@@user-hs7hz1io1e Seasonic is a manufacturer, a lot of other power supply brands actually rebadge seasonic units, and back in the day that used to be their main business, it wasn't until later they actually stuck their own name on their own psus.
This video has a lot of warnings for a good reason. For the love of god people don’t mess around with power supplies if you don’t know what you’re doing. Be safe.
Just don't mess around with them full stop. For me if a power unit has developed a fault replace the power unit I wouldn't rely on the rest of it being OK.
Linus is way too careless and flippant with this topic. The way he handles components that are connected to the mains is dangerous and gives the viewer a false sense of security.
I know a guy who made an arc welder out of a microwave transformer for a school project. Teacher wasn't stoked, told him a school project isn't worth risking your life
7:30 I am always blown away at how incredibly amazing Wiki is and just the sheer amount the time and effort people put into maintaining these sites/databases. What is just a quick and easy to read table to find what information you need in 30 seconds could have been an all day research task if this didn't exist.
Absolutely. And a lot of the time, people make these for their own easy reference later on. If you'll need info months or a year later, it's more efficient to post it online and let Google help you find it (especially if you forgot that you posted exactly that info), than to take notes to a local file and try to find it later. It is one of the remarkable and unexpected efficiencies of the internet - for those of us who don't have a perfect memory.
The minecraft wiki(not the fandoom one) is basicly the only source for game mechanics on minecraft (someof it is from WaI bugs, but most of it is minecraft.jar + mojmap/yarn/ quilt mappings or experience
Seasonic is wrong. They get worst option for video, not great new Meanell EPP-400-12 or lrs350-12 for 25$, but old used trash. with good brand 12v psu, this monstrosity will work fine and has gold rating.
@@gazooc yea also the typical pico psu is ment for 30w to 90w systems, higher powered picos use usually 24v DC to 60v DC as input. the 400w with 12v is a rare and cheap option with drawback on mass. this person who does this script for linus need to be fired. we have in the past many videos of this kind by LTT and i bet this is every time the same person who wrote the script for that.
@@B2gboi Meanwell is more trustwothy than seasonic. they make psu's for medical systems, and seasonic is just good but just for pc parts, and noobody will buy it for MRI machine pc or something like ICU.
People who build PCs in the sff (small form factor) world go down this route very often and luckily there's some more intuitive routes. The company HDplex makes a DC-ATX converter that can support those 19-20v laptop psu's (from Dell, etc.) which makes it very streamlined. It becomes as simple as plopping in the DC-ATX converter on the MB and plugging in the laptop barrel connector externally. There's nothing exposed and it turns out extremely clean-looking.
Yeah I was expecting them to show some of those small form factor power supplies and adapters, since they're an actual option designed for this, they have used them in the past for the desk Pcs, but they're not cheap which doesn't go with the whole budget thing they were talking about in the video. Still would have made a lot of sense to mention them.
Guryhwa used to sell hand-made psus in the sff community. No certifications, but not needed as they’re using much higher quality components than traditional psus and he’s made a lot of custom builds with his own psus.
SFF is great and has huge potential, but suffers so much from insufficient supplies, and casemakers and reviewers who constantly say "this SFF case is great because it is BIGGER!" PSUs are one of the biggest problems. The best solution is usually see is SFF cases with PSUs built into the case - which limits the options, but at least optimizes for the form-factor. Otherwise, we are all left either with pre-builts or self-builts in needlessly huge cases, just because components have horrible form-factors that don't fit together.
The great thing about them is also, that since they are 12-48V, they can be powered by powertoolbatteries. This way you can make your system completly off grid
I feel like handling a deenergized power supply someone else said they totally did right is like pointing a gun at yourself someone told you they definitely unloaded, and you weren't able to check.
Honestly, with how much Seasonic has been on board with your guys' ideas, as well as being an amazing company in general, I don't even mind ads for them anymore, lol. It just makes me happy my system has one, and that if something were to happen to my PSU, they'd most likely take care of me. Would love some sort of factory tour of theirs btw! Dunno if that's possible.
Nah, he'd totally do this and explode at least one capacitor in the process. Also he'd use the thin speaker wires and melt them to demonstrate why that's not a good idea.
@@Sloshy_garage "Paramedic: "The defibrillator isn't working! What can we do?" Colton: "I got ya, fam. Linus, ummmm, Dennis scratched your hardwood floor again!" Linus: "What the [bleep], Dennis?"
Particularly 'cos they got all the names of the parts in the power supply wrong. Those "diodes" on the left are MOSFETs in a half-bridge, for chopping the rectified DC into the flyback transformer. The thermal management is fine, too.
Not really, there is a great mystique around power supplies, but they really aren't "death machines". The only hazard is if you poke around them while they're plugged in, as anything powered off mains would be. The caps do not stay charged.
@@MTGeomancer Depends, if they didn't design in bleeding resistors they can hold there charge for days. I worked on a LCD TV PSU once that hadn't been pluged in for 3 days and i was quite sure that there was no more charge in the caps. But just to be sure i shorted them anyways... and they discharged with the loudest bang i have ever heared from a capacitor discharge.
@@MTGeomancer Your comment will get someone killed. Capacitors aren't magic, they can and often WILL stay charged for days. I once took a 200 V shock from a PC monitor PSU that stayed disconnected for nearly a week. Don't fuck around, because you WILL find out.
@@eDoc2020 It's not even a diode full stop. The mains input rectifier is below the output inductor, right after the common-mode choke and before the film cap (probably for a capacitive dropper to create the logic voltage rail) and input electrolytics. Those two packages on the left are MOSFETs for chopping the rectified DC into the high frequency flyback transformer. Each one has two power resistors and a small diode for an asymmetric gate drive network (Miller effect reduction) plus a larger diode for inductive flyback snubbing. The package bonded to the additional heatsink on the long side is the output diode.
HP server PSUS can be found for less than 10$ and not only use titanium 80+, but are also easily modified to output something like 12V 70A by bridging two pins with a resistor.
recently built a small home server with an itx motherboard featuring an embedded intel n100 cpu, and hooked it to a pico power module from Rgeek (aliexpress), I hooked it to a switching psu made for running LEDs; the whole thing uses under 65w with 2 hard drives on it. worked like magic, 3d printed a case for it, painted it black, put it in the same corner I have my router. It was really cheap and its pretty small. Do not use these things for a gaming pc dear god.
yes, i have an i3 7100 opnsense system. I had a silverstone 550w gold psu and swapped it for a 120w pico and 120w 12v power supply (bought from a brick and mortar store). the total system power went from 30w down to 20w, and its one less fan of noise. it would pay itself off in electrical cost in 2 years. it also takes up less space.
Funny how I also got an rgeek module (300w) with an AMD 5600g hooked up to a voltage regulator behind a car battery. The system draws 16w while idle and up to 150w under load. It's surprisingly usable for gaming at modest resolutions and framerates.
I liked that the sponsor read at the end of this one was actually a mini technical explanation rather than a sales pitch. Cool technical stuff is more interesting to me than "generic sales pitch" 😊
It would be really cool if they made a video where they actually make a power supply from electronic components. Flyback power supplies aren't even that hard to make at home.
That's the unfortunate state of the mainstream maker space. People will buy ready-made modules, stick them together, upload an Arduino/RPI routine that someone else wrote and call that "DIY".
The one advantage that I can think of is that if you have the voltage regulators separate from the 12V supply, then you could run the PC directly off its battery backup; skipping the whole step of bumping it up to mains voltage in order to run a power supply. I actually considered having 12V power in the house and running PCs off it with a central power supply. Then I realized how much amperage that would need to carry and how thick the copper needed to be, and discrete supplies started to look a lot smarter.
Yeah, what I plan on trying is setting up a small "island" of 12V using an Ecoflow battery, which would have my PC, a fridge, and a couple of other small appliances, and the rest of the house can be powered off of normal 220V AC from the Ecoflow's invertor. Best of both worlds.
@@p_serdiuk Very expensive way to have very short run time, powering all that. You'd be better off just getting an ICE generator. Plus I hope you do realize that you can't just tap into the battery without a low voltage cutoff circuit in series, unless the battery already has a sufficient BMS built in for that protection, or did you mean that the Ecoflow doesn't actually have a 12V battery and instead, this is just an alternate, buck regulated output? If that's what it is, then you aren't really saving that much in reducing efficiency, than to just let it boost to the 220VAC and then using the existing PC PSU, or just skip all that and run a laptop during an outage and only use the Ecoflow for the monitor... since adding an external monitor, keyboard and mouse, you don't lose much functionality or ergonomics.
