A Look Inside

Before reading this page we strongly suggest to take a look at this article, which will help you understand the internal components of a PSU much better.


The first thing we noticed was that the main PCB is very small compared to the case. It could easily fit into a much smaller one. The second was that the PSU utilizes an LLC resonant converter in order to achieve Platinum efficiency. If you take a good look at the secondary side you will see that there are no toroidal chokes there; this is a good indication for LLC resonant topology, although sometimes even if LLC topology is used a toroidal choke may be present for filtering purposes.


Strangely enough the AC receptacle does not hold any transient filtering components. However on the main PCB we find almost all necessary parts, two coils, four Y and three X caps. Unfortunately Super Flower did not add an MOV!


The bridge rectifier, a U30K80R, is cooled by the primary heatsink. In the APFC one mosfet, an IPW50R140CP and a boost diode are used. The APFC capacitor is provided by Nippon Chemi-Con (105°C, 560 μF, 400 V, KMQ). The PFC controller (NCP1653A) is housed on a vertical daughter-board next to the resonant tank. Finally the standby PWM controller is an ICE3B2565.


In the secondary side synchronous design is used of course and +12V is generated by four IPP041N04N mosfets. Afterwards the minor rails are generated by +12V through two DC-DC voltage regulation modules. Several polymer capacitors and a few electrolytics are used to filter the DC outputs. All are provided by Nippon Chemi-Con.


The LLC resonant controller is the undocumented SF29601 which also does housekeeping since it handles all PSU protections. It is housed on a vertical daughter board in the secondary side. In this board we also found an LM324 quad operation amplifier. Finally we noticed that the PCB supports up to five +12V rails, but in this case all are connected together so the unit actually has a single +12V rail.


On the modular PCB there are some more Nippon electrolytic capacitory for some additional ripple filtering.


Soldering quality, on the main and modular PCBs, is quite good although we have seen better.


The cooling fan does not have any identification on it.