REVISIT : PS4 Slim Faulty Power Supply ADP-160ER 

Even Louis Rossman would have made a dogs dinner of boards like this starting out. He who never tried, never failed. Thanks for revisiting this. 👍

Really pleased you revisited this =D Resistance you've gone with for bleeding the cap power is fine! Whilst you could damage the caps just shorting them, most people in the repair industry do just short them and 999 times out of 1000 it never causes any issue. Preheating both sides for a few mins at maybe 200 can help regards delamination, but it can be hard working with PSUs. One of the problems removing that diode is they glue them down before soldering - that was the wierd redish black colour underneath it! The other tip regards working with cheap boards like that one - use lower airflow! It takes much longer to gradually reach temperature but that's a factor! On things like the Switch, they have so many layers and so much ground layer etc the boards are much more tolerant as they can absorb the heat you use. On a cheap 2 layer board like this it will burn up super easy with too much heat too quickly. The other thing you should do regards removing small caps like that - heat both sides of the cap with the iron tip at the same time and slide them off - rather than using hot air. Great job! It was a fantastic learning excercise =D You could rework that board - ie. fit the ICs and caps, remove the broken traces and replace with small wires. One problem you can have when they go blackened like that is the board is carbonised and shorts could occur with high voltages etc. But I suspect it would work fine after refitting the missing / faulty components and fixing with a wire or two. I am so glad you revisited it!!!!

When you try to remove solder from parts, apply flux and then go over the pads with your hot soldering iron tip and add a bit of leaded solder. Leaded solder will bring down the melting temperature of the lead free solder and makes it easier to remove the part. If you keep having troubles, add more flux.

I actually cringed and winced when he was removing that diode..

I am very satisfied with you revisiting the powersupply and finding the fault. Good Job Vince! I am patiently awaiting your next video. Thank you.

This was really brilliant. Thank you for revisiting it. I was cringing when the board was burning. but at least you found the fault. Congratulations!

Super! Well done. Don't worry about what people may or may not be shouting at the screen or what somebody might think about not having a working product at the end of it. You do you. Best channel on RU-vid! Keep up the good work.

You have got me hooked on your channel. It is on of my favorite to watch. A thumbs up from the USA.

That board took a hell of a power surge. The bridge rectifier was shorted, which likely blew the PFC switching mosfet that you first replaced. This in turn blew out the PFC controller (the chip). SInce VCC and GND on the chip were shorted and that chip is powered via the 12V supply, that was likely damaged as well. Other components that likely failed in the PFC circuit would be the current sense resistor in series with the PFC mosfet (low value, fuse-able resistor), the gate drive resistor if there was one (between the PFC IC drive pin and the gate of the mosfet), the boost diode (this was near the other side of the board, under the large choke), and possible damage to the main switching mosfets as well (these two were on the bottom of the board, near the main switching transformer). Just an FYI but if you're working on switch mode power supplies a couple of tips - 1. If you have a multimeter with a Low Z mode, you can use it to discharge capacitors in a few seconds and it makes discharging them very easy as you just use the probes. 2. If any kind of switching mosfet fails on a power supply, it is highly likely that it will take out several other components with it (gate resistor, gate discharge resistor, current sense resistor, snubber and protection diodes, even the PWM IC). Check everything around it!

That's totally awesome that you figured it out. I love all these videos. Keep on making more.

Great revisited video Vince. Glad you had another look into this.

So Happy for you! Congratulations on finding the fault!

When you were removing the diode I had that Simpsons quote in my head... "Stop, Stop!... he's already dead."

Finding a short is a lot easier with injecting voltage and looking for heat and going from there. Thermal cam, freeze spray, alcohol boiling away... etc...

The chip is a NCP1612. It's a PFC (power factor controller). The shorted Pins are Gnd and Vcc. Your patience is unbelievable ... BTW: seems that is one of the boards where the components are glued to the board before soldering. They are not designed for servicing at that low level - that's not your fault ;-)

Discharging the capacitors with a light bulb is fine. They experience much greater current spikes 50/60 times a second, while charging, during normal operation. The pink dots around and underneath the SMD components are glue. That's why you're burning the board: The solder is already melted but the glue keeps the components stuck, making you falsely assume the solder is not yet melted. Try to apply some twisting force to the component while the solder is melted to break the glue.