As someone that's fully capable of building a proper PC PSU. I would never build one myself, to actually do it right'd be an absolute nightmare and buying all the bit components in the numbers used for one you'd be paying far more. Now if I use the parts I, an electronics repair man and terminal tinkerer, have on hand then I could do it cheaper. For a few dozen hours in labor that I obviously wouldn't charge myself for. Your significantly smarter than average user would more likely take 10x the price and around a year of learning and building up to it to make a DIY PSU work proper (To my admittedly strict safety and performance standards anyway). And that's probably me being generous as my time to go from no knowledge on electronics to being able to do that was around 5-7 ish years. But that's learning on an adjacent job where I sort of slowly picked things up over time and then a while of repairing PSUs and not directly trying to build them. Edit: Oh this is off the shelf modules, not components. There's a follow-up video idea ;) Components a lot of people could do but getting them from a reputable enough place presents issues. What consumers can buy there is quite random and the people selling actually decent modules don't tend to sell to consumers. Making most module purchases quite the gamble.
This is one of those areas where the product has been so incredibly hyper-optimized that there's basically no savings to be had. The budget models from reputable manufacturers are so cheap that there's hardly any money to be saved, and even those models are an order of magnitude better than anything you'd build. Even ignoring the risk of fire or electrocution, a bad power supply is likely to fry at least one component eventually. There's no point saving $20 on a PSU if you toast a $40 motherboard later. Cool project, for sure, but utterly pointless.
Not to mention an oscilloscope would be necessary for manually making one from not off the shelf pre made parts to ensure that its outputting consistent voltages and currents and probably a thermal camera ideally to make sure the components are not getting too hot. The problem with this is even if the theory behind it is fine, there will always be problems. That's the fun of electronics! Best to buy it off a company who has already done all of that for you really. Nice to know its possible still though in theory.
As an EE hard agree. Seriously, unless you think it's fun or you wanna learn then yeah, maybe. But I'd recommend about a hundred simpler and more practical projects for that. For money? Absolutely not. nononono
Maybe I'm in too deep but Idk why all the comments are making bomb jokes, it looks like he just connected an off the shelf acdc to an off the shelf picopsu. I very easily did this in a few minutes with a used server PSU a year ago
You could've got a high-power refurbished server power supply, one of the redundant ones with the edge connector, hacked it to turn on without the PSU backplane (or bought a module that emulates a backplane to enable the power out, and plugged this into the power modules. I bought a 750W server PSU refurbished with a warranty for about 29 CAD. They're dirt cheap refurbished, are high quality given they served time as a server PSU, and they're very powerful for their compact size.
9:20 That smoke in the game that appears to come out of the computer is very fitting, I almost believe they did this on purpose. I almost opened a power supply, and that was before I learned about the charged capacitors hazard. I tried to see why my computer was randomly restarting, turns out that when I plugged in the big ATX connector I didn't know it was split into two pieces
I have an intel n100 nas running in my basement. With a picipsu (which can handle an input up to 29 volts) and I bought a 20v usb-c adapter to dc plug. Connected everything to a 60 watts usb-c power supply and it is working pretty awesome. The system will never draw more than 45 watts, so plenty of headroom.
Fall 2022 I built a simple lab power supply 16v max and probably 1 or 2 Amps. It was extra credit for one of my college classes, it worked fine and I had a schematic for soldering it together. The next semester I had to design one that would take an alternating signal and produce a dc signal. Even had to build the bridge rectifier to get measurements even though we had a chip. It was low power and not reliable, my first one I still use today. I do not however want to build a pc power supply, but I could work on one after I discharged it and feel confident it wouldn’t explode,but don’t worry I won’t ever do it.
@@SirIron23 at that level it’s not hard. It took a while, we had something that gave us a general idea but no component values. But second one wasn’t going to power anything.
@@SirIron23The two best ways to learn are in the classes, which teach you how and why things work, and experiments (electronics kits and Arduino board sets are cheap) which teach you what works. It's worthwhile to get a little electronics tinkering kit to play around with. And it's perfectly safe if it runs on batteries.
@@chrisedwards3866 Even if it's on battery: you could still make a boost converter or a flyback HV with 12kV ... it's only safe if you don't go up in voltage (of couse we build a railgun in school)
I’ve build a 19KW Powersupply from 8 old supply’s from an old server. These are now used at a dyno at my workplace, to test some EV motors. I designed a PCB to hook the powersupplys to the CAN-bus, also ad a brake resistor, some 1500Amp solid state switching for shortcut protection, and made voltage selectable with some heavy duty contactors. It can switch between 12 and 96 volts. Some years ago I also made a 6Kw supply for same purpose, but their i had to parallel the supplys, to do that correctlyyou need some special circuitry to balance the load between them, that supply is still running fine in my office
Don't do this with 19KW again! You are over 11kW! You could buy a H-bridge for trains, solar power converters or motor controllers and a control board. You'll get one or two IGBT H-Bridges, a capacitor-bank, a control board and a cabinet. I like the 800 series fuses (50kA: ABB S803U-K100).
Used to dig through the IT trash at our office building and removed two HP 750W server PSU's from a broken server, works wonderfully for all sorts of 12v projects!
Fun fact: I work at one of, if not the only tech shop in North America, that does the Frankenstein mod to the backward compatible PS3 to keep em alive! We even got a dev PS3 shipped to us from Germany once!
I always find it funny how many amateurs want to mess about with making their own power supply, when you can get a high quality one from a very well-trusted brand (like Seasonic but also many many others) at basically the same price as you’re spending to scrounge around. If you don’t know what you’re doing and wanted to do it as a learning project, do yourself a favor and treat it as the expert-level task it is and get a ton of other less dangerous projects under your belt first. Zapping yourself can happen in a nanosecond, and with that level of current they can store and produce in the conversions, you’re probably meeting your maker.
I think it boils down to not fully understanding the power and danger of capacitors. We're used to things being safe if we unplug them, and to having circuit breakers on mains voltage. People don't realize that the inside of a PSU, old CRT monitors, etc, can store and deliver *more* energy than you'd get by sticking a fork in a wall outlet.
Those power modules make a whole lot more sense if you have access to 12VDC rather than having to deal with mains AC. For example, in a vehicle so you can avoid going from 12VDC to mains and back again. Another example would be if you have something like a server rack being powered by 12VDC - if I remember right, Google did/does this to make it easier to UPS the machines. The last use case I see is for running from solar power - a lot of solar arrays aim for 12-24 VDC which combined with a buck/boost convertor can give you a stable 12 VDC which is perfect for these power modules and, again, avoids the unnecessary jump to mains AC and back again.
PicoATX are usually not suitable for direct connection to a car battery. A car battery can have up to 14.4V when charging. PicoATX requires a stable 12V, which is passed directly to the output for 12V rail. Of course, there are also special versions that support different input voltages. They adjust the input voltage to a stable 12V.
@@Arcao still, converting 14.4v to stable enough 12v is relatively easy with a manufactured solution, and you could even diy it with some diodes and resistors if you don't care about efficiency, because most 12v car batteries are actually pretty stable dc sources by nature (they don't ripple and can deliver a lot of short term current with little voltage dip).
@@Arcao The bigger problem with wiring a PicoPSU (or anything like it) to a car's electrical system is cold cranking and load dumping. "12V" is anything but 12V in those conditions; it can go as low as circa 9V and as high as (short sharp spikes of) 42V within a couple of seconds -- it's a very harsh environment for anything expecting a stable voltage. You would absolutely need a transzorb and something like an LMQ62440 which can react very quickly to changes in input voltage and can shrug off the spikes when e.g. you turn off your high beams or you shift from 4th to 1st for whatever reason and your alternator goes nuts.
Guess how they are powering "home on wheels" PC's and PC's at war zones areas? I also have one PC powered by "Pico PSU" from a car battery. It's an i3-6300 with 2x4Gb and SSD. Takes 55W of power at peak. Lasts for hours if not days from a car battery.
@@sperzieb00n Converting 14.4V to 12V is really no easier than to any other moderate voltage, since you do want efficiency, due to running off a car battery which is not going to stay healthy for long if deeper discharged without the alternator/charger circuit running, and will be noisy power with an engine alternator running. Diodes and resistors? Maybe for a very low power system where you also have switching to bypass when the alternator is not supplying power, but none of that makes much sense, considering that if you were willing to suffer the efficiency loss anyway, could simply use a standard high efficiency inverter, with about 90% efficiency, and a gold PSU with about 85%, so you are losing about 25%, but you'd also be losing about that much from a lossly 14.4V to 12V with diodes and resistors, plus the additional lose of the separate 3V/5V regulation stages needed.
