Dell :: HOW-TO: Repairing A PA-13 (130w) Power Brick
Jan 27, 2008
Well many people seem to suffer from the dreaded brick Failure, I have had a few go crap, and many of those failures usually were traced back to a broken wire in the DC cable assemly. If you wiggle the cable in the area if the strain relief you can usually hear the crackling sound.
I usually find it breaks in the strain relief - See attached Picture.
Fixing this can be easily done with a few items, there are a few little challanges as well.
1. Soldering Iron & Solder
2. Solder Sucker (removing tool) or Solder Wick
3. Wire Cutters
4. pliers, Small Screw drivers
5. Volt Meter (DVM)
6. Electrical tape
If you see Picture 1 of the plug, I just wanted to point out the typical barrel type connector used in the Dell laptops 6000/6400/9400/M1710 Etc.
There are 3 wires to connect here, The Out side Barrel is the Negative supply, The inside Barrel is Postive, and the inside Tip is a Voltage Sense.
I have added some new Pictures to show the inside of the PA-13 brick.
You can see the three connectoins on the bottom side of the board. The spacing is tight, and you can easily solder across two pads, checking for solder bridges is important
Please note, the spaces are small, and you require good eyes, a magnifying glass would help, and some soldering skills.
After your soldered the new connections careful inspection to check for any solder bridges is required.....
As I'm about to upgrade my Inspiron 9400 to a 7950 GTX GPU and quite probably 4 gb of ram soon, I've read that I will need a new Power Adapter since 90W won't be enough.
My question is: Is PA13 (130W) enough? Everywhere I look on this forum, they say you should get a PA13 (130W) or a PA15 (150W)...
Is there any reason to get the PA15 (150W), because if not, there would be no reason to pay more for extra power if you don't need it. In that case, why mention de PA15 (150W) at all?
It sounded like a mouse or something chewing/clawing away at something. I freaked out I searched the entire room and finally narrowed down the sound to my damn power adapter.
It was making a sort of clicking/ light scratching noise. It's still doing it, is this normal, this is the first time I've heard it.
It sounds like there are some dodgy sellers for the Dell power supplies, at least on ebay, based on some discussions. If anyone has purchased a 130W PS and feels like they could recommended the seller I'd appreciate the tip. If posting an ebay or retail link violates forum rules then just PM me.
I would like to bring this to attention for the community, as it recently happened to my SXPS1647. This happens with the 90w brick and only on certain firmwares. The proc in my system is the core i7 620m.
One night just before bed i closed the lid on my laptop to put it to sleep and then turned off the TV, but then i heard a strange high pitched sound coming from the laptop area. I went back and investigated and there was a strange sound coming from the power brick. The best way I can describe it is the sound of electricity moving, a wave like sound that gets higher and lower pitched. Very concerning, so I call Dell and tell them the problem they send a new motherboard and ac adapter.
The dell tech comes to my house and says that's the strangest thing he has ever seen/heard. So he tries the new ac adapter and same sound so he replaces the mobo. With the new mobo the sound is not present, so im happy. But the computer was throttling really bad so i decided to check the bios with CPUZ and it was A01. I decide to update the bios to get rid of the throttling issues, A05 update went nicely but as soon as I restart the system the magic high pitch sound has returned. The previous mobo had the A04 bios when it was making the sound.
I recently read the whole 90w vs 130w ac adapter and wonder if that has anything to do with this issue?
If your battery is mostly drained and you plug the thing in, within minutes the brick gets so hot that I'm afraid to let it sit on any surface, much less touch it.
I thought it might just be a defective piece so I got a replacement power adapter and it gets just as hot as the other one. Has anyone else noticed this?
So I'm about to get my XPS 1647 today. I don't plan on gaming too much, so I don't know if I'll hit these throttling issues, but..
How do I know if my system is throttling or if its just running as fast as it can? Does the 90W power brick heat up? Is there some system monitor I can check?
