Q950 psu in smoke.

[crazyben]

I recently acquired the q950 and tried turning it on for the first time. It produced a chime and then smoke started coming out of PSU. I’ve recapped other model PSU, but not the Q950. I haven’t had the chance to open it up yet to determine what caused the issue. Based on your experience, is it worth attempting to fix the PSU, or should I opt for a modern replacement?

 

[shirsch]

Could well have been a RIFA line cap. If that's the case, it's worth diving in.

 

[crazyben]

That was my initial suspicion too. But I was not sure they were still using RIFA in q950. And it doesn’t help that you have to completely open the q950 to take out the tank psu lol.

 

[Byrd]

The Quadra PSU is pretty robust, crack it open and have a look. If never opened it will probably be caked with dust. Suspect the issue won't be leaking caps but another component like a voltage regulator.

I don't think they used a paper style RIFA cap was more polypropolene by thie stage.

 

[crazyben]

Sounds good. I will follow up with pictures once I open it up.

 

[imactheknife]

Sounds good. I will follow up with pictures once I open it up.

i just acquired a q950 and will have to recap the psu. Heard it can be a pain with proper caps etc

 

[Renegade]

i just acquired a q950 and will have to recap the psu. Heard it can be a pain with proper caps etc

Some have chosen to convert to ATX. Jmacz posted about this last week.
See here.

 

[jmacz]

Some have chosen to convert to ATX. Jmacz posted about this last week.
See here.

Indeed I did. Found a PSU putting out 30A on 5V so went with a conversion and it works great.

My stock PSU had power on the primary side but was completely dead on the secondary side. I think the transformer died. Rather than debugging, I saw a Corsair HX1200 for sale used at $50US so I went for it. Cheaper than caps + transformer + time.

 

[cheesestraws]

The main advantage of replacing the innards is that you basically only have to work on the low voltage side, and the likelihood of creating fire or shock risks is much, much lower.