Ahh the feedback control chip, exactly what I suggested in your previous video. Feedback pin was shorted to the sence pin which explains you the short jumped to the secondary side.

hello vince, yesterday i discovered the main cause of delamination and burning of the PCB´S, the main cause is the excessive heat (obvious) and also the presence of moisture in the plates, which makes the water between the layers boil and stew the plate , causing it to be prematurely destroyed, so to prevent this, it is good to use a PCB dehumidifier BEFORE attempting to welding by hot air! we keep learning together! hugs from Brazil, and keep going ALWAYS! YOUR VIDEOS ARE GREAT!

What an awesome piece of deduction mate, was well worth burning the laminate to learn something new about the board, great work :)

i fixed alot of ps4 power supplys and this is the first time i have ever seen that chip causing a problem so im noteing down that chip in my book as a possible problem on future repairs

glad to see you found the problem, you are having so much trouble with those components because they are glued to the board.

Youre right Vince about having to applying low temperature solder BEFORE removing SMD's, Especially when the Board you're working on may have experienced high currents "which BTW crystalizes solder" APU I dropped a like..

its nice , commentors sent you in right direction and lent some support. keep learning, keep up the work . wish they had this type of stuff back in the vcr days still have some great movies cant find on dvd.

Hi Vince, I enjoy watching your vids, I'm a bit of a diy'er myself. Your short finding technique interests me and looks good in getting you in the right area eventually! But I think you'd be much more efficient and successful using an esr meter or ddm with a higher ohm/resistance resolution to pinpoint the exact location of the short. Basically when you test for shorts the closer the ohm reading is to zero, the closer the short. But if the area is tight like this, you'd need a higher resistance resolution to clearly define it. This ps4 psu and your game boy cart repair video would of benefited the most with this technique imho. Great work though Vince, your videos are pretty educational thanks ; )

so happy you came back to this peace of mind , should look up board diagram to follow it if there is one , but worth the time knowing the fault makes it all worth it also can you see how much it would of cost to repair ? if u got parts on there own see if its worth

Just for your perusal ,a monalithic bridge rectifier wiil have a corner cut out, (Slant) this is always Dc +, the next 2 pins are Ac in then last pin is Dc 0v, how they are wired up is the Ac pin next to possative is usually Ac live in Brown or Red and the next pin is neutral Blue or Black, also on square rectifiers there is also a slant allowing you to determin the lead pin outs, handy if any printing is devoide.

Really enjoyed this video board luminition was burned not your fault...You have took out many chips before without bubble in board. You are really hardworking electronic enthusiasts. Keep it up

did you notice the small red blobs under the components? this is glue (used in factory to place an fix components in place before solder process, this is the real problem, and the temperature of your station, is a little hight and burning board is the price for learning, about the solder melting, it is melting but the glue is not and it fix the component to board, I not know the right way to do this job but I know the problem! and you burn the board because you inssit too much time in the same place of board... and all thogether lear too! thanks for your fantastic videos! you show your learning curve and we learning too thanks a lot!

De diode pads solder melted at 14:02 that was the point where the component could be removed if it wasnt for the glue , further heating ruined the board unfortunately , a lot of learning was done :) thx for sharing

Thank u for revisiting. That's very kind of you. We were taught about bridge rectifiers in high school. I think you need to get an infra red camera and use some chip quick

For glued down components like those diodes, I usually go with the desoldering gun (I’we got one automatic that is an iron + a pump in one - same as GadgetUK has btw) and suck up the solder then while heating the pads, carefully turn the component with pliers to break the adhesive. Hot air is too much for these boards without adding lower melting temp solder...

I love this guy. I will learn so much

So much knowledge aquired here !!!!! You'll never regret those 20£ and the time it took! Like TronicFix do with N. Switch, should you specialise now in "I bought 20 faulty PSU Slim , can i fix it?" :P Just kidding here :D

enjoyed watching this again 👍

i figure the $20 or so was WELL worth the money for learning how to do this if you ever have to again. AND for anyone that need to repair this, will have a LOT of good info to use!

Was waiting for this

mate add more flux and keep temps at 400c with high flow rate makes things a lot easier note components are glued to the board so once the solder is liquid work your tweezers a bit and it will come off Your patience is unbelievable i wish i had it like you. use a ts 100 to solder if you do smd at least. and get a proper flux like kimbo or amtec.