If you're daisy-chaining multiple power supplies into one input, diodes come in handy, especially the beefy ones that can handle a LOT of amperage. Also, this is why 12VO would be super-cool as a standard. It'd make PSUs so much more simpler with just a single high-power 12V system
Diodes also have a forward voltage drop. The best diodes for the job would be Schottky diodes, which have the lowest drop of under half a volt -- but they also have the highest reverse leakage characteristics, which would upset the feedback circuitry of a lot of power supplies which use e.g. resistor dividers or optoisolators for communicating the voltage they're putting out back to the switching controller, rather than a dedicated isolated feedback winding in the transformer.
CECHC PS3 models are also PS2 hardware backwards compatible, and are the only model in Europe that ever was. They are also expensive. CECHE onwards are the cheaper models
I mean, let's be honest, the PS3 is not only weird for not all models having PS2 backwards compatibility, but also because of the fact that Sony decided that they should go through the struggle of preventing the newest models from being able to run custom firmware. Makes earlier models a ton worth more (especially if they're backwards compatible).
Putting a thermopad straight to the metal housing is actually a better way of heat dissipation since the heat is yeeted out of the enclosure instead of heating up the air inside the unit. This is commonly used in some crazy high power dc-dc converters
Meh, not really. The housing is thin metal with worse thermal conductivity so the part you are trying to keep cool, gets hotter regardless of the heat dissipation external to the chassis. It is only really useful for passively cooled designs, with lower power density, optimized for lower cost. Didn't you think that PC PSU manufacturers would have noticed that they could do that, yet opted not to?
7:54 the reason why this PS3 is listed for $999.99 is that it has the 90nm swapped for the 40nm from some Slim models. Sony actually done this as part of the warranty repair of the backwards compatible models, though the way Computer Booter does it is a little bit different. I suggest watching Rip Felix’s videos for better understanding of this.
@@drew2626I agree with building a pc argument. Heck, you could probably build two PCs. But the ps3 is very difficult to emulate. Ps2 and ps1 games not hard to emulate at all. Also, people like preserving their hardware. I hear about people restoring older consoles all the time. And you could add an SSD to the PS3. That’s a noticeable difference in loading times and texture pop-in. Now the PS3 can’t full saturate the speed of any modern sata Ssd but it’s still a noteworthy improvement nonetheless.
You might want something like that if you plan to build your own itx case, since you can pretty much play Tetris with the components, you have greater flexibility in how you want to rearrange them to maximize space usage efficiency.
@@Gabu_ lol it's like Gandhi haha. Most misspelled name on the planet. Anyway, apparently no one got the joke, but I'm pretty sure I heard about him being a PSU engineer years back. Not for PCs, but for other stuff. I just thought it was funny that OP was calling for him to build a PSU. Too bad it didn't land.
Common slot server power supply is also a great high current 12V source. A DPS-1200 can put out 1kW. And they are made to be paralleled for more capacity.
I like this video as a thought experiment -- to show just how *not* worth it this is. I just looked and the Corsair RM750x power-supply that's in my PC right now is selling for $120 brand new at Newegg. Heck, a Seasonic Focus PX-750 is even cheaper -- $105. So an excellent, high-quality 750W PSU is just a smidge over $100? Cheap out on something else -- a less expensive GPU will still game just fine. You're not an eSports pro. You don't need 200fps. Paying for a good PSU is well worth it to have the safety and reliability (and warranty!) for something that, if it fails, can fry components and even start a fire. Never, ever cheap out on a PSU.
There are 12v server psus in the 4 digit watts for less than 30 bucks. So thats usually a good way to save a bit, as they are very good PSU's and have plent of watts if needed
4:45 i really don't like how you're waving a metal screwdriver around and when going to point to something, the camera cuts to a close up of a black spudger that could be mistaken for the screwdriver. Kind of sends mixed signals.
I built something similar for my modded backwards compatible PS3 and posted it on the LTT forums. Instead of making my own PSU, I gutted the original PS3 PSU and turned it into an RGB adapter to power a CECHA PS3 with a standard ATX PSU. There is a video on my channel with the finished PS3 but It would be cool to see LTT attempt it themselves and make it better like usual. The PS3 ended up installed in a full size PC caae, cooled by noctua fans and runs off a couple 3.5 inch HDDs.
Just go to your local computer recycling center and pick a power supply between $3 and $30. Got a cooler master 650w fully modular with 80plus gold for $30
I don't know where people find these magical computer recycling centers that sell parts for cheap, the only ones I can find just charge you to take your garbage
Thanks for re-filming the power supply close ups with linus sticking in his screw driver (AGAIN LIKE ALWAYS) unbelievable this guy, thank god he has such a team
I suspect by that point the janky psu was long dead and the pc was running on a seasonic psu with the jank purely a prop. Certainly at the end he's talking about it having died yet the computer is running and it's all still hooked together.......
One thing to look out for as well is clearanced power supplies at places like best buy. i bought my EVGA 850BQ power supply from best buy in 2016 for $26 because of clearance. ive been using it to this day, still a great power supply handles plenty of power, its quiet, and way more reliable than something like they were trying to show you in the video
I have to tip my cap, a really informative video based around a premise of building your own power supply but is actually the most detailed advert you could make for Seasonic. Well done sir, well done.
@@helloukw this is definitely not electrobooms secret channel. But I did shock myself a couple times by accident (using a taser module and triple a batteries)
LTT: Ok we need a sponsor for a power supply shenanigans video, where we ether use a under spect psu, try to destroy one or create a sketchy one by ourself Seasonic: Shut up and take my money!
Bought exactly the same AliExpress psu about a month ago, I don't trust the 20A rating but it's stable 12.00V even if I change the load. It's great at limiting the number of adapters I need since I can use it to power router, optical to ethernet converter, led strip and car radio I use as an amplifier.
Forgot to add, without radio it's basically cold to the touch even after hours of lights being on anywhere on the case, with radio it's heat up a bit but still pretty cool
I have a friend I went to high school with that always built crazy shit like this just on a much much less professional level to the point we were all sure he was going to be his own death sentence (because his only training was early 00s internet videos and articles, no hands on training) So we basically started calling him "Stat" as a nickname because we were all sure he was going to end up as just another statistic in a paper on accidental electrical deaths, happy to say he's still alive and kicking and is a certified electrician now (Incase anyone is wondering the nickname stuck and we still call him that lol).
4:29 just a point of clarification. The caps you show are not filtering caps they're bulk. Bulk capacitors help with sudden increase in load preventing voltage drops. The filtering caps will be much smaller ceramic type rather than the big aluminum electrolytic type you are showing. These caps will be in the range of 0.01-100nF.
I use these power module all the time, when I build robot. Typically robot battery are 12V or 24V. However motors can create tons of noise especially when a robot is moving more "dynamically" so typically a buck converter of some sort (12V to 12V or 24V to 12V) is used before the power module. Some of the computer module we install on robot had i7 + 3060 ish specs and we haven't seen any problem as long as the motor isn't stalling (which would draw tons of current and could easilly pull a 12V lead acad battery to as low as 5V). The computer running on robot typically run Ubuntu and have it's SSD set to read only to prevent any data loss in case of computer shutdown.
find a high current 12v regulator to add to it and it’d be great for powering a PC off a car battery or camper without using an inverter. that’s the setup in my camper, we boondock a lot but the wife works from home, so i have one of those atx modules connected to a 12v 40amp regulator connected to the camper battery (fused of course) paired with a monitor that actually used a 12v power brick and use starlink which also uses 12v. i actually did testing with it, using the same computer, monitor, wifi with the power bricks connected to the inverter was using just over 100amps from the battery, now same setup but using the atx module, uses about 28amps from the battery. however, with all that being said, a laptop would be much simpler as they make ac and dc charger for them.
This has crossed my mind actually for whitebox server builds. Would be a good way to setup redundant power. If you have several AC 12v power supplies all feeding a common 12v bus it makes it easier to setup redundant power. Ideally you would use 12v PSUs that support load sharing but you could also use big diodes to prevent one backfeeding the other. I cannot find anywhere in Canada to buy those Pico power supplies though, and I wouldn't trust Aliexpress for something like that.
I don't build my own PSUs but I do refurbish them when they are of decent quality apart from sub-par capacitor brands. Most of them fail from frying their off-brand capacitors and will work for another 15+ years by simply fitting them with higher quality caps. Both of my LG monitors failed after ~3 years. Swapped out the fried output and bootstrap caps in their PSU, they worked perfectly until I retired them ~10 years later to upgrade from CCFL to LED and TN to IPS.
