it's that time again:

[zwol]

Time for another episode of No User Serviceable Parts!

This time I'm not going to complain about self-tapping screws at all, nor am I going to have pro and con lists, nothing like that. This time I'm just going to ask you what's wrong with this picture.

Don't see it? Here's a hint.

Yes, that is a blob of epoxy, permanently bonding what would have been a detachable fan header to itself and also (perhaps not intentionally) the capacitor next door, thus forcing me to shell out $80 to replace the entire power supply instead of just $5 or $10 for a new fan.

What really infuriates me about this is, someone thought to make it a detachable fan header in the first place. They could have soldered the wires directly to the circuit board, but they realized that the fan tends to fail long before the rest of the power supply, so they specified a standard 120mm fan and a detachable header, so you could fix it. And then some other asshole came along and said no, we can't have that, epoxy it down!

Of course, person A didn't go far enough. The proper design would allow you to replace the fan without opening the enclosure that you're not supposed to open on pain of severe electric shock and/or loss of warranty. But then there would have been no episode of this show, and I suppose we can't have that, either.

Comments

[markgritter.livejournal.com]

Heh. I think the computer I'm using right now has its replacement power supply fan connected with electrical tape, but I think that was just due to no connector at all.

[zwol]

I did consider cutting the wires and splicing them, but I decided to go for the quick expensive fix, since I was going to have to go out and buy something either way.

Of course, then I discovered the hard way that not all power supplies have the special extra feed for my horribly overspecified video card, so I had to go back to the store and exchange the first replacement.

[brooksmoses]

An alternate cheap fix is a $2 X-Acto knife and a $3 pack of #13 saw blades, which would make short work of the epoxy blob.