Amazing tutorials, thanks a lot for your work.

29:28 "It came off real easy that time"... that's because it's at that point the board gave up it's will to live.

I love your videos and always look forward to the next installment :)

..... Nicely done, Vince!! Who said " Persistence is futile " ?? :-) The discharge/dummy load resistor isn't vitally specific, depends somewhat on the charge voltage on the capacitor, but, as most are charged from a bridge rectifier straight from the mains 240V supply, its going to be in to 300V plus, area. I would be looking at around 50Kohms, and, I wouldn't use a single resistor, cos if it goes open circuit at some point, you might be under the false assumption the capacitor has discharged, when it hasn't!!! If you want to be really, really safe, add a neon bulb in series with about a 100K 1/2W resistor across them, & you will see it glow, till the voltage gets down to 80V, or so. I personally use 3 off 100Kohm resistors, in parallel, 2 watts each should be fine!! Stay safe!!

The red stuff is glue! It keeps the components on the pcb so it can be wave soldered.

I find taking a photo of the tracks and marking the route with a pen helpful with a complicated board

There has been a lot of good advice here in the comments about how to properly remove one of those glued down components. I would love to see Vince do a follow up video showing how to remove one. How about it Vince?

The chip is a Enhanced High‐Efficiency Power Factor Controller. The Complete chip Part number is NPC1612A3, just google that number and you will find a PDF for the data sheet. Excellent troubleshooting, you are coming along nicely.

You need to make a miniature tri pod, with one of the three legs longer than the others, put a weight on the long leg, and bend it down at the tip. Sharpen the tip and use it to hold the chips in place.

the components are glued down before being flow soldered on the production line, you need to add leaded solder with a soldering iron then you can use less heat or use some low melt solder alloy with the hot air

Well done finding the fault in the end :) Your board is delaminating and burning, as your hot air gun is too hot, for too long in the same area.... you usually only need around 250-280c max to melt solder, i'd also drop the fan speed slightly.. And as many others have said, they were so difficult to remove due to the glue underneath them, which is used during wave soldering process, to stop the components moving around... There is something that can soften the glue (I can't remember the name of it though) which can help, or just add a touch of fresh solder, then you can see when it's soldered and apply a small amount of force to break the glue....

glad to see you found the problem, it's always so satisfying to watch the ones when you do.

Some great fault tracing!. The chip is a power controller!

Vince you're a fucking genius! I absolutely love these video. Keep them coming mate

I love your videos as well as your tenacity.

1612a3 is NCP1612a3 PFC controller chip(power factor controller)

Hi Vince, when working on that type of board that has been wave soldered. use hot air on it like you use it when you hotair LEDs. i normally run around 210c - 250c low air.(wave solder max temps are normally around 260c) and also before adding flux i add some leaded solder. Also because its wave soldered they glue all the parts onto the board before going into the process. if you have the time go look how they do all the different soldering. very interesting to learn. Glad you got the fault on the board. Well done!

Glue, bane of my life when dealing with smc. Keep up the good work fella ☺️

Glad you did a revisit on this psu. Over the moon to have my name featured in the vid also. 🙂 Keep up the good work Vince.

Also there is a little mark on the board beside rectifier bridge + sign determining direction of the snip single corner on the rectifier.

BIG THUMBS UP! Thank you for clearing this fault for everyone :)

Watching your videos leaves me with a question: what's that flux-stuff gel you're using, what does it exactly do and if it's just used to transfer heat to the solder points, why don't the other parts in direct vicinity simply come off, too? They often get into contact with the hot flux-stuff and I would expect them to come loose as well. Sorry for this silly question but I'm a complete idiot when it comes to motherboards 'n' stuff. Regards from Germany, Dee

You can use the known good board to determine which of the pads should be ground

your so relaxed even you barbecued the board, i realy like your investigative logic skill

somehow i feel you need to watch some electroboom "full bridge rectyfier" videos also if it was me i would pisck my roll of in4004's and swap everything that does not show 0,2-0,7 on diode tester and yes, many smd boards components are bonded with epoxy before puting entire boards trough bath of molted solder for rapid soldering the red stuff is epoxy glue, use acetone and ipa mix next time to soften it up before desoldering, you can always mix some 2 part epohy glue with a bit of acetone later and use it as replacement solder mask/track bonding glue if the red glue lift some solder resist or tracks , you can also drill small holed trough delaminated area and inject this inside i love watching your videos though because it show me how crazy i was 10 -15 years ago

Thanks for the education!