I repair power supply units used in aircraft for a living, think replacing the capacitors, trace repair, etc. The units I work on provide the cockpit with 16,000 volts DC, so we have to take a ton of precautions when testing them outside the case. they get tested in a di-electric fluid to prevent arcs. Our test equipment also discharges it, and when it's hooked up we can always see how much current is flowing and the voltages across different points so we know if it's been properly discharged. all of this is also done on a copper plate that connects to ground just to make sure that the person testing it is not the easiest path to ground. Long story short, if you don't have the proper equipment and training it is not safe to open up a power supply.
I really love this type of content and hope to see more of these kinds of project! I remember we used to make a speaker from a plastic cup and a magnet. Maybe a basic black - white display with a low resolution is also possible?
This reminds me of my dad smack talking non IBM laptop power supplies. He studied electrical engineering and made a trickle charger for a car battery based off of a repurposed power supply from an old IBM thinkpad. He could only get it working with a model from IBM because when the battery approached capacity his original Dell laptop power supply would just cut off
There is one case where you should absolutely open a power supply, but still be extremely cautious! If you're picking up a retro PC, there's a type of glue that was used for a long time that was used to keep some soldered components from wiggling loose and breaking themselves off the board. When this glue was new, it was resistive and white. If it's unfortunately taken on moisture, it will turn a dark color and will become extremely conductive and, since it often made contact with other parts on the board, will cause a short/fire. Depending on how rare or unadaptable it is, you might want to just replace the power supply at this point (they're a lot better these days, especially if you're putting it into a PC and don't need the voltages missing on some power supplies these days). Otherwise, you're going to have to remove the adhesive, which should be fine but discharging the capacitors safely anyway (even though they should be flat dead if it's been unplugged for years) is good safety. Maybe Seasonic should consider making some retro power supplies?
LED power supply has regulation and is done by some version of TL494, and it has output filter inductor. You can even see it it is big. That LED power supply are generally identical to old AT power supply's except have only one output voltage.
This is not a physics/electronics channel, so this is a nitpick. The capacitor animation at 4:25 makes it seem like the capacitor turns AC into DC. It would've been nice (imo) to show that the rectifier first turns the sin wave(AC) into wobbly straight line above the 0 line and then the capacitor making it less wobbly.
Those power supplies don’t normally die. They have very good overload and thermal protection. I’ve overloaded them and gotten them so hot. You can’t touch them and they still work every time they grow down. I only killed it when I ran it on 220 V. It got hotter than the normal smell burn. It still worked fine after it cooled down, but it had a grown. I am pretty sure the transformer was toast. You could tell that I got hot enough stuff was melting.
For those familiar with circuit theory, ideal power supplies will pump infinite current into each other if connected in parallel and are mismatched even in the slightest, and realistic power supplies are limited by their internal resistance but will still be pumping lots of current if mismatched. If must be done, connect them in parallel via ballast resistors.
Haven’t watched the video yet, but this is exactly what my electrical engineering professor said to us near the end of our first semester. Turns out to be incredibly complicated
An old server PSU might be the best candidate here. They're really cheap, come with the wall socket plug already installed, they're usually platinum+ rated so really good components and with a tweak to the cooling system to make it quieter or hell, get an HP 1200W one and you might run it fanless for a let's say 400W PC. They only output 12V so they're perfect for a pico PSU setup. A really REALLY small SFF build with the PSU outside the case might be a good idea. Or inside, since most server PSUs are quite flat so they don't take much height in a case.
Connecting psus in parralel will be fine. The higher voltage one might end up doing more work at lower loads but it'll be fine. Once the load gets higher the voltages will drop and thwy will work together and both provide enough current.
I think this kind of solution is not really for making your own PSU, but for situations where you start with 12V power. Like the gamer van projects. It doesn't make sense to have an inverter make high voltage AC from a battery only to have a power supply turn it back again. Especially in permanent installations. But that wouldn't be a good video for Ecoflow or Anker to sponsor I guess.
![The Wall Song ร้องข้ามกำแพง | EP.215 | พาเวล นเรศ - พูห์ กฤติน | 17 ต.ค. 67 [1/5]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/IUzrjuf60P4/mqdefault.jpg)
i love these electroboom guest episodes where he isnt even there
He would have also corrected 4:22 which shows a filtering capacitor working with ac current! ac + capacitor = Dead capacitor
mehdi is smart enough to stay away from actually dangerous situations
I was thinking the title was lacking "With Electroboom". Seems like exactly where he should be.
@@stevenlee3661 *electrolytic (polarized) caps are the only ones that blow with ac
@@dasiro Except for that time that he nearly killed himself when his homemade Jacob's Ladder fell and he caught it.
Seasonic actually lowering a price of a component because the manufacturing got cheaper is a wild change of pace
Unprecedented
I dont even have a desktop pc and that alone makes me want to buy from Seasonic.
Who actually manufacturers seasonic power supplies, in house or rebranded other...
@@user-hs7hz1io1eseasonic are their own manufacturer.
before they moved into retail they were ODM for a few brands, and probably still are.
@@user-hs7hz1io1e Seasonic is a manufacturer, a lot of other power supply brands actually rebadge seasonic units, and back in the day that used to be their main business, it wasn't until later they actually stuck their own name on their own psus.
This video has a lot of warnings for a good reason.
For the love of god people don’t mess around with power supplies if you don’t know what you’re doing. Be safe.
Same goes for AC power. It scares me what some people do when they need to add sockets or something.
Just don't mess around with them full stop. For me if a power unit has developed a fault replace the power unit I wouldn't rely on the rest of it being OK.
No thanks unless you want to show me hard facts on how many people die a yet from power supplies.
Linus is way too careless and flippant with this topic. The way he handles components that are connected to the mains is dangerous and gives the viewer a false sense of security.
I know a guy who made an arc welder out of a microwave transformer for a school project. Teacher wasn't stoked, told him a school project isn't worth risking your life
7:30 I am always blown away at how incredibly amazing Wiki is and just the sheer amount the time and effort people put into maintaining these sites/databases. What is just a quick and easy to read table to find what information you need in 30 seconds could have been an all day research task if this didn't exist.
Absolutely. And a lot of the time, people make these for their own easy reference later on. If you'll need info months or a year later, it's more efficient to post it online and let Google help you find it (especially if you forgot that you posted exactly that info), than to take notes to a local file and try to find it later.
It is one of the remarkable and unexpected efficiencies of the internet - for those of us who don't have a perfect memory.
The minecraft wiki(not the fandoom one) is basicly the only source for game mechanics on minecraft (someof it is from WaI bugs, but most of it is minecraft.jar + mojmap/yarn/ quilt mappings or experience
These great time savers exist because People Like You make them. -poke-poke-hint-hint- :)
Therapist:how would you like to die?
me:building my own psu carelessly
IMO opening one would be more dangerous
@@TOZAbuild one doesn't work and than open it.
me replacing fan in my psu because no money
Tbh I bought a 7$ 500w atx psu second hand
lol youre probably scared to clean out a prebuilt
Tanner: So it died?
Lucas: "Yeah"
Segue to Linus: "In conclusion, does it work? YES!"
You can't fool me movie magic
The PSU is actively cooled when is inside the PlayStation and they put at full load without a fan.
Let's be fair. Any PSU will die if you push it above it's power limit.
I hate to say it but Seasonic isn't wrong.
It’s almost like they know a lot about PSU manufacturing 😂
Seasonic is wrong. They get worst option for video, not great new Meanell EPP-400-12 or lrs350-12 for 25$, but old used trash. with good brand 12v psu, this monstrosity will work fine and has gold rating.
@@gazooctell us in 5 yrs if you still have a house or charcoal pls.
@@gazooc yea also the typical pico psu is ment for 30w to 90w systems, higher powered picos use usually 24v DC to 60v DC as input. the 400w with 12v is a rare and cheap option with drawback on mass.
this person who does this script for linus need to be fired. we have in the past many videos of this kind by LTT and i bet this is every time the same person who wrote the script for that.
@@B2gboi Meanwell is more trustwothy than seasonic. they make psu's for medical systems, and seasonic is just good but just for pc parts, and noobody will buy it for MRI machine pc or something like ICU.
People who build PCs in the sff (small form factor) world go down this route very often and luckily there's some more intuitive routes. The company HDplex makes a DC-ATX converter that can support those 19-20v laptop psu's (from Dell, etc.) which makes it very streamlined. It becomes as simple as plopping in the DC-ATX converter on the MB and plugging in the laptop barrel connector externally. There's nothing exposed and it turns out extremely clean-looking.
