This morning I had a problem with my server. After some diagnostics, I traced it down to the power supply. And, because I’m a little bit crazy (just a little), I went further.

Breaking the seal and opening a power supply will void the warranty. This should be obvious, and just in case it isn’t, they say so on the very seal I had to cut. Granted, this piece of electronics is almost seven years old now, so the warranty is long gone anyway. And I was curious. I was sure the power supply was where the fault lay, but I wanted to be certain.

At first glance, everything looked fine. A little dusty inside there, but nothing out of the ordinary for more than six years of service. Again, no smell of burnt electronics. No scorch marks. I was starting to think that I had opened it for no reason. And then I saw this, in the back, near the exhaust fan:

Two capacitors, both bulging, although the picture doesn’t really show that very well. I would have had to disassemble it a lot more in order to get a decent angle. But what you can see is that there is corrosion on one of the capacitors. Let’s zoom in:

Looks to me like it’s about to burst. I’m still rather glad that the power supply was smart enough to just turn off to prevent a bigger problem.

And as for luggage01, I stuck a spare power supply in (this one is only about three years old) and it’s happily processing away again. I may even get ambitious and upgrade the operating system while it’s got my attention. Fedora 9 is a little too old for my tastes…