Dell Did Something Mostly Right: Power Supply Tear-Down & Review (Dell G5 5000)
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Date: 2021-06-13
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Comments and reviews: 10
jacky
You can already tell PSU brands are going to send you cherry picked models to review.
I think most losses from a PSU are in 2 types of components. 1 Diodes, 2 transistors/mosfets. Diodes have a straight up voltage drop, so you have 230v after a diode you have 229.5v then sadly you probably have 2 of them 1 at the line and the other at the neutral. So you drop 0.5v 2 times. Then after conversion there is probably 1 too. So just from diodes you lose roughly 2% efficiency maybe more. Yes there are diodes with a forward voltage drop of 0.08v but the characteristics of those might not be best for this application. Mosfets are exactly the same they have a forward voltage drop.
The third loss comes from wire resistance and capacitance between traces.
Anyway that dell PSU is pretty good. Dell needs to stop with the bs though and actually be fined for literally making ewaste. There are standards and Dell just throws them out the window.
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You can already tell PSU brands are going to send you cherry picked models to review.
I think most losses from a PSU are in 2 types of components. 1 Diodes, 2 transistors/mosfets. Diodes have a straight up voltage drop, so you have 230v after a diode you have 229.5v then sadly you probably have 2 of them 1 at the line and the other at the neutral. So you drop 0.5v 2 times. Then after conversion there is probably 1 too. So just from diodes you lose roughly 2% efficiency maybe more. Yes there are diodes with a forward voltage drop of 0.08v but the characteristics of those might not be best for this application. Mosfets are exactly the same they have a forward voltage drop.
The third loss comes from wire resistance and capacitance between traces.
Anyway that dell PSU is pretty good. Dell needs to stop with the bs though and actually be fined for literally making ewaste. There are standards and Dell just throws them out the window.
reply
Nukacolared
I always love learning more about how tech works. Surprised that I took three physics classes in high school and one in college, yet I still have little clue of how electricity works. It probably didn't help that those topics were at the backend of the curriculum, and so ended up being not focused on enough or at all. And its not the kind of thing your average person talks about.
But, yea. I always love these videos were you give a bit of a lesson on tech and how certain things work. You and your team certainly know how to explain this kind of stuff in a way that gives others a chance at understanding the basic concept, and even encourage them to find out more and not be so intimidated by the topic. Many people I have seen seem to often forget how complicated some of this stuff is when trying to explain it to a noob.
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I always love learning more about how tech works. Surprised that I took three physics classes in high school and one in college, yet I still have little clue of how electricity works. It probably didn't help that those topics were at the backend of the curriculum, and so ended up being not focused on enough or at all. And its not the kind of thing your average person talks about.
But, yea. I always love these videos were you give a bit of a lesson on tech and how certain things work. You and your team certainly know how to explain this kind of stuff in a way that gives others a chance at understanding the basic concept, and even encourage them to find out more and not be so intimidated by the topic. Many people I have seen seem to often forget how complicated some of this stuff is when trying to explain it to a noob.
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Matthew
Really great to see y'all starting to line up content like this. The loss of the JonnyGURU website left a massive void in terms of this sort of in-depth testing (though looks like there's a guy at Tom's putting in good work too).
If I may suggest something: JonnyGURU had something of a series called Death of a Gutless Wonder , showing how bad cheap PSUs really are in terms of build quality and in performance. It was an incredible thing to point people to when they were tempted to cheap out on PSUs. It would be nice to have something like that again... once you're comfortable making another negative video again, at least.
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Really great to see y'all starting to line up content like this. The loss of the JonnyGURU website left a massive void in terms of this sort of in-depth testing (though looks like there's a guy at Tom's putting in good work too).
If I may suggest something: JonnyGURU had something of a series called Death of a Gutless Wonder , showing how bad cheap PSUs really are in terms of build quality and in performance. It was an incredible thing to point people to when they were tempted to cheap out on PSUs. It would be nice to have something like that again... once you're comfortable making another negative video again, at least.
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AaronShenghao
To be honest any OEM ever since 90s have a primary goal for their system: Making sure you are more likely to throw them away than repair than using other parts.
I had to deal with it when a old Lenovo system motherboard died. When I tried to see a way to replace the board with a standard one, I noticed the front panel is all customized aside from USB and F-panal audio. In the end I ended up getting a second hand board plus a new case and power supply...
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To be honest any OEM ever since 90s have a primary goal for their system: Making sure you are more likely to throw them away than repair than using other parts.