Yeah I was expecting them to show some of those small form factor power supplies and adapters, since they're an actual option designed for this, they have used them in the past for the desk Pcs, but they're not cheap which doesn't go with the whole budget thing they were talking about in the video. Still would have made a lot of sense to mention them.
Guryhwa used to sell hand-made psus in the sff community. No certifications, but not needed as they’re using much higher quality components than traditional psus and he’s made a lot of custom builds with his own psus.
Sure, but if you want to save money rather than space and have to feed a significant discrete GPU, this isn't the way to go.
SFF is great and has huge potential, but suffers so much from insufficient supplies, and casemakers and reviewers who constantly say "this SFF case is great because it is BIGGER!" PSUs are one of the biggest problems. The best solution is usually see is SFF cases with PSUs built into the case - which limits the options, but at least optimizes for the form-factor.
Otherwise, we are all left either with pre-builts or self-builts in needlessly huge cases, just because components have horrible form-factors that don't fit together.
The great thing about them is also, that since they are 12-48V, they can be powered by powertoolbatteries.
This way you can make your system completly off grid
I feel like handling a deenergized power supply someone else said they totally did right is like pointing a gun at yourself someone told you they definitely unloaded, and you weren't able to check.
"It's loaded with blanks."
As long as its not Alec Baldwin?
Always tie your own knots
make sure there's no signs of Rust
Electroboom had taught us safety. It will hurt, but we'll live.
Honestly, with how much Seasonic has been on board with your guys' ideas, as well as being an amazing company in general, I don't even mind ads for them anymore, lol.
It just makes me happy my system has one, and that if something were to happen to my PSU, they'd most likely take care of me.
Would love some sort of factory tour of theirs btw! Dunno if that's possible.
ElectroBOOM is gonna have an aneurysm watching this video
Nah, he'd totally do this and explode at least one capacitor in the process. Also he'd use the thin speaker wires and melt them to demonstrate why that's not a good idea.
@@Steamrick I mean look at 4:22. It looks like Linus planned on blowing one up with ac current! Didn't make the cut I guess :(
**paramedic trying to defibrillate him**
“It’s like he’s immune”
@@Sloshy_garage "Paramedic: "The defibrillator isn't working! What can we do?"
Colton: "I got ya, fam. Linus, ummmm, Dennis scratched your hardwood floor again!"
Linus: "What the [bleep], Dennis?"
Particularly 'cos they got all the names of the parts in the power supply wrong. Those "diodes" on the left are MOSFETs in a half-bridge, for chopping the rectified DC into the flyback transformer. The thermal management is fine, too.
this is a good time to bring out the old LTT Addage: Do as we say, not as we do
DO NOT TRY THIS, YOU GENUINLY MIGHT DIE
Not really, there is a great mystique around power supplies, but they really aren't "death machines". The only hazard is if you poke around them while they're plugged in, as anything powered off mains would be. The caps do not stay charged.
@@MTGeomancer no they will. they can hold their charge for about 10 minutes on average. and even then i wouldn't trust it
@@robertlinke2666 No they don't. I'm an Electrical Engineer working on things like this for the past 18 years.
@@MTGeomancer Depends, if they didn't design in bleeding resistors they can hold there charge for days. I worked on a LCD TV PSU once that hadn't been pluged in for 3 days and i was quite sure that there was no more charge in the caps. But just to be sure i shorted them anyways... and they discharged with the loudest bang i have ever heared from a capacitor discharge.
@@MTGeomancer Your comment will get someone killed. Capacitors aren't magic, they can and often WILL stay charged for days. I once took a 200 V shock from a PC monitor PSU that stayed disconnected for nearly a week. Don't fuck around, because you WILL find out.
5:22 Missed opportunity for "FUUUULLL BRIDGE RECTIFIER"
Yeah but it's not a bridge rectifier. Power supplies of this type usually use a "full-wave" rectifier which is only half a bridge rectifier.
@@eDoc2020 It's not even a diode full stop. The mains input rectifier is below the output inductor, right after the common-mode choke and before the film cap (probably for a capacitive dropper to create the logic voltage rail) and input electrolytics. Those two packages on the left are MOSFETs for chopping the rectified DC into the high frequency flyback transformer. Each one has two power resistors and a small diode for an asymmetric gate drive network (Miller effect reduction) plus a larger diode for inductive flyback snubbing. The package bonded to the additional heatsink on the long side is the output diode.
HP server PSUS can be found for less than 10$ and not only use titanium 80+, but are also easily modified to output something like 12V 70A by bridging two pins with a resistor.
Bomb has been planted
Roger that
I fear no man
One palace, one jungle.
9:07
"Be careful when it's turned on"
*touches it with bare hand*
recently built a small home server with an itx motherboard featuring an embedded intel n100 cpu, and hooked it to a pico power module from Rgeek (aliexpress), I hooked it to a switching psu made for running LEDs; the whole thing uses under 65w with 2 hard drives on it. worked like magic, 3d printed a case for it, painted it black, put it in the same corner I have my router. It was really cheap and its pretty small. Do not use these things for a gaming pc dear god.
Thats my plan, I was actually looking at one of these things last night when I was planning my new server.
@@instanoodlesI recommend checking out the meanwell LOP series, their ripple is within ATX spec
Done the same using h310 i+ modded mobile 8th gen low power CPU from AliExpress with 4hds for my nas
yes, i have an i3 7100 opnsense system. I had a silverstone 550w gold psu and swapped it for a 120w pico and 120w 12v power supply (bought from a brick and mortar store).
the total system power went from 30w down to 20w, and its one less fan of noise. it would pay itself off in electrical cost in 2 years. it also takes up less space.
Funny how I also got an rgeek module (300w) with an AMD 5600g hooked up to a voltage regulator behind a car battery.
The system draws 16w while idle and up to 150w under load.
It's surprisingly usable for gaming at modest resolutions and framerates.
I liked that the sponsor read at the end of this one was actually a mini technical explanation rather than a sales pitch. Cool technical stuff is more interesting to me than "generic sales pitch" 😊
I mean, some build bombs, right?
Gigabyte Moment
5:05 I did enjoy that the mini screw driver all the sudden becomes a plastic spudger in the zoom in 😂 great video, very informative 👍
its not just once, it keeps going for a while lmao - he still has it at 5:16
him: i built my own PSU
reality: i repurposed someone else's ready made PSU
It would be really cool if they made a video where they actually make a power supply from electronic components. Flyback power supplies aren't even that hard to make at home.
I came here to say the same thing. The title is quite misleading. It should have been "Can you power a PC with non-PC psus?".
That's the unfortunate state of the mainstream maker space. People will buy ready-made modules, stick them together, upload an Arduino/RPI routine that someone else wrote and call that "DIY".
@@ПётрСемерич Yeah I thought they were gonna build a flyback or forward converter SMPS.
@@ПётрСемерич Half bridge is also easy to make.
The one advantage that I can think of is that if you have the voltage regulators separate from the 12V supply, then you could run the PC directly off its battery backup; skipping the whole step of bumping it up to mains voltage in order to run a power supply. I actually considered having 12V power in the house and running PCs off it with a central power supply. Then I realized how much amperage that would need to carry and how thick the copper needed to be, and discrete supplies started to look a lot smarter.
Yeah, what I plan on trying is setting up a small "island" of 12V using an Ecoflow battery, which would have my PC, a fridge, and a couple of other small appliances, and the rest of the house can be powered off of normal 220V AC from the Ecoflow's invertor. Best of both worlds.
@@p_serdiuk Very expensive way to have very short run time, powering all that. You'd be better off just getting an ICE generator. Plus I hope you do realize that you can't just tap into the battery without a low voltage cutoff circuit in series, unless the battery already has a sufficient BMS built in for that protection, or did you mean that the Ecoflow doesn't actually have a 12V battery and instead, this is just an alternate, buck regulated output? If that's what it is, then you aren't really saving that much in reducing efficiency, than to just let it boost to the 220VAC and then using the existing PC PSU, or just skip all that and run a laptop during an outage and only use the Ecoflow for the monitor... since adding an external monitor, keyboard and mouse, you don't lose much functionality or ergonomics.
