Hi! I wanna know if I transfer a psu from its original case to a acrylic case that I made would work fine ?? I think it need to be grounded so how can I do that with an acrylic box ...? thx!
theres a chance you may run into problems, just get the acrylic covers that covers most sides of the PSU
i think maybe you should ask in electronics. as far as i know, the idea of grounding is to allow electricity to flow through to the ground, to prevent buildup of charge, so acrylic being an insulator would therefore be bad. the major problem i can see you having is a buildup of static due to airflow, which might screw with the psu.
If you check the points where the original boards were bolted to the chassis, you should be able to see if the bolt was conducting from the board to the chassis, or if it was insultated. On my old (burnt out) Antec 250W power supply, the circuit board has 4 screws that mount it to the chassis. 3 of these 4 mount points have exposed solder that is obviously intended to provide a ground to the circuit board. It also has a green wire that goes from the "incomming power" ground to the chassis, but this serves to ground the entire chassis, not just the PSU chassis. I suspect that the easiest way to make this work, would be to leave the bottom tray of the PSU in tact, and just build the top and 4 sides from plexi. If your bent on going straight plexi, try wiring some small ring connectors together, and placing one at each point where the PSU circuit board used to contact the chassis, then connect it to the ground wire that comes in from the wall plug. Take note of other circuits in the system that use the same type of grounding setup... I don't know off hand it the mainboard, add-on cards, or disk drives use this technology, but I doubt it... after all, aluminum chassis are not the best way to conduct a ground... and all those systems have a dedicated ground wire in the DC circuit anyways. Good luck! -TZ
Acrylic will NOT be grounded, since it does not conduct electricity. Here's the thing: the primary way a computer is grounded is through the mains plug. But you'll have to make sure that the ground wire inside the PSU is connected directly from the PCB to the plug socket. The PC will work if it's not grounded BUT...it's a Very Bad Thing. If there's any sort of short at all, it's going to go straight into all of the components and probably fry all of them. And if you touch the PC at this point, you'll get shocked...and could end up in the ER (or worse.) If you want to do it, by all means, do it. Just make ABSOLUTELY sure that the PSU is grounded! And please be careful when opening up your power supply! Those capacitors contain enough voltage to potentially kill you, even if the PSU isn't plugged in (capacitors are sort of like batteries, in that they can store a charge for up to two weeks or longer.) Honestly, my recommendation would be the same as the previous posters to use one of the premade acrylic covers. It'll still show everything that needs to be seen, but you won't be doing anything more than replacing three sides of the PSU. Thus, you won't potentially defeat any grounding.
Well, thx for all your reply!! Maybe I could just cut the aluminium bodom side where the pc board of the psu is attached ?? This way, I could put this plate of aluminium inside my acrylic box !? Thx alot !
All of your components have grounds attached to them, not including their connections to their cases. By grounding their cases it helps to cut down on EMI radiation. That is the main purpose of the grounds being connected to the case, not to provide the actual ground that the circuits use. Thats the way I've always understood it. Also, acrylic is capable of carrying a charge. Have you never felt the built up static charge you can get from working with acrylic? Never seen it draw a piece of paper to itself, or the hairs on your arm? It wouldn't hurt to ground the acrylic too.
Sorry but I don't understand very well... I have a little bit of difficulties with my english ... So what are the solution ? I can give you pics of my acrylic psu box and my psu pcb card if needed to describe something...
I've been thinking about this some more, and I've come up with this: Many of the system components are not actually grounded through the chassis intentionally. Back in the day, I had a "AT" motherboard that used nylon spacers to space it off from the chassis... NOT REGULAR screws. So it was not touching the case or being grounded by anything other than the AT power cables from the PSU. I've seen plenty of hard drives and CD Drives that use plastic rails so that they can be quickly removed from the chassis without tools.... because there is no metal contact, they are not being grounded either. I think your perfctly safe to run the ground wire from the power cable to the grounded pad (where the PSU circuit board touches the PSU chassis) on the PSU's circuit board, and perhaps just for kicks, make sure it touches the acrylic too. So three acceptable solutions I can give you are: 1) buy an acrylic cover that simply replaces your stock PSU cover 2) cut the case of the PSU apart so only the bottom remains, then build an acrylic case around that. 3) place it in an entirely acrylic case, and wire a ground strap to the PSU circuit board to prevent a static discharge. I'm going to be building an acrylic case for my next system (probably in a year or more)... and I'm going to do option #3.
Yes you can, just hook all your PCB ground points under the board to the main ground pin It looks like this once finished, well i hope yours looks better lol You can e-mail me if you need help. kobalt@videotron.ca On the case
