As we have mentioned in other articles and reviews, the first place we look when opening a power supply for a hint about its quality is its filtering stage. The recommended 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, usually removing the MOV and the first coil.

This power supply has one X capacitor more than needed but it has only one ferrite coil instead of two.

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Figure 6: Transient filtering stage.

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.

In the next page we will have a more detailed discussion of the components used in the Kingwin ABT-450MM.