New HDPLEX 200W LPS

[Chopin75]

HI all,

 

I have I believe the updated 200W model as I got it in 2019, but it just spontaneously smoked yesterday!   I was  using 19Vm and 2 of the 5 V for  SATA and USB bridge and it happened only few min after I turned off the main HDPLEX PC. Has anyone experienced this with the new model too ? 

[Chopin75]

4 minutes ago, tboooe said:

Dude that's a bummer but I will say with total confidence that Larry will take care of you.  Have you contacted him?

My builder did (I have the HDPLEX built to my specification) contact him and Larry is sending  a return slip for me to return it to have a look.  You guys mentioned an updated version to be (or already released) this month? I believe mine is earlier version. Now when I reread this site carefully, I feel perhaps mine HDPEX (ordered around end Dec or early Jan may be defective, ? no ground or defective ground or fuse, who knows  ??, Luckily my HDPlex appears ok though I have not fully tested it yet, and I am still not sure if my PinkFaun audio bridge is still ok (as expensive as the PC!) . A shame because it worked so nicely for past month. 

[Chopin75]

1 minute ago, rickca said:

There's a second batch of inventory expected at the end of February.  Some small changes ... moving the transformer a bit further away from the daughter card because some units like mine arrived with the daughter card pins not properly seated.  Larry also mentioned a gold plated AC inlet.  There's certainly no change in the new batch related to the unit going up in smoke!

 

HDPLEX has also said the new batch will have ELNA capacitors like it's supposed to.  A small number of the first batch had Rubycon caps due to supply lead time from ELNA.

Thanks! Maybe I will ask him just to send me a new updated unit, even if I need to wait till end of the month.  Any advantage of ELNA cap vs the Rubycon ? 

[Chopin75]

4 minutes ago, rickca said:

Well, are you sure your unit had Rubycon caps?  Mine has ELNA caps and it was from the first batch.  I opened it up and checked.

 

Were you using the 19V rail of the 200W LPS together with an HDPLEX 400W DC-ATX?  What are the specs of the PC you had built?

 

Not sure what caps I have. Did not open it. Yes, I used the HDPLEX 400W, as recommended by Larry and I also asked him about running AMD ryzen chip. The 19V is supplying the main HDPLEX PC, and it is a ASROCK X3700 + AMD Ryzen 2700x chip. I also use the 5V to supply the SATA drive (where the OS is) and another 5 V for the USB audio bridge. I also have surge protector (Trip-lite isolator, and none of the other equipments were afffected)

[Chopin75]

3 minutes ago, rickca said:

That's very similar to my configuration.  My CPU is i7-6700K (91W TDP).  Your 2700X is 105W TDP.  I'm also using the two adjustable rails ... 12V into a Startech USB card and 7.5V into an Uptone Audio ISO REGEN.  Obviously the 19V is carrying most of the load, the load on the adjustable rails is very light.

 

You said it started smoking shortly after you turned off your PC.  Had you just been listening to music, or were you doing something CPU intensive?

 

I use a ZeroSurge on my office system where I run this configuration.

No, I was not doing anything intensive such as PCM-->DSD256 or uploading files at same time, was just playing 24/96 native 2-ch, not using HQplayer. Though I did nor check if the PC OR LPS was really hot before the meltdown. I think the LPS was rather hot but it is usually quite hot anyway, 

 

[Chopin75]

3 minutes ago, rickca said:

It doesn't sound like you overloaded the 19V rail in that event.  Please  post your diagnosis when HDPLEX receives your RMA unit and figures out what happened to it.  

Sure, will do so! 

[Chopin75]

When I first started to turn on the HDplex (which is now smoked, RIP), it also on't work but I think because I did not plug in the connectng wires properly. just make sure the wires are well connected on both ends. This HDplex turns out to be a nightmare it seems! I should have done more research before getting it! 

[Chopin75]

56 minutes ago, incus said:

This happened to me minutes after firing up my updated 200W model for the first time too. It fried one of my cables in the process but luckily the server was fine. I contacted Larry and he sent out a replacement two-day mail without even waiting for the old unit to arrive back with him. Stand up guy. And yet the smoke was very disconcerting... He never did tell me what was wrong... New unit sounds great by the way. No issues since then...

Well. all Larry did was asked me to send it back to him but he did not send me a replacement right away so I am still without my LPS after more than a week.

[Chopin75]

6 hours ago, tboooe said:

Larry said this batch will also have the the changes to the transformer and additional heatsinks for the rectifier too.  Hopefully mine wont smoke!

Larry Replied back and it is true that the new batch of LPS would have the additional heatsinks to protect the rectifier. I

 

Below is his explanation for the smoked LPS (he asked me to post his answer):

 

"First, my engineer got the return unit yesterday and confirmed it is the rectifier got damaged.

See attached picture.

Since the incident, my engineer has been trying to replicate this in the lab and he did, the rectifier will generate smoke once the 19V rail exceeds 12A. 

Our current protection limiter is set at 15A which is enough to be triggered in case of short but not enough to be triggered for 12A. 

