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 unit's OEM is SuperFlower, a company with very strong Gold and Platinum platforms. In fact SuperFlower is the OEM who brought the first Platinum PSU to the market, which reveals much about their R&D and design/implementation capabilities. In HALE90 850W an LLC resonant converter is used to decrease switching losses and boost efficiency at Gold levels.


Behind the AC receptacle there is a small PCB holding some of the transient filter parts. One CM choke along with one X and two Y caps are soldered there. The transient filter is located on the main PCB with one CM choke, one X and a pair of Y caps. Unfortunatelly there is no MOV present although there is a void place for its installation. That's a shame! In the last of the photos above you can see also the lonely bridge rectifier, which is sandwiched among two heatsinks.


In the APFC two IPW60R125CP mosfets along with a boost diode shape the current waveform. The two parallel hold up caps are provided by Nippon Chemi-Con (390μF each or 780μF combined, 400V, 105°C, KMQ series). Between the PFC choke and the hold up caps there is a thermistor for protection against large inrush currents and right in front of it resides an electromangetic relay which bypasses it once the PSU starts. So there is a small efficiency gain and on top of that the thermistor cools down rapidly and is ready to provide protection again once needed. The PFC controller is an NCP1653A and is housed on a vertical PCB in the primary side, right next to the PFC choke. The standby PWM controller is soldered directly on the main PCB and its model number is ICE 3B2565.


As main switches two IPW60R125CP are used.


In the secondary side synchronous design is used along with DC-DC converters for the generation of the minor rails, in order to increase efficiency. The +12V rail is generated by six FDP040N06N mosfets and afterwards fed through two VRMs, which are housed on the same PCB, to generated 5V and 3.3V. All the caps on the secondary side are provided by Chemi-Con and besides electrolytics we found some polymer ones.


There are five +12V islands on the main PCB however on the solder side we didn't spot any current sense resistors, necessary for multi-rail OCP (Over Current Protection), something natural since this unit has a single +12V rail and with 70A on this rail OCP is pretty much useless.


On a vertical PCB in the secondary side the SF29601 resonant controller is housed. This IC besides the LLC converter is also responsible for the unit's protections. On the same PCB, but on the other side, there is also an LM324 Quad Power Amplifier to provide a helping hand with the protections.


In the front side of the modular PCB we find many wire conductors which enhance the PCB traces and minimize energy losses. On the solder side there are three Chemi-Con filter caps, which were quickie soldered.


Soldering quality on the main PCB is good with mostly neat and clean joints. Also we didn't spot any long component leads. Notice the soldered metal board, in the second photo, which greatly enhances conductivity. Most likely it is used to transfer power to the VRMs that generate the minor rails.


The cooling fan is branded with NZXT's logo so we cant identify its original manufacturer. NZXT promises a really quiet operation even at high load/operating temperatures. During our tests we will see if this stands.