psu video nice!!!
What's next an iron mine? Resistor and capacitor fabs?
Great video! very in depth tour.
I had a cooler master psu die on me after like a week. Never got it replaced because coolermaster seemed to go out of their way to ignore me... Even the one and only case i bought by them had motherboard standoffs holes that weren't threaded properly.. needless to say i don't by coolermaster
Anyways, A really great video GN!
ft. Cooler Master
"Before that this video is brought to you by the new Be Quiet power supply"
I have several questions.
Kids nowadays have no idea how great modern PSU's are compared to 15 or 20 years ago.
Awesome !
Wonder why they don't go straight PSU -> Inverter load -> Back to AC, that would cut away the charging inefficiency.
Still, nice to know (albeit imagined) that they recycle the energy as much as possible.
The only PSU I've ever had fail was an Antec. Let's just say it was very easy to diagnose. :)
I've had two PSUs fail on my, one was an old no name brand in a hand-me-down computer my dad built. It blew up good and took the system with it (Electrolytic cap - one of the big ones - popped)
The other was a lot less exciting. Silverstone 600w SFX PSU just gave up the ghost. Nothing else was damaged, but none of the rails would output power, not even +12v or +5vsb. Local shop confirmed the same. The replacement it still kicking, 4 years later
Cooler Master video brought to you by bequiet!
On another episode of "How It's Made: GN Edition"
0:26 wow, that is ONE FANCY SCOPE!
This video definitely makes me feel more confident about my power supply failing
Another interesting video Steve! I had never had any psu issues until 2017 where I had two fail in the same way within 6 months of each other. The unit in question was the rm650x from Corsair, each unit produced a loud bang when the rocker switch was turned on after a PC clean. This completely blew capacitors and rendered the units dead. I RMA'd both PSUs to ebuyer who have the ability to test hardware in the UK and they told me they had had several do the same thing but that they continued to sell them. Weird. Since then, I did some digging and found many many reviews on amazon reporting the same failures... Please Gamers Nexus, can you test this PSU? Unless of course you've got a little deal with Corsair that you don't want to jeopardise. Love the content as always.
I have a new found respect for power supplies...
Hey Steve! Nice to see this vid from my hometown Tainan.
I know where you went now 😁 No worries, I'm 🤐
I didn't know I needed this video, but I did.
Great video :)
My power supply is from that factory!
Manual bending machine is commonly called a sheet metal brake.
where ?
In German it is called "Kantbank" which translates to "edge bank" or "bend bench".
We used to call them a Brake press in the sheet metal shop where I worked. There's another more complex machine that does similar jobs called a folder. Folders are more complex than the brakes.
@@FoolOfATuque Thank you.
Would be REALLY nice if you did a SeaSonic...please?