The reason for no rectifier damage or smoke in the previous several batch is because the power tube before it always got damaged first at this current.

In the new design with LT3045, we improved the heatsink for power tube and change the design a bit to greatly lower the chance of power tube circuit damage.

However, this improvement obviously exposed the weakness of the rectifier heatsink. 

 

The solution to solve this is two fold:

1. Lower the current limit for the 19V rail from 15A to 12A. This might trigger some unwanted restart for some PC customer in rare case. But that is a necessary trade off .

 

2: Change the heatsink to a much bigger one. My engineer ask the CNC shop to cut one for him for testing. See attached picture. The temperature is very good after 5 hours at 12A on the 19V rail last night and still running cool till now as I am writing this email.

 We will apply this new heatsink to the new batch due in a week or two besides other improvements.  

 

With those two changes applied, there is enough safe margin for robust operation of the rectifier.

 

 

All new batch including the replacement unit for you will have this new heatsink."

 

 

From what I understand is that a surge of > 12 A at the 19V rail has caused the rectifier to blow. (normally it is 10 A, with my rusty Physics, I suppose the current "A" fluctuates depends on resistance.  See pic.  The power tube in the previous model would blow by 12A and thus protected the rectifier (I presume that is a lesser damage?), but the latest model the power tube is modified such that it won't blow at 12 A so the current can reach 15 A and blows the rectifier. Now he has lower the limit to 12 A only and in addition has added larger heat sink to dissipate the heat so the LPS won't overheat easily to smoke again. So it looks like this is a double protection to prevent blowing of either the power tube or rectifier. 

 

I have to say Larry has provided speedy and great service, despite this rather unsetting incident. He did explain to me this is an issue of 19V rail only so I am glad that the 5 V rails are safe as my expensive USB bridge was attached to the 5V !  I fully understand for boutique small companies  products often are work in progress, and may not have been tested fully by many clients before market lounge, hence they are so much cheaper and improvements are continuing. (They can be imperfect, but the upper hand is likely great value for the money. I am ok with a bit of inconvenience )

So he is sending me a brand new LPS with all the upgrades discussed above and other stuff for the latest batch, due in 1-2 wks. 

 

 

[Chopin75]

7 hours ago, PeterSt said:

 

 

 

 

Are you able to elaborate on this ? I mean, would you have an explanation of what would be drawing 228W+ via that 19V when the PC was turned off ? ... "Main HDPlex PC" ??

IOW, interesting ...

 

 

NOt entirely sure but my theory (and can be all wrong) is that after I switched off the main PC by turning off the Euphony OS, the LPS iwas still powered so could continue to supply the 19V as I did not turn off the main switch yet. It is possible the resistance change after turning off the computer has caused the surge of current. I will ask Larry about this. 

[Chopin75]

14 hours ago, Chopin75 said:

NOt entirely sure but my theory (and can be all wrong) is that after I switched off the main PC by turning off the Euphony OS, the LPS iwas still powered so could continue to supply the 19V as I did not turn off the main switch yet. It is possible the resistance change after turning off the computer has caused the surge of current. I will ask Larry about this. 

Regards to why mine smoked after I turned off the PC. I was wrong about having high current surge. Here is Larry's explanation:

 

"I understand there is concern or suspicion that my LPSU might cause internal high current after shut down. This might be the reason cause smoke on the rectifier.

 

However this theory is proved false in our lab.

 

A simple wattage meter on the AC input will show only 4W after the PC shutdown.

 

Another proof is that 12V rail has the same design as 19V yet 12V rectifer has never been damaged.

 

 

Last we have replicated the issue.

 

The rectifier structure is basically two copper with PN in between.

 

Once the PN is damaged by high current, the two copper will generate a lot of current due to they are very close and PN separate them is no longer function.

 

The heat from high current will cause silicon on the rectifier to smoke and after silicon is consumed, the fuse will be cut. "

 

 

It sounds like the4 chronic high current surge has already damaged thre rectifier structure and at some point the meltdown occurred so it was likely incidental that mine smoked after PC was off. And may perhaps explain there was no high voltage or current that has damaged my PC.  We shall see how they new design works out.  

[Chopin75]

Pinkfaun also recommends this:

 

http://www.faradpowersupplies.com/

 

 

This is dedicated single V only, no adjustment which should make it better for sound and more reliable.  It uses some sort of supercap too. Does HDPlex use similar way of employing super cap to charge/discharge ? 

 

[Chopin75]

People don't realize there is a limitation on measuring devices that is often far inferior to human ear which is a far superior measuring instruments so to speak.  This explains why one an hear the sonic difference between Steinway and Bosendorfer and Yamaha but but I bet one cannot really measure it electronically to tell the difference. Ok, we are talking about measuring noise now but surely the human ear can hear subtle changes as a result of electronic noise. So it is possible the noise difference between different PSU are so low that measuring instruments are not really detecting it but they are large enough to affect the sound.

[Chopin75]

On 6/5/2019 at 5:11 PM, FredericV said:

I respect the guy, he was the one responsible for introducing room correction into windows vista, and it's bass mgt & home theater features. He knows what he's doing. Those threads were on avsforum where we even discussed how to hack the registry so that certain cards could run these features.

