Oh dear, after running the node without any issues for over 14~15 months the Synology power brick actually died 
on the worst possible day before new years and public holidays, I wont be able to get a replacement power brick for the synology NAS to bring it back online
RIP reputation and up-time #sad.
What’s the voltage and current rating of that power supply? Maybe you can figure out how to use a PC power supply temporarily.
It’s a 12V output with 8.33A
Was thinking if I could butcher the 4D cable connector and hook up the + and - to a 12V rail PCI-E plug… but… I don’t know how much Amps the output of the PC PSU would provide via the PCI-E cable…
It should work. a PC power suppy is powerful, so it should easily be able to provide 8.33A (~100W). Use all pins of the 6pin PCI-E power connector (3x positive and 3x ground, just parallel them) and the connector should not get too warm.
usually for power bricks i just find one with excess amps or very close to the old one atleast… usually it can be within 10% + -
then cut the plug for the device off the old power brick and place it on the new one… many things run on 12 volts, so should be a good chance you could find a power brick to repurpose…
ofc the voltage has to be exact… and pay attention that you get the polarity right.
if you cannot see the polarity the wire is usually marked with a line or color, you might also be able to measure the polarity on the old power brick, even tho it’s dead it will most likely put out voltage, it just cannot produce any amps without heavy voltage drops… usually
else i think the plug might also have some convention… like + on the inside and - on the outside … but not sure would have to look that up… atleast if its one of those common round connectors.
Yea, just need to confirm the polarity of the DIN cable + and -
Looks like a 2 wire cable. I suspect + on inside insulated then - on the outside then insulated. The 2 wires lead straight a 4 pin out 2 + and 2 -
didn’t consider it would be a 4 pin connector… i suppose they maybe use multiple voltages… ofc if only two wires come out of the power brick then … thats kinda weird… i would check the synology documentation / repair manual…
i suppose they might just like that they have multiple connectors to ensure a better connection… but that would usually also mean more heat… i mean if they make multiple smaller connections rather than one big one, or so i would think…
maybe it’s just for redundancy… cables connectors sure does tend to be a weak point… not sure i like the design tho… i mean the concept is okay for redundancy… but really… then would one even notice if only one connection in the power brick connector was powering the whole shebang.
which would increase resistance and heat over the working connector pins and maybe even created damage and atleast eventually burn out the power brick…
seems like a weird design.
like a storage engineer doing electrical design 
hooked it up to a lab power supply and supplied 12v and 5amp max to the unit.
outer cable is - and inner is +.
Will re-wire an old ASIC miner PSU that has only 12V output via PCI-E cables.
i might replace the connector is it’s only a two polarity connection… i don’t like the 4 pin connector for it.
it wouldn’t surprise me if that connector could kill the power brick, when it get’s loose or worn…
and if its just a plain 12 volt connection it makes no sense to use 4 pins
power bricks shouldn’t just die… ofc they might at times, for various reasons… but usually there will be a cause, and if synology power bricks have a tendency to die, then that could very well be why…
ofc i wouldn’t exactly blame them, the concept kinda makes sense… until one starts to think about the failure mode, which ends up being quite devastating.
atleast you got it working… so all is right
and take care you don’t burn out the lab power supply fuse or worse, since 5 amps might be kinda low balling it… wouldn’t be confident that it would survive that long term.
so i would try to get the other solution fixed today…
The lab PSU showed max amps for the 2 HDD’s spinning up hitting 2.3A So it was enough to power it up and I shut it down.
Soldering some wires atm repurposing some XT60 connectors I have sitting around.
I can’t change the 4pin as it’s direct to the synology NAS like that.
This ASIC 12V only PSU spits out 90 A
lol 90 amps does sound a bit outside the optimal efficiency spot but hey whatever works for a temporary patch.
i’m sure it’s fine… tho when you are making a final fix or getting a new power brick… if it was me i might test the connection of that connector… see if there is an issue with it… or atleast check a bit on it online, see if others have had issues with it or if it’s common their power bricks just up a die…
but it maybe something so simple as their power bricks might be a bit to small or to cheap, who knows… i do think it’s kinda weird it should just die tho… i know it happens… but it’s just so rare imo… i generally always want to look for another cause than just random chance…
i really hate that 4pin connector… lol ofc they may use it to make the connections inside more easy… i would suspect something like maybe an 4 PIN 12V ATX connection on the system / motherboard and then maybe just soldered to a connector in the back… would make for ease of assembly, using common components… and maybe they could get the 4pin connectors for cheap…
i hate the choice of it tho… i’m sure there are plenty of room inside, ofc the power bricks might also be cheap because of the weird connectors, who knows.
