A Look Inside VX450W

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 pages we will discuss in details the quality and rating of the components used.

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Figure 3: Overall look.

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Figure 4: Overall look.

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Figure 5: Overall look.

As we mentioned, internally this power is identical to Antec Earthwatts 500 W, but using better electrolytic capacitors.

As we mentioned on other articles and reviews, 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 and the first coil.

This power supply is impeccable, bringing one extra X capacitor and one extra ferrite coil on this stage, plus two additional Y capacitors and one additional X capacitor after the rectifying bridge.

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Figure 6: Transient filtering stage (part 1).

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Figure 7: Transient filtering stage (part 2).

Now let’s have a more detailed discussion on the components used on VX450W.

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