I had to deal with it when a old Lenovo system motherboard died. When I tried to see a way to replace the board with a standard one, I noticed the front panel is all customized aside from USB and F-panal audio. In the end I ended up getting a second hand board plus a new case and power supply...
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Robin
When they sell these in bulk as part of business PCs to large corps the efficiency rating is definitely one of the stats on the spec sheet that gets examined. A CFO might not know much about CPUs or RAM but they can definitely work out how much cash their binning from an efficiency percentage.
It's probably cheaper for them to bulk manufacture a standard PSU for everything than to make small batches of less efficient PSUs for different types of system.
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When they sell these in bulk as part of business PCs to large corps the efficiency rating is definitely one of the stats on the spec sheet that gets examined. A CFO might not know much about CPUs or RAM but they can definitely work out how much cash their binning from an efficiency percentage.
It's probably cheaper for them to bulk manufacture a standard PSU for everything than to make small batches of less efficient PSUs for different types of system.
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Le
It would be great if in a future video you could show output characteristics on a brand new PSU and one that's like 8 - 10 years old, to show if, and why it would be beneficial to preventively change your PSUs.
Most people with PSU issues would look at HWinfo and see the reported voltages to be good, without having any idea what the ripple has become with aging caps.. and wonder why after changing PSU their OC is now stable and they have no more crashes.
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It would be great if in a future video you could show output characteristics on a brand new PSU and one that's like 8 - 10 years old, to show if, and why it would be beneficial to preventively change your PSUs.
Most people with PSU issues would look at HWinfo and see the reported voltages to be good, without having any idea what the ripple has become with aging caps.. and wonder why after changing PSU their OC is now stable and they have no more crashes.
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Tedd
Could be used for a poor man desktop power when playing around with electronics....I currently got 2 old powers hooked into a custom made power rail/plugboard mounted on my workbench... +/- 12v +5v +3.3v and the +5vsb... with some cheap durrent displays on each voltage.... Been working nicely when playing with MCU's(arduinos/stm32/arm/esp's and other....) and when testing old drives and perf's for pc's.... :)
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Could be used for a poor man desktop power when playing around with electronics....I currently got 2 old powers hooked into a custom made power rail/plugboard mounted on my workbench... +/- 12v +5v +3.3v and the +5vsb... with some cheap durrent displays on each voltage.... Been working nicely when playing with MCU's(arduinos/stm32/arm/esp's and other....) and when testing old drives and perf's for pc's.... :)
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BigAl268
That was really Interesting! Love hearing Stone's breakdown of the PSU, Someone that Speaks the Language of my People, So to speak! LOL!
The only thing I would change are the Triangle and Rectangle waves he was talking about. Those are Referred to as Saw-tooth and Square wave outputs as far as I understand DC waveforms. Everything else sounded spot on! Thanks for giving this kind of testing a Go!!
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That was really Interesting! Love hearing Stone's breakdown of the PSU, Someone that Speaks the Language of my People, So to speak! LOL!
The only thing I would change are the Triangle and Rectangle waves he was talking about. Those are Referred to as Saw-tooth and Square wave outputs as far as I understand DC waveforms. Everything else sounded spot on! Thanks for giving this kind of testing a Go!!
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Jacob
Brings back memories as a tv repair technician. I've had to repair numerous tv power supplies that work just like the one described here. On another note: Dell computers are only useful for business applications where they will be thrown out and replaced with new ones as needed. They are not geared towards the general public as they can't be upgraded, which as you described, is a shame.
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Brings back memories as a tv repair technician. I've had to repair numerous tv power supplies that work just like the one described here. On another note: Dell computers are only useful for business applications where they will be thrown out and replaced with new ones as needed. They are not geared towards the general public as they can't be upgraded, which as you described, is a shame.
reply
nan
Power supply testing is badly needed. I have no clue which power supplies are actually good , or wont fail catastrophically. My corsair 850 surged a few weeks ago, taking my motherbaord, cpu and cablemod cables with it. Corsair is the trusted brand, but i've never seen testing of failures, if they fail gracefully or catastrophically. Which is more important than the failure rate imo.
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Power supply testing is badly needed. I have no clue which power supplies are actually good , or wont fail catastrophically. My corsair 850 surged a few weeks ago, taking my motherbaord, cpu and cablemod cables with it. Corsair is the trusted brand, but i've never seen testing of failures, if they fail gracefully or catastrophically. Which is more important than the failure rate imo.
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