Assuming you could buy spare power boards from them, it might not be too bad.

You could keep a stock of 10-15% of them, and replace them as needed...  While one is getting warranty service, you swap in the spare.

Plus to be honest the failure modes of most power supplies are what - capacitor failures?

I can repair that myself.

Oh and internal power supply could raise the heat induced failure rate.  No longer is the power supply next to the unit with it's own large heat sink (the case)...

Now all that heat produced by the PS is more exposed to the ASICs.

Agreed.

Integrating the PS should reduce the cost, but not sure they'll be passing that onto us.

I think since he is in possession of one, the ASIC's are real and the miner is real.

That said I'm guessing the packaging may just be re-purposed Bitmain boxes.

While the ASIC development is huge...  Producing the actual system boxes, in volume, with a high degree of system reliability...  That's another thing.

Not that S9's don't suffer from (major?) heat failure issues?

Forgive me - I might have missed this in the conversation.  Are you in possession of it already and just need time to do a comprehensive test / assessment?

Thanks