We decided to disassemble this power supply to see how it looks like inside, what is the design used and what components are used. Please read our Anatomy of Switching Power Supplies tutorial to understand how a power supply works inside and to compare this power supply to others.
In this page we will have an overall look, while on the next page we will discuss in details the quality and rating of the components used.
On Figures 7 and 8 you can have an overall look from inside this power supply.
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Figure 7: Inside Young Year YP-AB.
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Figure 8: Inside Young Year YP-AB.
What immediately caught our eye was the marking “Model ATX-66B”. We found out after a quick search on the net that this is the exact same PCB used by other power supplies manufactured by Young Year, including some models they OEM to Ultra (X-Connect 500 W) and Aspire/Apevia.
As we mentioned on other articles, the first place we like to take a look when opening a power supply to have a hint about its quality is its filtering stage. The recommend components for this stage are two ferrite coils, two ceramic capacitors (Y capacitors, usually blue), one metalized polyester capacitor (X capacitor) and one MOV (Metal-Oxide Varistor). Very low-end power supplies use fewer components than that, usually removing the MOV, which is essential for cutting spikes coming from the power grid, and the first coil.
This power supply filtering stage isn’t good at all. It features only one ferrite coil (instead of two) and two Y capacitors. There is a ceramic disc capacitor labeled as “J101” but this capacitor is connected in series with the main AC power line instead of in parallel. So this power supply missed one MOV, one ferrite coil and one X capacitor just to have the basic recommended components for this stage. It is interesting to notice, though, that there is empty space for installing the X capacitor (labeled “CX102”) and the second ferrite coil (labeled “LF103”). So, some models using this same PCB may have a more complete filtering stage (which is the case of Ultra X-Connect 500 W and the model sold in Europe by Levicom) – but still missing the MOV. The European version also features passive PFC.
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Figure 9: Transient filtering stage.
We found something really bad on the model we disassembled: it hadn’t a NTC thermistor. As you can see on Figure 10, it had, instead, a wire jumper on its place (labeled “TH101”).
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Figure 10: The thermistor is missing on this power supply!
On Figure 11 you can see a thermal sensor touching the secondary heatsink, which commands the power supply to shut down under an overheating situation.
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Figure 11: Secondary thermal sensor.
Now let’s have a more detailed discussion on the components used on Young Year YP-AB.
