We decided to disassemble this power supply to see what it looks like inside, how it is designed, and what components are used. Please read our Anatomy of Switching Power Supplies tutorial to understand how a power supply works and to compare this power supply to others.

This page will be an overview, and then in the following pages we will discuss in detail the quality and ratings of the components used. Two things immediately caught our attention. First, all capacitors used on this power supply are Japanese, with the components used on the secondary being solid. The second thing was the design used. This power supply uses a DC-DC converter on the secondary, meaning that this is basically a +12 V power supply that gets the +5 V and +3.3 V outputs by installing additional switching power supplies on the +12 V output. This design is being used by several power supplies and so far has proving to be the best choice for building high-efficiency units. What is different on this product is that instead of the DC-DC converter being installed on a daughterboard on the secondary, it was installed on the modular cabling system printed circuit board. A nice and really smart choice, as it drastically reduces the number of cables necessary to connect the modular cabling system to the main printed circuit board.

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Figure 4: Overall look.

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Figure 5: Overall look.

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Figure 6: Overall look.