The power supply they sent is not only the wrong wattage rating, it also won't even FIT into my laptop's power input.
I emailed them, and they won't even replace the thing.
"I reviewed your order details and I see that 65 Watt power supply is listed on your order details therefore we are unable to send you the 90 Watt power supply as per
Dell's Exchange guidelines, an exchange could be done for like to like items only."
Just got one of these, and the power brick is well erm.. a brick!
I need / want to get a third party one that is hopefully smaller, so does anyone know of one suitable? or, if not.. know of what i should be looking at to try and find one?
Is it normal for the power brick to get hot? When I say hot I mean, it's so hot I'm afraid to leave it plugged in and go anywhere. I just got my system the other day but really haven't messed with it so far (except for making sure everything was up to par.) Today I started getting into everything, clean install, etc and I noticed like after 10 minutes of it being plugged in (120 watt brick) the brick was so hot it felt like my heating pad on high. I've never experienced this before, is this normal?
I have a Dell Studio 1558 and I have some concern about my power brick. The brick itself makes a light sizzling, buzzing or light crunchy noise which isn't continuous, but is causing me concern. The computer itself, also makes a similar noise when doing stuff like scrolling down a page in an internet browser. Every time I press the down arrow and it loads new images, it makes a brief sizzling noise.
When my computer was brand new I brought this up with tech-support and they gave me a new power brick but the noise never went away. I took a day off work to stay at home and waited for a tech to come to my house so I haven't complained about it since then. It seems to be an intermittent issue, some days its worse than others, and I've had this computer for about 2-3 years now.
Have there been any recalls on the power supplies for my computer? Aside from making a noise, I haven't noticed any decline in my computers performance, I'm just worried about it shocking me or frying some of the components inside the computer!
my power brick making a clicking noise and the LED light sort of flickering in conjunction with the noise. Does anyone else have this issue? I'm not sure it's a problem, but I'm worried that it might be.
I have been looking online and getting mixed results regarding buzzing noises from ac power adapters. My old hp dv6000 laptop powerbrick did not make buzzing noises as loud as my new dv6-1235cl from costco.
I noticed that a lot of people now hear buzzing noises from their ac adapter. Then I came onto this website.
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Is this a bunch of bs or are they for real?
I can hear the buzzing noise when I put my ac adapter on the table, but almost non existent when its on the ground. I want to know if this will be a fire safety hazard in the future? I dont want my house burning down even when this thing is plugged in.
I have a DELL XPS 1530 Laptop, a few days back my 90W AC adapter stopped working and beeped continuously and the green light also didnt turn on. I gave the adaptor to a local electronic shop to get it repaired .
After getting it repaired I plugged it to the laptop and it charged normally upto 48% and after that the battery did not charge. Then on reboot a message is being display that "
The Adapter wattage is not recognised please connect a 65W DELL adaptor"
I'm another person suffering from a duff m1330. I was using it last week for some light web browsing and the screen just randomly froze and faded to white (there were some colourful vertical stripes also). I know that this is something todo with the GPU because it happened before.. luckily i was within warranty and an engineer came out and swapped the motherboard.. but that was like 2 years ago and i am not in warranty anymore.
When i try to power it on, i just get a blank screen, there arn't any booting noises. I've tried running the powerbutton+'d' key LCD test and that works alright, so I know it isn't the display.
I have also tried removing the battery, holding the power button for 30seconds then restarting. This worked last week and the system booted up and i assumed everything was ok but then it failed again a day later. strange.
I performed the copper-mod ( Dell XPS M1330 - nVidia GeForce 8400M GS - Copper Mod) yesterday in the hopes that that might help something .. but i'm guessing the GPU has already been cooked by this stage, if thats what it is.
Anyway, my next thing to try is replacing the motherboard. Does anyone know a good place to source one? Or have any other suggestions of what might fix it?
Are there any newer motherboards that would fit in the M1330 case? cos i'm thinking if im replacing the mobo anyway, might aswell get a better one and a faster processor.
