I opened up my ATX Power Supply as I had it for quite a few years but it has been stowed away and used intermittently until I use it a lot more in my office computer in recent years. I just don’t trust any power supplies Made in China, even from a reputable brand as a couple of decades of working with computers tells me that they are bound to break after a few years, and very often it is the capacitor that rotted and the rest are collateral damages. Lo and behold there is one:

After I took the capacitor out, I noticed something odd: the polarity marker on the circuit board is the reverse of how the capacitor was installed! Holy smokes! I just want to verify if the PCB markings is right or the installer was right, so I installed wires to the capacitor to lift it up so I can connect the multimeter leads across it to measure the voltage polarity. This picture also shows the PCB’s capacitor orientation marking:

And the multimeter reads -5V following the original orientation of the capacitor before I took it out. This means the polarity was reversed!! No wonder the capacitor bulged. I was lucky that it didn’t blow up after a few years of use! Probably it was rated 16V yet only -5V was passed to it so the electrolytic capacitor rotted slowly.

To give XFX Force credit, they didn’t slap the power supply together with the cheapest white label components from the gutters. It uses proper Nichicon and Hitachi capacitor, so it might be the reason that reversed capacitor lasted so many years.

It’s the workmanship in China. If you go with a Red Chinese (Yellow-Soviets) brand, they might use junk components, but don’t think you are safe with foreign companies that has a solid process and design. The cheap labor in China who doesn’t give a crap can still manage to fuck it up. So trust nothing

ElectroBOOM!