i just hate it so bad, i would so suspect that was the failure point
if it was tho you should be able to see it… either on the inside or outside… it would have gotten quite hot i would suspect… ofc it won’t get any more hot than whats required to keal the power brick… so its not a certainty that it would have gotten that hot before giving out… but 100 watts is a fair amount of destruction in a small area.
i would expect it to have caused some visible heat damage… if it was due to a bad connection
Back online! But, yikes my uptime went down drastically from 100%
Hopefully I should be able to recover from this. Yes, I do have a replacement brick ordered.
Yea will definitely inspect the unit, but there is no dmg to the connector on the outside and everything looks normal, will pull it apart tomorrow to double check.
Quick search revealed these synology bricks tend to just die… which tells me that either the bricks are shit or they barely meet the minimum requirements… mind you I’ve only got 2 HDD’s so it’s not power demanding. The NAS ran 2years straight without problems. 14~15months running StorJ.
I’ll post some pics of my temp fix shortly
must have been offline for longer than you thought…
6.4% of a month so like 48 hours maybe, takes 30 days until the online score goes back up.
atleast you had the gear to take it on, wasn’t sure at the beginning if it was going to be a scissors, tape and twisted wires operation lol.
making an adaptor cable was a nice touch, looks like you do this quite regularly…
hahah, nah I definitely didn’t want to just twist tie and duct tape the wires together when there’s a lot of amps going through it. I didn’t have any simple crimp wire casings or whatever they’re called to just extend and join the wires together (would have been a 5 min job) so instead I decided to do a quick connector. It took a bit longer than I wanted but it came out nice. The connector is overkill as it is rated at 60Amps.
Honestly, I don’t do this often but I did make my own speaker wires once and will attempt to solder / repair my own electrical equipment if it’s a matter of just replacing a blown component etc.
Yea, it might be possible that it was offline for much longer than I noticed and I didn’t receive any email notification which is a shame, otherwise I would of picked it up sooner.
All my other devices connected to the UPS were running fine except the NAS completely powered down.
That temp PSU is probably pulling 500W ( don’t know how efficient it really is but could be a standard 85% PSU). Mind you I’m only using 1 PCI-E set of cables (3 + and 3 -), technically it’s not drawing much so I have no idea.
It will have to do for the moment until a replacement brick comes in 4 or 5 days.
100 watts isn’t that bad… if you think twisted wires are bad, then look at those feeble little 4 pins.
raw power connections isn’t the same as speakers connections… has to be very nice connections for speakers, if aiming for optimal audio quality, for power you basically just don’t want the cables or connections to get hot or be loose.
wires getting hot increases resistance and thus… makes them hot… so it can easily run away, but one can push pretty immense amounts of power through pretty small cables, especially if it’s short length.
think about that thin little wire in a glass fuse, sure it’s very conductive and such… so yeah if a little extra heat isn’t a problem and maybe some voltage drop… then a limit connection isn’t to bad… worst is the loose intermittent connections… because those sparks are just killers.
Just want to add a word of caution here… 100w is pretty damn bad if you have a bad connection. It could get hot fast. Please do it right and don’t start any fires. [end of PSA]
@Sasha, I’m not worried about your solution though. Looks solid!
As for the downtime, they just announced that suspension will be activated on the next update. But only at 60% uptime, so you’ll be more than fine! And disqualification won’t be enabled anyway. So you could have survived a lot worse.
This was my worry for a synology Nas, I wanted to be able to use my own PSU if it had ever failed. Synology has been notoriously bad with there power bricks and psu setups.
I suspect the brick got too hot and the hotter it gets the less power in Watts and Amps it can pump out, reading a few tech documents on other brick power supplies.
So if the ambient room temp or the brick is getting really hot, this must be the failure point. I don’t think it’s the cable connection itself as it sits snug and doesn’t move or wobble etc…
The new replacement is a 120W and 10A so it has some overhead 