As someone that's fully capable of building a proper PC PSU. I would never build one myself, to actually do it right'd be an absolute nightmare and buying all the bit components in the numbers used for one you'd be paying far more. Now if I use the parts I, an electronics repair man and terminal tinkerer, have on hand then I could do it cheaper. For a few dozen hours in labor that I obviously wouldn't charge myself for. Your significantly smarter than average user would more likely take 10x the price and around a year of learning and building up to it to make a DIY PSU work proper (To my admittedly strict safety and performance standards anyway). And that's probably me being generous as my time to go from no knowledge on electronics to being able to do that was around 5-7 ish years. But that's learning on an adjacent job where I sort of slowly picked things up over time and then a while of repairing PSUs and not directly trying to build them.
Edit: Oh this is off the shelf modules, not components. There's a follow-up video idea ;) Components a lot of people could do but getting them from a reputable enough place presents issues. What consumers can buy there is quite random and the people selling actually decent modules don't tend to sell to consumers. Making most module purchases quite the gamble.
This is one of those areas where the product has been so incredibly hyper-optimized that there's basically no savings to be had. The budget models from reputable manufacturers are so cheap that there's hardly any money to be saved, and even those models are an order of magnitude better than anything you'd build. Even ignoring the risk of fire or electrocution, a bad power supply is likely to fry at least one component eventually. There's no point saving $20 on a PSU if you toast a $40 motherboard later.
Cool project, for sure, but utterly pointless.
Not to mention an oscilloscope would be necessary for manually making one from not off the shelf pre made parts to ensure that its outputting consistent voltages and currents and probably a thermal camera ideally to make sure the components are not getting too hot. The problem with this is even if the theory behind it is fine, there will always be problems. That's the fun of electronics! Best to buy it off a company who has already done all of that for you really. Nice to know its possible still though in theory.
As an EE hard agree. Seriously, unless you think it's fun or you wanna learn then yeah, maybe. But I'd recommend about a hundred simpler and more practical projects for that. For money? Absolutely not. nononono
Maybe I'm in too deep but Idk why all the comments are making bomb jokes, it looks like he just connected an off the shelf acdc to an off the shelf picopsu. I very easily did this in a few minutes with a used server PSU a year ago
Guryhwa is an example for what you said you don't want to bother with. Sourcing and assembling those components must have been a pain.
You could've got a high-power refurbished server power supply, one of the redundant ones with the edge connector, hacked it to turn on without the PSU backplane (or bought a module that emulates a backplane to enable the power out, and plugged this into the power modules. I bought a 750W server PSU refurbished with a warranty for about 29 CAD. They're dirt cheap refurbished, are high quality given they served time as a server PSU, and they're very powerful for their compact size.
Now this is the unhinged content I look forward too
9:20 That smoke in the game that appears to come out of the computer is very fitting, I almost believe they did this on purpose.
I almost opened a power supply, and that was before I learned about the charged capacitors hazard. I tried to see why my computer was randomly restarting, turns out that when I plugged in the big ATX connector I didn't know it was split into two pieces
The title of this video made the video before I even opened it.
I opened it because Linus was on the left side of the thumbnail
But if you didn't open it , would the video really be made?
@@SaiakuNaSenshuschrodingers cat
damn tik tok broke people.
@@itchiegames building your own power supply breaks people too
I have an intel n100 nas running in my basement. With a picipsu (which can handle an input up to 29 volts) and I bought a 20v usb-c adapter to dc plug. Connected everything to a 60 watts usb-c power supply and it is working pretty awesome. The system will never draw more than 45 watts, so plenty of headroom.
Searching for ElectroBOOM's comment...
I was half expecting a random ElectroBOOM pop up in the video itself. 😅
0:12 I was hoping Alex would be the voice of "Safety". Irony at its finest
Fall 2022 I built a simple lab power supply 16v max and probably 1 or 2 Amps. It was extra credit for one of my college classes, it worked fine and I had a schematic for soldering it together. The next semester I had to design one that would take an alternating signal and produce a dc signal. Even had to build the bridge rectifier to get measurements even though we had a chip. It was low power and not reliable, my first one I still use today. I do not however want to build a pc power supply, but I could work on one after I discharged it and feel confident it wouldn’t explode,but don’t worry I won’t ever do it.
As a hs student about to go into college for engineering im terrified I don’t even know where I would begin to design something like that
@@SirIron23 at that level it’s not hard. It took a while, we had something that gave us a general idea but no component values. But second one wasn’t going to power anything.
@@SirIron23The two best ways to learn are in the classes, which teach you how and why things work, and experiments (electronics kits and Arduino board sets are cheap) which teach you what works.
It's worthwhile to get a little electronics tinkering kit to play around with. And it's perfectly safe if it runs on batteries.
@@chrisedwards3866
Even if it's on battery: you could still make a boost converter or a flyback HV with 12kV ... it's only safe if you don't go up in voltage (of couse we build a railgun in school)
I’ve build a 19KW Powersupply from 8 old supply’s from an old server.
These are now used at a dyno at my workplace, to test some EV motors. I designed a PCB to hook the powersupplys to the CAN-bus, also ad a brake resistor, some 1500Amp solid state switching for shortcut protection, and made voltage selectable with some heavy duty contactors.
It can switch between 12 and 96 volts.
Some years ago I also made a 6Kw supply for same purpose, but their i had to parallel the supplys, to do that correctlyyou need some special circuitry to balance the load between them, that supply is still running fine in my office
that is seriously impressive
Don't do this with 19KW again! You are over 11kW! You could buy a H-bridge for trains, solar power converters or motor controllers and a control board.
You'll get one or two IGBT H-Bridges, a capacitor-bank, a control board and a cabinet. I like the 800 series fuses (50kA: ABB S803U-K100).
Used to dig through the IT trash at our office building and removed two HP 750W server PSU's from a broken server, works wonderfully for all sorts of 12v projects!
Fun fact: I work at one of, if not the only tech shop in North America, that does the Frankenstein mod to the backward compatible PS3 to keep em alive! We even got a dev PS3 shipped to us from Germany once!
I always find it funny how many amateurs want to mess about with making their own power supply, when you can get a high quality one from a very well-trusted brand (like Seasonic but also many many others) at basically the same price as you’re spending to scrounge around.
If you don’t know what you’re doing and wanted to do it as a learning project, do yourself a favor and treat it as the expert-level task it is and get a ton of other less dangerous projects under your belt first. Zapping yourself can happen in a nanosecond, and with that level of current they can store and produce in the conversions, you’re probably meeting your maker.
I think it boils down to not fully understanding the power and danger of capacitors. We're used to things being safe if we unplug them, and to having circuit breakers on mains voltage. People don't realize that the inside of a PSU, old CRT monitors, etc, can store and deliver *more* energy than you'd get by sticking a fork in a wall outlet.
I have never once seen someone try and make their own power supply. What are you talking about?
@@alexdavis9324must be a new stupid trend.
@@alexdavis9324 Clearly something outside the scope of your personal experience 🤷🏻♂️
@@alexdavis9324 I've never seen an apricot, doesn't mean they don't exist. You're not the main character in this planet.
Used to use those pico power supplies back when building car PCs was a fun passtime about 15 years ago
Those power modules make a whole lot more sense if you have access to 12VDC rather than having to deal with mains AC. For example, in a vehicle so you can avoid going from 12VDC to mains and back again. Another example would be if you have something like a server rack being powered by 12VDC - if I remember right, Google did/does this to make it easier to UPS the machines. The last use case I see is for running from solar power - a lot of solar arrays aim for 12-24 VDC which combined with a buck/boost convertor can give you a stable 12 VDC which is perfect for these power modules and, again, avoids the unnecessary jump to mains AC and back again.
PicoATX are usually not suitable for direct connection to a car battery. A car battery can have up to 14.4V when charging. PicoATX requires a stable 12V, which is passed directly to the output for 12V rail. Of course, there are also special versions that support different input voltages. They adjust the input voltage to a stable 12V.
@@Arcao still, converting 14.4v to stable enough 12v is relatively easy with a manufactured solution, and you could even diy it with some diodes and resistors if you don't care about efficiency, because most 12v car batteries are actually pretty stable dc sources by nature (they don't ripple and can deliver a lot of short term current with little voltage dip).
@@Arcao The bigger problem with wiring a PicoPSU (or anything like it) to a car's electrical system is cold cranking and load dumping. "12V" is anything but 12V in those conditions; it can go as low as circa 9V and as high as (short sharp spikes of) 42V within a couple of seconds -- it's a very harsh environment for anything expecting a stable voltage. You would absolutely need a transzorb and something like an LMQ62440 which can react very quickly to changes in input voltage and can shrug off the spikes when e.g. you turn off your high beams or you shift from 4th to 1st for whatever reason and your alternator goes nuts.
