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.

On 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.

We can point out several differences between this power supply and a low-end (a.k.a. “generic”) one: the construction quality of the printed circuit board (PCB); the use of more components on the transient filtering stage; the active PFC circuitry; the power rating of all components; the design; etcetera.

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Figure 5: Overall look.

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Figure 6: Overall look.

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.

On this section this power supply is flawless, as it has more components than the necessary – one extra X capacitor, two extra Y capacitors, one extra coil and a ferrite bead on the main power cable. This power supply also features an X capacitor after the rectifying bridge.

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Figure 7: Transient filtering stage (part 1).

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Figure 8: Transient filtering stage (part 2).

A very interesting feature from this power supply is that its fuse is inside a fireproof rubber protection. So this protection will prevent the spark produced on the minute the fuse is blown from setting the power supply on fire.

Talking about protection, this power supply uses a tiny semiconductor thermal sensor located on the solder side of the printed circuit board, under the secondary heatsink (see Figure 9). This sensor may go unnoticed by an untrained eye. The purpose of this sensor is shutting down the power supply in case of an overheating situation. You can see this thermal sensor on Figure 9.

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Figure 9: Thermal sensor.

This power supply uses a UCC28515DW integrated circuit, which is an active PFC and PWM controller combo. It is located on a small printed circuit board shown on the left-hand side from Figure 6.

Now let’s have a more detailed discussion on the components used on Silencer 610 EPS12V.