This gave me a right laugh, chuckling along at state of the board with the trace dangling in the air.

Another excellent fix. Well done

37:50 this is precisely the reason I moved out of hardware support. Back in my day you had to perform the troubleshooting and even in some cases reverse engineer the circuit (no internet, never mind Google or RU-vid!). Normally pennies for the parts and £100 labour. It was normal to charge about £250 per repair and took perhaps 3 hours. Bear in mind the original purchase price would be in the region of £15k and it was no wonder people questioned why it was so cheap to fix (Often questioned "did you really fix it?"). Move to today similar hardware faults, fixed in a hour or 2 for under £5, try charging £250 for the repair and you'd be laughed at - generally the hardware is cheaper to replace second hand than repair. Sad, but thats the way it goes. Sometimes cheaper for a consumer to buy a new device than to spend time & effort to have someone repair it. In fact I just threw out 4 oscilloscopes, deguassers and calibration equipment (I should've taken pictures!) as I hadn't powered them on in nearly 20 years!

is that IC connected to the mosfet you replaced ? is it the controller that controls the frequency of the mosfet ? (feedback circuit) ?

Remember to check with both normal and reversed leads on your meter when checking for shorts as most diodes conduct one way but not both. When checking for shorts your meter outputs a voltage and so the leads have a polarity i.e Red Positive + and Black Negative - . When you check shorts or resistance think about components conducting with the leads one way around but not when reversed. So check both ways !! A diode check is also handy on a meter as it shows the forward bias across diodes, for silicon diodes approx 0.6V Bridge Rectifiers are simply 4 diodes connected together in a bridge configuration in one package and each diode can be checked independently. This shows the internal connections and how each diode is connected en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diode_bridge.

great work mate, i have a different part number an ADP-160FR, but it looks almost exactly the same, it only has 1 capacitor less at the top side left of the board, yours has 4 in a square near the 5volts 4pin connector mine has only 3, but does almost the same, with the mosfet, with the 10 pin ic chip and with some capacitors, and the rectifier, the different is that the fuse is not broken yet, so it can be that with testing after replacing the mosfet you broke more part, just a thought, Grt from the Netherlands

Interesting video.. glad you figured it out.. too bad you can't fix it...

Hi, great vid 👍 and the parts are glued to the pcb, that’s the red stuff you see 😏 making it harder to unsolder 😞 keep up the great work 😏

Carbonated PCB! Nice!

Congrats on finally finding out what the problems were:)! The glue does hold components on and is meant to during manufacturing (going thru a wave-solder machine) but it shouldn't keep you from removing components. I know you are learning but yes please add some solder next time! Get it "wet" to reflow the factory solder and the chips will come off much easier without burning the board! Also, a bit more time with the hot-air and not soo close too! Board burning/delamination was from being too close and too much heat/time on one spot.

I'm glad you found out the problem. I really wanted to know.

Hello Vince, that red stuff underneath is SMD glue and the more you heat it the harder it will be and it's a nightmare removing glued SMD components.

the bridge rectifier is just 4 diodes in the package. you can even make your own fairly easily with 4 x 1N4007 diodes or similar.

I guess that you know this by now all the components are glued down by the pink glue and your hot air is way to high for a single sided board with no big ground areas 260 degrees is plenty with quite low air flow. Where the board is black you will find starts to be conductive like a resistor so it would have to be cut away leaving a hole and hard wired. Hope this helps in the future especially on power supplies.

Brilliant well done Vince :))

You can use a tweezers soldering iron to remove SMD components and not use hot air.

