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Last Tuesday was my best repair day in months, fixed 4 dead power supplies in a row before noon
Two were just blown caps on a HP desktop and a Dell monitor, but the other two had bad solder joints on the transformer pins that I almost missed, has anyone else noticed more failures around the transformer area lately?
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piperwhite5mo ago
I've replaced at least 6 transformer pins this year alone.
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rodriguez.diana5mo ago
Used to think transformer failures were just cheap junk from the 90s, but lately I've seen it more in quality stuff too. Had a high-end Asus PSU where the pins looked perfect under a magnifier, but the scope showed hairline cracks. My method changed after missing one last year that caused intermittent shutdowns for two months. Now I reflow every transformer pin on anything over 5 years old automatically. Saved me a ton of returns.
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logan7055mo ago
Damn, that hits close to home. I had a similar situation with a Corsair unit last fall. Looked totally fine, multimeter showed steady voltage, but it was crashing under load every couple weeks. Finally put it on a scope and found those same hairline cracks you're talking about.
I felt like an idiot for not catching it sooner. Now I just hit every transformer joint on anything that's not brand new. It's annoying extra work but beats dealing with pissed off customers coming back two months later.
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