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.


Once we removed the casing we looked at two long and quite thick, gold heatsinks. Apparently Super Flower, having the semi-fanless operation in mind, provided some extra passive cooling to the unit. If you combine this with the high efficiency which leads to decreased energy dissipation, then you can easily figure out that the fan at low-middle loads won't be necessary. However when these heatsinks get hot then the fan must work overtime to cool them down. In order to achieve Platinum efficiency Super Flower utilized an LLC resonant converter along with a half bridge configuration.


Right behind the AC receptacle there is a small PCB with some of the transient filtering stage components. A CM choke, one X and two Y caps can be found there. On the main PCB we find another CM choke and two pairs of X and Y caps. Strangely enough there is no DM choke in the transient filter (although in some cases the CM choke also suppresses DM noise) neither an MOV.


The two parallel bridge rectifiers (US30KB80R) are bolted on the large primary heatsink. Each one can handle up to 30A so they are too powerful even for a 1000W unit.


In the APFC two IPW50R140CP mosfets chop the pulsating DC signal. This time not one but two boost diodes are used. The hold up caps are provided by Nippon Chemi-Con with the smaller one having 470µF capacitance and the second 560µF. Both are rated at 105°C, 400V and belong to Nippon's KMQ series.


Between the large hold up cap and the huge PFC choke resides the thermistor which protects the unit from large inrush currents. There is also a relay to bypass it once the main caps are fully charged.


This small vertical daughter-board houses an NCP1653A PFC controller. The same is also used by the Seasonic Platinum/Gold units.


The PSU utilizes a resonant converter to achieve higher efficiency through zero voltage switching of the primary choppers, which are two IPW50R140CP fets.


The standby PWM controller is an ICE3B0565 IC and is soldered on the component side of the main PCB.


In the secondary side ten IPP041N04N fets rectify +12V. Each one can provide up to 80A in continuous mode, quite an overkill for the 996W that +12V can deliver on paper! Eight polymer Nippon caps along with some electrolytic ones (105°C, KZH, KZE and KY series) filter this rail.


The minor rails are generated by two DC-DC converters. On each converter four mosfets are used and a metal shield protects them from interference.


The LLC resonant controller is a proprietary IC with model number SF29601. It is housed on a vertical PCB in the secondary side and besides the primary choppers it also handles all the protections of the unit. Since this is a custom made IC, we couldn't find any info on the net about it. On the solder side of this small PCB there is an LM324ADG Quad Operational Amplifier.


On the front of the modular PCB eight Nippon KY series caps provide extra filtering to the DC outputs. On the solder side of the same PCB we find many hand made soldering jobs.


Soldering quality on the main PCB definitely is not bad but not as high as we expected from a company that rivals Seasonic and Delta in performance terms. Also the initial PCB design was for five +12V rails which in this case form a single one.


The fan caries Super Flower's logo and it writes "Ball Bearing" with big capital fonts. Its model number is HA1425M12B-Z (12V, 0.36A) and it manages to combine performance with low output noise, normally two incompatible things. It is equipped with a plastic baffle to direct the air towards the rear side of the unit.