Definitely yes.
It also has strong +5v rail, good for even athlon xp systems (and I think that this PSU is from that era).

Go for it! Heroichi PSUs were considered good. You should be able to use it even on powerful Athlon XP systems.

I've always wanted to know why some ATX PSUs provide one AT plug, in which situations would that be useful?

Auxiliary connector, some pentium 3 systems and some early p4's and Athlon xp machines used it to provide extra +5 power to the motherboard.

Yeah, the most common place to find those AUX connectors are older SMP boards.

The large transformer will probably be a step-down transformer, if so, it would be for using the PSU with a 230V supply. I could go on a long winded tangent about efficiency and whatnot, but to cut a long story short, these were usually found in the better PSUs.

Yep worth the trouble of restoring it. Looks like a solid real-300W PSU, with a huge 30A +5V rectifier.

keropi wrote:

... not sure what the purpose of that transformer-like device on the separate metal sheet is ...

It's a large passive PFC (Power Factor Correction) coil, for the happiness of electrical companies.

From your point of view it's just an undesired heat generation device (they get hot), so I'd extirpate it and bridge the two points where it connects to the PCB with a piece of wire. Junk PSU makers know this trick well 🤣 .

ODwilly wrote:

Auxiliary connector, some pentium 3 systems and some early p4's and Athlon xp machines used it to provide extra +5 power to the motherboard.

HighTreason wrote:

Yeah, the most common place to find those AUX connectors are older SMP boards.

Thanks for the clarification, guys!

thanks all for the replies, looks like I have some work to do 😀

@TELVM
thanks for the explanation, that thing is going in the parts drawer 😉

edit: finished removing the caps, all these seem standard ones to me, no crazy specs here or low-esr ones , right?

Yep just the usual stuff. Quickly, kill those Fuckyyus with fire before they lay eggs! 🤣

The internals look like an inverted board-layout of the Antec PP303X, many of which I have recapped. Just make sure you use some nice, name-brand caps such as Panasonic, United Chemicon, Nichicon, etc. You don't have to use low-esr, (and in the case of PSU's you don't necessarily want to because too low of esr can affect how the circuit works in the PSU) but I would use something a little more low-esr than general purpose caps. And make sure you get 105 degree caps, not 85's.

In my case, I recapped a PP303X with (IIRC) Panasonic FM's and FC's. I've also used Samxon capacitors with good success, but those aren't as common to come by. Most people will tell you not to bother with the two, large filtering capacitors, but I always replace them, anyway with Panasonic TS-ED's which have very high ripple handling. Let's face it, the PSU is the core of your system--it affects how well everything else in the system works so why not make it super-solid?! It will also alleviate some of the ripple which reaches the CPU's filtering caps on the motherboard.

Back in the day I had an Asus P4PE which was running on a recapped PSU, and I opted to recap the motherboard with polymer caps (because I had a mess of them to repair motherboards in the future) and when I threw the board back in the system and booted back up, the system was always snappier at everything it did. And believe me you, anything to make one of those blasted 478 P4's run snappier was WELCOME!

(Just in case Keropi or someone else get tempted:)

Beware however that recapping PSUs with polymer caps may not be a good idea, as polys will FUBAR some PSUs.

See Hardware Insights - Poly-Modding: Does it actually work?

Awesome, thanks for the cap info 😀
As usual, getting good capacitors here is a problem so I'll need to order online. Does this capacitor seem a good replacement for the 2 large 680uf ones?
http://www.tme.eu/en/details/lgu2g680mely/105 … itors/nichicon/#

For the smaller ones I have a stock of chemicon caps, I'll just need to order the large values: 680/2200/3300uf ones that need to be slim to fit.

Yep Nichicon GU 200V 680uF (or higher uF) will do for the bulk caps.

For the secondary and small caps Nichicon PW, PM, or HE will do.

TELVM wrote:

(Just in case Keropi or someone else get tempted:)

Beware however that recapping PSUs with polymer caps may not be a good idea, as polys will FUBAR some PSUs.

See Hardware Insights - Poly-Modding: Does it actually work?

Not convinced it was the poly, or the massive drop in capacitance on the 12V (where the difference with polys was the worst) - if there isn't enough capacitance to absorb each "kick" from the switchmode, then it doesn't matter how low the esr is.

Power supplies, unless specifically designed to use polys, are not the appropriate place for a poly upgrade. Polymer caps are very fast, and would require all the circuitry behind them to be equally quick. The only place I've seen polys applied to a PSU are server-grade supplies, and even they don't use it on all rails. In the VRM circuit of a motherboard, behind a CPU you would normally half the value in capacitance because the goal here is only to smooth the incoming power.

Polys have been appearing inside quality modern consumer PSUs for some time now. The 2010-vintage Antec TP-650 that propels the PC from which I'm writing this already had several polys onboard (click to expand):

·····

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Antec/TP-750C/4.html

The ultra-modern, state-of-the-art Corsair AXi 1500 filters the +12V rail with polys:

But even that showpiece still uses lots of lytics:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Corsair/AX1500i/4.html

Thing is, as Logistics says the PSU must be specifically designed to handle polys.

On ancient half-bridge PSUs, like Keropi's HEC-300, recapping with polys is at best an adventurous proposition.

...damned minimum orders, a 5-7eur job ends up at 30+ :\
looking for alternatives like ebay atm

Φανος Ηλεκτρονικα doesn't send orders country-wide?

^ no page to order , I need to pick specific caps in dimensions (else they won't fit) and I can't just give a telephone order and receive Lelon caps 🤣

GeorgeMan wrote:

Φανος Ηλεκτρονικα doesn't send orders country-wide?

Only Greek tech-savvy guys will understand 🤣 .