Guess how they are powering "home on wheels" PC's and PC's at war zones areas?
I also have one PC powered by "Pico PSU" from a car battery. It's an i3-6300 with 2x4Gb and SSD. Takes 55W of power at peak. Lasts for hours if not days from a car battery.
@@sperzieb00n Converting 14.4V to 12V is really no easier than to any other moderate voltage, since you do want efficiency, due to running off a car battery which is not going to stay healthy for long if deeper discharged without the alternator/charger circuit running, and will be noisy power with an engine alternator running. Diodes and resistors? Maybe for a very low power system where you also have switching to bypass when the alternator is not supplying power, but none of that makes much sense, considering that if you were willing to suffer the efficiency loss anyway, could simply use a standard high efficiency inverter, with about 90% efficiency, and a gold PSU with about 85%, so you are losing about 25%, but you'd also be losing about that much from a lossly 14.4V to 12V with diodes and resistors, plus the additional lose of the separate 3V/5V regulation stages needed.
If you're daisy-chaining multiple power supplies into one input, diodes come in handy, especially the beefy ones that can handle a LOT of amperage.
Also, this is why 12VO would be super-cool as a standard. It'd make PSUs so much more simpler with just a single high-power 12V system
Diodes also have a forward voltage drop. The best diodes for the job would be Schottky diodes, which have the lowest drop of under half a volt -- but they also have the highest reverse leakage characteristics, which would upset the feedback circuitry of a lot of power supplies which use e.g. resistor dividers or optoisolators for communicating the voltage they're putting out back to the switching controller, rather than a dedicated isolated feedback winding in the transformer.
CECHC PS3 models are also PS2 hardware backwards compatible, and are the only model in Europe that ever was. They are also expensive.
CECHE onwards are the cheaper models
I mean, let's be honest, the PS3 is not only weird for not all models having PS2 backwards compatibility, but also because of the fact that Sony decided that they should go through the struggle of preventing the newest models from being able to run custom firmware.
Makes earlier models a ton worth more (especially if they're backwards compatible).
Putting a thermopad straight to the metal housing is actually a better way of heat dissipation since the heat is yeeted out of the enclosure instead of heating up the air inside the unit. This is commonly used in some crazy high power dc-dc converters
also it is way cheaper
Meh, not really. The housing is thin metal with worse thermal conductivity so the part you are trying to keep cool, gets hotter regardless of the heat dissipation external to the chassis. It is only really useful for passively cooled designs, with lower power density, optimized for lower cost. Didn't you think that PC PSU manufacturers would have noticed that they could do that, yet opted not to?
The audio is super trippy in this one
Thought it was just me, its really bright and sibilant
7:54 the reason why this PS3 is listed for $999.99 is that it has the 90nm swapped for the 40nm from some Slim models. Sony actually done this as part of the warranty repair of the backwards compatible models, though the way Computer Booter does it is a little bit different. I suggest watching Rip Felix’s videos for better understanding of this.
@@drew2626 Well you gotta consider what’s been done to it as well. Plus it’s backwards compatible.
@@drew2626I agree with building a pc argument. Heck, you could probably build two PCs. But the ps3 is very difficult to emulate. Ps2 and ps1 games not hard to emulate at all. Also, people like preserving their hardware. I hear about people restoring older consoles all the time. And you could add an SSD to the PS3. That’s a noticeable difference in loading times and texture pop-in. Now the PS3 can’t full saturate the speed of any modern sata Ssd but it’s still a noteworthy improvement nonetheless.
You might want something like that if you plan to build your own itx case, since you can pretty much play Tetris with the components, you have greater flexibility in how you want to rearrange them to maximize space usage efficiency.
I had shivers running down my spine at the "powering on" stage, lol. That looked SKETCH.
I wanna see Medhi (elctroboom) create a power supply from scratch now LOL
Isn't that his day job?
@@sntslilhlpr6601I mean he is an electrical engineer. Idk if he has a job outside of TH-cam nowadays
His name is Mehdi. When will people learn? lol
@@Gabu_oh no I mistyped his name whatever will happen to little old me??? Is the unibrow gonna smite me? Go away
@@Gabu_ lol it's like Gandhi haha. Most misspelled name on the planet.
Anyway, apparently no one got the joke, but I'm pretty sure I heard about him being a PSU engineer years back. Not for PCs, but for other stuff. I just thought it was funny that OP was calling for him to build a PSU. Too bad it didn't land.
Common slot server power supply is also a great high current 12V source.
A DPS-1200 can put out 1kW. And they are made to be paralleled for more capacity.
I like this video as a thought experiment -- to show just how *not* worth it this is.
I just looked and the Corsair RM750x power-supply that's in my PC right now is selling for $120 brand new at Newegg. Heck, a Seasonic Focus PX-750 is even cheaper -- $105. So an excellent, high-quality 750W PSU is just a smidge over $100? Cheap out on something else -- a less expensive GPU will still game just fine. You're not an eSports pro. You don't need 200fps. Paying for a good PSU is well worth it to have the safety and reliability (and warranty!) for something that, if it fails, can fry components and even start a fire. Never, ever cheap out on a PSU.
There are 12v server psus in the 4 digit watts for less than 30 bucks. So thats usually a good way to save a bit, as they are very good PSU's and have plent of watts if needed
4:45
i really don't like how you're waving a metal screwdriver around and when going to point to something, the camera cuts to a close up of a black spudger that could be mistaken for the screwdriver. Kind of sends mixed signals.
I built something similar for my modded backwards compatible PS3 and posted it on the LTT forums. Instead of making my own PSU, I gutted the original PS3 PSU and turned it into an RGB adapter to power a CECHA PS3 with a standard ATX PSU. There is a video on my channel with the finished PS3 but It would be cool to see LTT attempt it themselves and make it better like usual. The PS3 ended up installed in a full size PC caae, cooled by noctua fans and runs off a couple 3.5 inch HDDs.
Just go to your local computer recycling center and pick a power supply between $3 and $30. Got a cooler master 650w fully modular with 80plus gold for $30
As long as it isn't a Corsair, it is probably good.
I don't know where people find these magical computer recycling centers that sell parts for cheap, the only ones I can find just charge you to take your garbage
Seasonic will have the comment moderation team delete this forbidden knowledge
@@pedro4205 Guessing older Corsair units aren't good? Considering their fully modular PSU are rated high on the tier list.
@@think-draw-animate6589 canada & the us, i don't think these are a european construct
5:30 those are not the rectifiers, but the n fets and diode for the PFC circuit, the diode is a 4 leg bridge in a sigle package behind it.
Whoever came up with the eels caption in the intro is a genius 😄
Thanks for re-filming the power supply close ups with linus sticking in his screw driver (AGAIN LIKE ALWAYS) unbelievable this guy, thank god he has such a team
Linus touching the ungrounded medal case of the ps3 psu (while running?) is horrifying to me.
I suspect by that point the janky psu was long dead and the pc was running on a seasonic psu with the jank purely a prop. Certainly at the end he's talking about it having died yet the computer is running and it's all still hooked together.......
One thing to look out for as well is clearanced power supplies at places like best buy. i bought my EVGA 850BQ power supply from best buy in 2016 for $26 because of clearance. ive been using it to this day, still a great power supply handles plenty of power, its quiet, and way more reliable than something like they were trying to show you in the video
nuh-uh, can't stop me
The comparison to sponsored models and detailed explanations provide a clear insight into the real value versus expectations of such an endeavor.
Sounds shocking to build your own power supply ;)
Booo!
wow adding VIAs to the groundplane enhances thermal dissipation. truly revolutionary.
I got a park fire alert, Linus 😂
I have to tip my cap, a really informative video based around a premise of building your own power supply but is actually the most detailed advert you could make for Seasonic. Well done sir, well done.
You won't stop me. Even if it is dangerous, i will do it.
ElectroBOOM is that you?
@@helloukw this is definitely not electrobooms secret channel. But I did shock myself a couple times by accident (using a taser module and triple a batteries)
Thats the spirit. Electronics arent as dangerous as many people make it seem. Like its definitely dangerous, but like.. not thaaat dangerous..
Good, Darwin award incoming.
@@TheCustomFHDme who got third degree burn in my finger because one of my arduino capacitor exploded😅
All my recent power supplies are seasonic. I use one also in my 4U server nas and it's perfect. No problems, just performance.
LTT: Ok we need a sponsor for a power supply shenanigans video, where we ether use a under spect psu, try to destroy one or create a sketchy one by ourself
Seasonic: Shut up and take my money!