Once again, the Almighty Vince has done it! Some info about the rectifier: it’s most likely a so-called “Full Wave Rectifier”. The AC is a sine wave in terms of voltage at any point in time (which is why it has a frequency), and the FWR (short for “Full Wave Rectifier”) inverts the negative segments of the AC. Since the DC-voltage is 340, that means it could be a “Two-phase FBR”, which means the AC is split into two separate lines, each phased away from one another. That’s actually a much more efficient way to rectify the AC voltage, as it comes out mostly DC (with only a bit of voltage bouncing, meaning less filtering is needed). In any case, capacitors and diodes help smooth this slightly bouncy DC voltage even more, resulting in a fixed DC voltage. There’s a second rectifier variant (not much used, but extremely simple) called a “Half Wave Rectifier” (HWR). Instead of inverting the negative half of the AC voltage, it just cuts it off. The difference is that the FWR uses four diodes, the HWR uses only one. Of course, the internet can give you more info, particularily Wikipedia. Just search for “Rectifier” (minus the quotation marks). Once again, stellar work, Detective Vince! Case closed! PS: Yes, AC plugs can go in both ways, since it’s a sine wave spending half the time at positive voltage and half the time at negative voltage. Therefore, AC has no polarity, unlike DC. MAJOR EDIT: Changed the naming from “Half/Full Bridge Rectifier” to “Half/Full *WAVE* Rectifier”, the proper naming of these units. Also, changed from “Three-phase FWR” to “Two-phase FWR”, because you mentioned the voltage was increased by a factor of 1.41, which is approximately the square root of 2. A “Three-phase FWR” would have the voltage increased by a factor of 1.73, which is approximately the square root of 3. It also makes sense as the FWR unit had only two AC “inputs”... yes, they are individual inputs with different “phasing”.

Hi! Can you please tell me the marking on the IC32 marking? Mine is blown and I need it to replaced it. Thank you.

Unfortunately for such small components you need soldering tweezers like those used in expensive Hakko soldering station. Also use low-melt leaded solder to lower the melting point so it'll be easier to take off the components. Be prepared to spend $500 on them. Buy nice or buy twice.

Very imprissive with your deductive logic well done

I know what ya mean about needing closure. I once had a 1st gen segacd that had odd lines all through the screen during fmv scenes and would be missing other onscreen items. At first I figured it was leaky caps,but they didn't fix it,then I thought it was the zip ram and again that didn't fit it.i spent probably a year looking over it every so often testing things here and there but never could figure it out. Even tho I had cleaned the board multiple times and went over it many many times even with a microscope what ended up fixing it was poring a crap load of ipa everywhere and scrubing the hell out of it. I was over the moon when it finally worked correctly. I guess some Corrosion happend out of sight and dumping the ipa over the entire board out of frustration dislodged it..

The board is burning because the material is fiber mat. It is sensible to longer heat transfer. This is why the board is wave soldered.

add leaded solder prior to removing smd components with hot air. Pb free solder has a higher temp required for flow, but will mix with leaded solder.

I added the 600th like. HOORAY FOR VINCE

I'm glad to see this!

everytime he say bridge rectifier i go like electroBOOM ;))

My old one (160 FR) was not working for a reason i got a new l160 ER) and still isnt working what did i do wrong? Is it the cord or is it the new power supply i bought pls let know?

Hi. Any know the name of the Q9 MOSFET?

You are right. Once the top layer has delaminated from the board, all the heat you add has nowhere to go. From that moment its just a very thin layer hanging "in mid air", so similar to a piece of paper it will start to burn up, way before the solder had had time to melt. You _might_ have had more luck with a soldering iron from the moment it popped off, but as you said, of course it did not really matter much. You might also have heated it up too quickly, leading to the delimitation in the first place. The top layer heats up, but has poor heat conductivity into the body of the board. With a high enough temperature difference between it and the board, the top layer expands enough to rip off from the bottom. If you were to heat up the whole thing slowly, keeping the temperature differential small, you'd probably be fine. You could do that from the bottom by placing the whole thing onto a heating pad.

I dont know but I think it's some sort of glue at you see thay all have a brown line in the middle of them and the chip ?

that diode was glued in look @ the ic next to it it has red blobs under it that is why it took a little force to take it out

What is the part number of the 450v 68uf electrolytic capacitor?

You can remove caps without hot air station, melt on side and lift it up with hot iron, then the other will come out easy.

The red You see under the parts are glue , The manufacturers use it to hold the part to the board when they wave solder the board , you must heat the board just to the solder melt and then twist the part off the board

All power supply uses bridge rectifier or 4 diodes which are the same. it is for converting AC to DC. No transformers provide DC

I have a question, you probably answered in another video but it would be easier to ask. What hot air station are you using, to remove compnents on board, thanks.

I honestly could not tell whether this is trolling or not :-D Reminds me of the "Dangerous LED" video that Big Clive did. Good job :-)