HD plex are not true linear power supplies, and they use a shared transformer for several rails which is not the most ideal design choice. Furtthermore, wasn't there a DC - DC converter inside the latest PSU? So I'm not surprised what he measured.

Agree that HDplex is not the ideal LPS, and really is for budget user for a cheap solution. It is supposed to work well with this converter that is placed within the HDPLEX PC:

 

https://www.hdplex.com/hdplex-400w-hi-fi-dc-atx-power-supply-16v-24v-wide-range-voltage-input.html

 

Not sure what this DC-ATX converter is ??

[Chopin75]

6 hours ago, austinpop said:

Looking for some advice from the experienced hands here, who have used the HDPlex DC-ATX converter.

 

I want to use it with a Paul Hynes SR-7 19V/6A rail, but in a quick test we tried, the computer didn't power up. It also seemed to trip the over-current protection, as we had to replace the fuse on the PSU before it powered on again.

 

This is too expensive a PSU to experiment with, so I asked Larry for ideas. He suggested I try it with a laptop adapter. The most powerful unit I had lying around is a 90W 19.5V/4.62A supply, which conveniently has a 7.4x5.0mm tip, which fits perfectly in the HDPlex-supplied 7.4x5.0 to 6-pin Molex adapter. Here's the test:

1. connect power supply like this:
   • 19V 90W laptop adapter -> 7.4x5.5 - to 6-pin adapter -> 6-pin input on the DC-ATX converter
2. Nothing else attached to the converter

Result: the amber light on the converter comes on for a few seconds, then goes off. The laptop supply seems to go into overcurrent protection, as I have to disconnect and reconnect for it to come on again (LED indicator).

 

Before you tell me this converter is rated for 400W load, and requires a hefty input supply - I know this. My plan is to only drive ATX (not EPS or any other output) for a very low power use case, where the expected power draw should be in the 20-30W range. 

 

According to Larry, the DC-ATX Converter requires a significant inrush current to "charge the capacitors." but he does not know what the requirement is. Has anyone experienced this, and do you have any experimental data that suggests what the inrush requires from the input power supply? This seems to be the limiting factor to using this converter at this point.

 

I am currently looking for a more powerful SMPS (sadly I threw away all me old adapters in my last house cleaning ) to test this on.

 

 

 

I had a similar problem when my own HDPLEX 200W smoked. So I wanted to test to make sure that I have not damaged the HDPLEX PC with the DC-ATX. I used a labptop brick DC power cord. (I think 19.5V and 4.5 A or 6.5 A) and it turned on the PC alright but cannot boot my SATA Drive (with Euphony OS).  My PC builder thinks the Amp is not adequate so I think I did separate power source 4 V to power the SATA by itself. Then it did work but only intermittently. Anyway the whole ordeal wasvso cumbersome I gave up using it until my new HDP LPS arrived months later!  Not sure if this helps u much. 

[Chopin75]

3 hours ago, austinpop said:

 

Yes, I think this is a key takeaway. When it comes to powering a mobo, either through ATX or EPS, even if the expected steady state power consumption is expected to be low, there are going to be current transients, especially during power on. 

 

The case I ran into was simply within the HDPlex DC-ATX converter, but I am sure once you connect this to the motherboard, there are further transients associated with all the other regulator modules in the system.

 

How this aggregates to determine the current rating for a suitable power supply is unclear. I do know someone who was able to successfully power the ATX input on his mobo, through the DC-ATX converter, using a 19V/5A rail on his SR7. I tried this experiment with another AS'er's SR7 with a 19V/6A rail and ran into an issue, but at the time I was unaware of this DC-ATX transient demand. I'm not sure what we did wrong, which is why I'm backtracking to figure it out.

Ok so from your experiment 6.5 A worked, I think mine was also a laptop 6.5A Brick  but it was inadequate to run my euphony even on separate LPS on its own. My CPU is power hungry Ryzen 2700x. I think you need a 10 A LPS like the HDPLEX one. Farad is making a 12 A which should work . 

But this does answer my question about LPS for my PC, which uses DC-ATX and so the issue is not the motherboard but the design of the DC-ATX. 

[Chopin75]

1 hour ago, davide256 said:

I find that DC wallwarts and SMPS's are like Star Trek tribbles in my system. They multiply. I used an HDPLex 100W to make life simpler and now that its died,

the HDPlex 200W will perpetuate allowing me to always have better options than the "comes with" PS.  Having dabbled with different PS's over the past year,

I consider their contribution underappreciated, much as audiophile turntables were misunderstood/ridiculed during the heyday of vinyl.

 

Audio system updated to reflect current configuration/ PS's in use

 

Unfortunately the HDPlex 12V feeding the LPS 1.2 power input just died, looks like a warranty field trip is pending.

Sorry to hear this. Is this the latest HDPlex 200W ? Did u talk to Larry about it? My latest HDPlex 200W upgrade works fine but I never used the 12V, only 19V and the 2 5 V