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In the past year I've had over 4 "out of warranty" PSUs die on me. A 750w Silverstone, 450w and 480w Antecs, a 400w Enermax and a few no name ones.

So now I've got a box of dead PSUs and I'm thinking, there's got to be a particular component that's responsible for a large portion of the failures.

And yeah, I've heard all the "Deadly Internal voltage" warnings etc. I always wait a day before opening one up, but I've pulled apart quite a few to recover the fans, so now I'm looking to actually repair them.

There are a number of possibilities, including dirty power at your location as the most likely suspect. Transients, harmonics and brownouts will reduce the lifespan of PSUs, and such anomalies can be caused by a number of factors including under-spec wiring, large motors being started, unfiltered VFD/inverter drives, other inductive loads such as UPS units, and more.

It's also possible that some component in your systems is causing an issue, such as component(s) with inordinately high leakage causing out-of-spec power draw and additional heat.

If your PSUs actually meet the ATX power design guidelines, then it's highly unlikely that anything inside your system is causing the problem. Power supplies are supposed to be built with a very large number of protections that would prevent it from being damaged (and prevent it from damaging anything). I would be very suspect of the power going into the PSU, though. It may be wise to invest in a small UPS that provides power conditioning.

old but still valid.

My experience is bad caps or bad fans causing heat and switching transistor failures.  It is usually not worth attempting to fix a PS below 700W. 

http://www.mikesarcade.com/cgi-bin/spies.cgi?action=url&type=info&page=psrepair.txt

the common component is the pilot.  Purchasing under powered cheap PSU's.   most psu are advertising peak wattage, not constant wattage output.

buy SeaSonics and be done with it.  

i have a bunch of these..  2 to a big rig: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151087

Buy a voltage conditioner. I have one for all of my machines.

Get an online UPS if you're paranoid. How did those PSUs die?. Open them up(properly discharging capacitors, I'm not responsible for death) and use your nose to try to localize a burnt component. Normally when I repair PSUs I see capacitor failures, normally that's the only thing connecting PSUs, hot environments reduce capacitors lifespan, and some Antec PSUs are known to have bad capacitors. 

They also leak their charges out naturally, especially if a sane designer included a shunt resistor of appropriate value.

Months? I did not know that and did open a few PSUs. Am I lucky to be alive?  ;D

How do you properly discharge them then?

Only two very big capacitors at the input stage (220v) are dangerous.

Good news is the capacitors do not hold much charge; you can short-circuit them with a screw-driver. There will be some small sparks, but not much. Of course do not hold the metal part of the screw-driver, or you will be screwed.

These capacitors are nothing compare to audio capacitors (10000 uF+); they can explode like mini grenades

slightly off topic: When I was younger I was taking apart a disposable camera with a flash... Well somehow I touched something on this camera and it blew me away, about 6 feet away on to my back.... My hand was covered in blisters.

I read that before, the author said "I repair lots of power supplies and it's really quite easy and practical" but I felt the opposite after further reading...

Bear in mind that it was written in sometime around 1998.

The common denominator there is all those PSU's are crap or underpowered. No offense.

The Antecs are great budget PSU's for casual rigs but high temps and high draw will shorten their life up a lot.

Number one thing you need when mining is good power supply. I've stuck with PC Power and Cooling and their seven year warranty and they'd yet to have to help me because they are all still working as advertised.

yes, nowadays we just send those crap back to China as scrap metal and they'll take care of it for us :)

Just disconnect the fan from the PSU controller and connect it directly to the 12v so it's always spinning at 1500+RPM...  I find heat to be a big killer

The main thing I found is to keep at or below 70%  of the PSU's max output.

If you need 700 watts,use a 1000 watt PSU,at least  ::)

I had an 800 watt Kingwin,2 1/2 years old when I started mining with 2 6970's.My system,while mining used 640 watts.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121026

Guess what,it lasted about 3 months.I RMA'd it (3 year warranty) & they sent me a 1000 watter.No more problems  ;D I even use less wattage,only 25 watts,but less is better.

Thier RMA process was confusing,so I complained about it & said I was going to buy another PSU (1000 watter) from another manufacturer if we couldn't work this out.

2 weeks later,after sending my dead unit back,I got a package,but they upgraded it to the 1000 watter for the "inconvienence"  8)  

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121037

They even called a week later to make sure I was happy  ;D

BTW,I've used about 7 Kingwins in gaming builds & none have died,2 of them are going on 4 years old  ;)

if you use SeaSonic, you dont have to worry bout % of use. it is rated at the advertised wattage for 100%uptime

Hey, did you check the continuity of the fuse that is in your PS?

really? did you figure out what it was. does someone know?

Well derp, you can still do that today, if you can find a store that sells disposable cameras with a flash. The capacitor is usually a 450 volt rating, and it will give you a decent jolt. I've often taken such cameras apart after they have had all their film shot, and liberated them of the flash mechanism. The film canister is still sealed and can be turned in for processing, it won't be ruined by you opening it.

If you do it right, you can re-use the charging circuit and repeatedly get some cool sparks from the cap using a screwdriver. However it will ruin cheap screwdrivers by cutting into the metal because of the heat from the spark.

Antec TruePower TP650 died on me. When I plugged it in, I could hear a click and nothing. Upon opening the PS, I realized that there was a short circuit in the big coil on the top LEFT corner. https://i.imgur.com/6vYr9.jpgs

The epoxy glue stuck to the coil and a plastic sheet had melted and become carbon due to the heat. Somehow the glue reacted with the enamel on the coil windings and removed some enamel and the carbonized glue was creating the short circuit. I scraped away all the black deposits and washed it thoroughly with IPA, and the PS was good again. Just a heads up for the adventurous.