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#1
How do PSU's work?
FIRST A WARNING!!
As I think Britton30 pointed out any tampering, dismantling, or attempts at repairing these units is potentially fatal as referenced in Brinks post on a teen death. From personal experience I can say that during my uninformed years I have by sheer accident breached some of the terminals while taking these devices apart and have witnessed the destruction of the item that came into contact with the stored energy with the capacitors in thee units.
I might add that this applies to anyone dismantling microwave ovens, old TV sets or ANY device that uses capacitors in any size - even the small ones can BITE - you must treat all capacitors as charged - to ignore this warning is foolhardy and as stated potentially fatal.
Working as an RN I can attest to the power of these electrical components in that they are the actuating "item" / component in a defibrillator machine. Now we have all seen how those things work (or supposedly work - dramatised for viewers) on TV or films but in reality it does stop the heart!
However:-
Seeing there is a debate within the tutorial on PSU's I felt it necessary to start a new thread for any discussion or debate that isn't strictly general information on PSU's for average user.
So given that I do have a fairly limited and self taught knowledge in that I do know that high currents that are needed within a computer can be supplied by a rectified voltage source form a mains transformer.
However to supply the currents that we now need by purely using a dedicated transformer/s requires huge, heavy, and VERY expensive transformers, therefore it takes some very clever switched mode circuitry to be able to use smaller and therefore cheaper transformers to produce the currents that are required.
I did some researching and came up with this ref and some very interesting videos should anyone want to see what goes on in a PSU.
Switching-power-supply « « Electronic Circuits diagrams Schematics Projects*:: Next.gr
AGAIN - WARNING!!
Any tampering, dismantling, or attempts at repairing these units is potentially fatal!!