I just recieved a PA-13.. My comp gives me an odd dos screen saying it dosent recognize the power adapter... Is there something i have to do to make it recognize..? or should it be automatically recognized..?
I have a 9400 and i was planning on putting a fx-2500 vid card in tonight... Whats wrong here..?
I have a Dell Latitude E6400 which uses Dell's 90w Charger PA-10 which is a 90w 4.62A and 19.5V.
I have been looking for a second power supply, but before I drop the money on a new one. I also have an old Inspiron which uses a the 130w Dell Charger, it is a 6.7A power supply, and the same 19.5V as my Latitude Charger.
Could I use this charger with my Latitude without causing damage? I am just a little concerned about the Amperage being higher than my current charger.
Using my inspiron 2330 (only 18mths old ) as normal next thing it tells me it encountered fault and has to reboot anyway it keeps saying scanning and repairing drive (c) then does not allow me to log in so i manage to get into bios to do a scan and it guves me a error code of 2000-0142 validation code of 112406 and and then says harddrive 0-s/n wd-wmc152946178
When i finally manage to log in my desk top screen is flashing and keeps telling my hard drive fault ....
guys, can I use the new 210watt power brick with the M6300? and does it weigh less, or is there an after market solution outthere?
I still occasionally use an old 90watt brick but just for short times as it gets hotter than hell.
I'm trying to cut down travel weight, hence the new brick.
Looking ahead I think my next laptop would be something like the M4500 (dropping down a size for mobility) or something from HP. I don't game on laptop anymore, well nothing more than old titles, so just need fast CPU and good screen and something better than integrated.
my HDD, when idle, makes access noises every 2 or 3 seconds. The noise sounds like normal HD access noise (like a watch tick), but in a quiet room it can be very annoying after a while. If it was not for the fact that the HDD light does not light up when the noise occurs, I would assume something was accessing the HDD every few seconds or so.
If I used HDPARM, I can kinda stop the noise by setting the drive to 254. TO be honest though, I'm not really sure what this is doing.
The issue is really annoying as a) everyone just says drive failure, but I don't think it is, and b) it seems to be HUGELY common. Some people say it is headparking, but why would a system park heads every 2 seconds?
Has anyone had this issue fixed by having their HD replaced? I cannot stress enough that the "ticking" is not loud and, unless you were in a quiet room you would never notice. It sounds exactly like access sounds, but just every couple of seconds.
I just updated my laptop to bios A09 and it froze part the way through the update, needless to say the worst happened and the laptop no longer powers up ,
after some googling i have found others who have had this problem and have also bricked there laptops.
Please beware when or if you use this update as it could happen to you. The good news is Dell are picking it up tomorrow and are replacing the motherboard under warranty
Looks like my original 90W gave up the ghost. Lucky I have access to a couple in the meantime, but need to get a new one, prob off ebay. (not looked yet)
Any reason or benefit from say 130w - 150w Bricks?
I bought this laptop to ease my sense of dispair when im away from my pc - however it seems to crash about once a month and then stop working for a while... like a week and eventually it just recovers completely for another month? im guessing it has something to do with built up static or something? im not big on laptops.. a lot of the time it seems fine but then when i open up WoW it crashes up again
also if i have it closed while listening to music or something it constantly makes this "dudu" noise as though theres some important notification but nothing on screen and it makes it like every 15 seconds but just randomly...
I have a Dell Latitude D800 that will not power on. When the power button is pushed the green power indicator light comes on, the CDROM spins for a moment, but then nothing happens, there is no BIOS information displayed, no power on self test, no Dell logo. It just sits there with the green power light on.I have tried removing the power & battery then pressing the power button for 10 seconds (actually, I have tried as long as 60 seconds). I have tried to turn on with the power connected but not the battery. I have tried removing the connector cable for the power button and the connector cable for the display and then reseating them.