Bought exactly the same AliExpress psu about a month ago, I don't trust the 20A rating but it's stable 12.00V even if I change the load. It's great at limiting the number of adapters I need since I can use it to power router, optical to ethernet converter, led strip and car radio I use as an amplifier.
Forgot to add, without radio it's basically cold to the touch even after hours of lights being on anywhere on the case, with radio it's heat up a bit but still pretty cool
Also also sucks that you didn't test the AliExpress one was intended how much can you push it before breaking
What happened to the audio?
Looks like bass is high to the moon
came to write the same .
I have a friend I went to high school with that always built crazy shit like this just on a much much less professional level to the point we were all sure he was going to be his own death sentence (because his only training was early 00s internet videos and articles, no hands on training) So we basically started calling him "Stat" as a nickname because we were all sure he was going to end up as just another statistic in a paper on accidental electrical deaths, happy to say he's still alive and kicking and is a certified electrician now (Incase anyone is wondering the nickname stuck and we still call him that lol).
Linus saying: capacitors for smoothing.
Linux showing: diodes
Those are capacitors. Tantalum or aluminium SMT capacitors can have black plastic package similar to diodes.
4:29 just a point of clarification. The caps you show are not filtering caps they're bulk. Bulk capacitors help with sudden increase in load preventing voltage drops. The filtering caps will be much smaller ceramic type rather than the big aluminum electrolytic type you are showing. These caps will be in the range of 0.01-100nF.
1:54 Nothing inspires confidence like sloppy craftsmanship like a _very_ crookedly-placed inductor. 😒
I use these power module all the time, when I build robot. Typically robot battery are 12V or 24V. However motors can create tons of noise especially when a robot is moving more "dynamically" so typically a buck converter of some sort (12V to 12V or 24V to 12V) is used before the power module. Some of the computer module we install on robot had i7 + 3060 ish specs and we haven't seen any problem as long as the motor isn't stalling (which would draw tons of current and could easilly pull a 12V lead acad battery to as low as 5V). The computer running on robot typically run Ubuntu and have it's SSD set to read only to prevent any data loss in case of computer shutdown.
🥇
find a high current 12v regulator to add to it and it’d be great for powering a PC off a car battery or camper without using an inverter.
that’s the setup in my camper, we boondock a lot but the wife works from home, so i have one of those atx modules connected to a 12v 40amp regulator connected to the camper battery (fused of course) paired with a monitor that actually used a 12v power brick and use starlink which also uses 12v.
i actually did testing with it, using the same computer, monitor, wifi with the power bricks connected to the inverter was using just over 100amps from the battery, now same setup but using the atx module, uses about 28amps from the battery.
however, with all that being said, a laptop would be much simpler as they make ac and dc charger for them.
This has crossed my mind actually for whitebox server builds. Would be a good way to setup redundant power. If you have several AC 12v power supplies all feeding a common 12v bus it makes it easier to setup redundant power. Ideally you would use 12v PSUs that support load sharing but you could also use big diodes to prevent one backfeeding the other. I cannot find anywhere in Canada to buy those Pico power supplies though, and I wouldn't trust Aliexpress for something like that.
You're ignoring the fact it's immortal. At 10:16 it's already dead but it's still powering the computer! ZombiePSU!
I don't build my own PSUs but I do refurbish them when they are of decent quality apart from sub-par capacitor brands. Most of them fail from frying their off-brand capacitors and will work for another 15+ years by simply fitting them with higher quality caps. Both of my LG monitors failed after ~3 years. Swapped out the fried output and bootstrap caps in their PSU, they worked perfectly until I retired them ~10 years later to upgrade from CCFL to LED and TN to IPS.
I repair power supply units used in aircraft for a living, think replacing the capacitors, trace repair, etc. The units I work on provide the cockpit with 16,000 volts DC, so we have to take a ton of precautions when testing them outside the case. they get tested in a di-electric fluid to prevent arcs. Our test equipment also discharges it, and when it's hooked up we can always see how much current is flowing and the voltages across different points so we know if it's been properly discharged. all of this is also done on a copper plate that connects to ground just to make sure that the person testing it is not the easiest path to ground. Long story short, if you don't have the proper equipment and training it is not safe to open up a power supply.
I really love this type of content and hope to see more of these kinds of project! I remember we used to make a speaker from a plastic cup and a magnet. Maybe a basic black - white display with a low resolution is also possible?
This reminds me of my dad smack talking non IBM laptop power supplies. He studied electrical engineering and made a trickle charger for a car battery based off of a repurposed power supply from an old IBM thinkpad. He could only get it working with a model from IBM because when the battery approached capacity his original Dell laptop power supply would just cut off
There is one case where you should absolutely open a power supply, but still be extremely cautious! If you're picking up a retro PC, there's a type of glue that was used for a long time that was used to keep some soldered components from wiggling loose and breaking themselves off the board. When this glue was new, it was resistive and white. If it's unfortunately taken on moisture, it will turn a dark color and will become extremely conductive and, since it often made contact with other parts on the board, will cause a short/fire. Depending on how rare or unadaptable it is, you might want to just replace the power supply at this point (they're a lot better these days, especially if you're putting it into a PC and don't need the voltages missing on some power supplies these days). Otherwise, you're going to have to remove the adhesive, which should be fine but discharging the capacitors safely anyway (even though they should be flat dead if it's been unplugged for years) is good safety. Maybe Seasonic should consider making some retro power supplies?
LED power supply has regulation and is done by some version of TL494, and it has output filter inductor. You can even see it it is big. That LED power supply are generally identical to old AT power supply's except have only one output voltage.
for the single Voltage 250W Psu no further cooling of Components, the VRM is mostly intrgrated in the primary switching unit.
My buddy had a seasonic. The fan died at like 4 years old. Just threw a new fan in, soldered the wire, heat shrink. good as new.
This is not a physics/electronics channel, so this is a nitpick. The capacitor animation at 4:25 makes it seem like the capacitor turns AC into DC. It would've been nice (imo) to show that the rectifier first turns the sin wave(AC) into wobbly straight line above the 0 line and then the capacitor making it less wobbly.
i like the angle videos that spotlight the mfr more while being fun. I also enjoy the stupid silly stuff so, grats.
0:08 Anybody else's heart skip a beat when Tynan comes on screen?
Those power supplies don’t normally die. They have very good overload and thermal protection. I’ve overloaded them and gotten them so hot. You can’t touch them and they still work every time they grow down. I only killed it when I ran it on 220 V. It got hotter than the normal smell burn. It still worked fine after it cooled down, but it had a grown. I am pretty sure the transformer was toast. You could tell that I got hot enough stuff was melting.
I love how confident Seysonic is in their products
I wish there were more serious in depth videos from LTT such as this
For those familiar with circuit theory, ideal power supplies will pump infinite current into each other if connected in parallel and are mismatched even in the slightest, and realistic power supplies are limited by their internal resistance but will still be pumping lots of current if mismatched. If must be done, connect them in parallel via ballast resistors.
Haven’t watched the video yet, but this is exactly what my electrical engineering professor said to us near the end of our first semester. Turns out to be incredibly complicated
That explains why the seasonic focus i bought to replace my thermaltake unit was so massively discounted. Out with the old in with the new
I love seasonic been using it for 4 yrs in rough (unstable electricity) condition with no problem 🤗❤❤
An old server PSU might be the best candidate here. They're really cheap, come with the wall socket plug already installed, they're usually platinum+ rated so really good components and with a tweak to the cooling system to make it quieter or hell, get an HP 1200W one and you might run it fanless for a let's say 400W PC.
They only output 12V so they're perfect for a pico PSU setup. A really REALLY small SFF build with the PSU outside the case might be a good idea. Or inside, since most server PSUs are quite flat so they don't take much height in a case.
PicoPSU's can run on 20V sometimes. I have one powering my home server via a USB-C PD GaN plug. Whole PC pulls less than 20W idle and 65W peak.
Connecting psus in parralel will be fine. The higher voltage one might end up doing more work at lower loads but it'll be fine. Once the load gets higher the voltages will drop and thwy will work together and both provide enough current.
Linus the magician plastic to metal screwdiver when zoomed
I think this kind of solution is not really for making your own PSU, but for situations where you start with 12V power. Like the gamer van projects. It doesn't make sense to have an inverter make high voltage AC from a battery only to have a power supply turn it back again. Especially in permanent installations. But that wouldn't be a good video for Ecoflow or Anker to sponsor I guess.
Looking for dead units to salvage power supplies from instead of looking for the power supply itself might be the best idea I've heard on this channel