These days, it’s super-easy to jump onto the World Wide Web to find purported replacement parts using nothing but the part identifier, whether it’s from a reputable source like Digikey or Mouser or from more general digital fleamarkets like eBay and AliExpress. It’s hardly a secret that many of the parts you can buy online via fleamarkets are not genuine. That is, the printed details on the package do not match the actual die inside. After AliExpress-sourced MOSFETs blew in a power supply repair by [Learn Electronics Repair], he first tried to give the MOSFETs the benefit of the doubt. Using an incandescent lightbulb as a current limiter, he analyzed the entire PSU circuit before putting the blame on the MOSFETs (IRFP460) and ordering new ones from LCSC.
Buying from a distributor instead of a marketplace means you can be sure the parts are from the manufacturer. This means that when a part says it is a MOSFET with specific parameters, it almost certainly is. A quick component tester session showed the gate threshold of the LCSC-sourced MOSFETs to be around 3.36V, while that of the AliExpress ‘IRFP460’ parts was a hair above 1.8V, giving a solid clue that whatever is inside the AliExpress-sourced MOSFETs is not what the package says it should be.
Unsurprisingly, after fitting the PSU with the two LCSC-sourced MOSFETs, there was no more magic smoke, and the PSU now works. The lesson here is to be careful buying parts of unknown provenance unless you like magic smoke and chasing weird bugs.
This is Hackaday, we are hackers, so of course we “like magic smoke and chasing weird bugs” – but only on our terms – like when we know we are experimenting with something we don’t fully understand or testing out “known-suspect parts” – not as a surprise from an “I thought this was a legit part” counterfeit.
AS FAR AS MY EXPERIENCE GOES MOST OF THE SEMICONDUCTORS FROM ALIEXPRESS IS FAKE.
Well I can’t say that as the microcontrollers I’ve ordered were fine. They obviously sent you a broken Caps Lock key though.
I wouldn’t say lcsc is too reputable as they do some shady stuff themselfs. They were/are selling some xilinx xc9572 they werent supposed to sell: https://x.com/SMDprutser/status/1720177005717524624?t=vu5NrlYUmaWpagnskrnbaw&s=09
I still love them for the chinese brands they carry, also the yellybean stuff seems ok.
I don’t personally think selling genuine parts they sourced outside of the manufacturers order sheet is shady when access to new chips is increasingly accompanied by a large contract of do’s and don’ts. I’m sure the manufacturers don’t appreciate it, but as a consumer I would rather have access to small batches of cool new stuff than not. That also means I carry no water for LCSC, Mouser, Newark, etc as their interests only partially align with my own.
If you are going to compare a counterfeiter’s haven like aliexpress or ebay(from china sellers) to a more legitimate source, I wouldn’t compare to LCSC. Lol
I’d like to share my experience with aliexpress purchasing. when buying modules or finished products, I prefer to choose specialty stores that focus specifically on those items, as they are generally more reliable. In contrast, I avoid stores that sell everything, as they are often associated with counterfeit goods or may not ship the items at all. For components like LED, resistor and capacitor, I would unhesitatingly choose reputable brands like mouser and digikey, as these manufacturers don’t sell directly and counterfeiting is very prevalent.
It is very strange that in 2024 someone still does not know that buying semiconductors (and other components) on Aliexpress is a very dubious enterprise. Of course, there are official stores of Chinese manufacturers where you can buy the original. But there are few of them and you can also make a mistake: the seller can lie that he is official.
In all honesty i really have not had any trouble with AliExpress semiconductors. I have come across a store though that sold modules that were probably factory rejects due to say a wrongly designed pcb or a wrong part soldered on.
When in doubt, I would treat all semiconductors from Aliexpress and most Chinese vendors on Ebay/Amazon and similar eshops to be fake. The only exceptions seems to be what they produce themselves, that is, if you buy a western branded chip, say a precision OpAmp, chances are that you’ll receive:
the real thing (almost never the case)
a legit factory reject that doesn’t follow its specs but may work in non demanding applications (quite rare today)
a relabeled similar part, for example a generic OpAmp that pretend to work (very common, all costly chips and transitors/j/mosfets are faked this way when possible)
a completely different part that they relabeled as a more popular one, which of course will never work (example: a LM358 clone labeled as a 8 pin microcontroller – this is also common for chips that don’t have a cheaper similar model; happens also with transistors).
a conveniently labeled piece of plastic with pins and no die. (happened in the past, more rare today)
Modules are a different story as they’re faster to check and it seems they almost always work, still they mostly employ working clones of the semiconductors, that is, do not expect that cheap XR2206 or 8038 signal generator to contain the real chip as production stopped decades ago; all NE5532 low noise preamps will contain a relabeled TL072 or similar inferior chip; all power and/or vintage transistors will be cheaper clones, all Arduino modules use working MCU clones, etc.
In most applications they do work, but never expect them to perform according to the original data sheet.
Moral of the story: buy parts only from legit vendors.
LCSC? I’ve bought a few cheap parts from them in the past and they were all OK, still I’d be very cautious to purchase costly parts from them anyway.
My preference goes to the usual ones: tme.eu, mouser.com, digikey.com etc.
We’ve had dodgy opamps from LCSC. They’re ok for cheap PCBs (JLCPCB) but that’s it.
i guess we still have digikey and mouser for electronic components but i’m pretty sad about the state of computer parts these days. newegg and amazon are thoroughly on the ‘federated’ model that degrades into an exact clone of ebay. the first casualty was parametric search — even when it works, it gives a bunch of duplicate listings for the same thing. but then you never really know the providence of what you’re receiving — used, QC reject, fake, warehouse/shipping damage reject, mis-described, no one knows. very frustrating. for a couple years now if i buy something, i swear to myself i won’t use newegg…but i just haven’t found a reputable alternative that has any variety at all.
it’s on my mind because i recently bought an intel wifi m2 board for my laptop, and i took the old atheros one out and put it in the handy-dandy compact packaging from the intel part. and i thought, “i should cross out ‘intel’ on the box so that i know what’s inside” but the box already doesn’t say intel! it just says “wifi” and then lists all of the specifications and frequencies of any wifi anywhere so it will hit the right mark no matter what’s inside.
i guess it’s just the maturation of the walmartification of commodities. somewhere there’s a substandard / knockoff version of the product and now everyone has to set their price point based on that knockoff and there’s no brand differentiation anymore.
This happens to most OEM products from far east that are labeled with a random brand, then relabeled after two months to give impression of different stuff being introduced on the market, or if the former brand ruins their image with a defective/crappy product.
Less and less true brands are producing their hardware today, unfortunately, but that is the price to pay to have …well… lower prices. Having a few manufacturers making most of the stuff means production numbers so huge that they can apply ridiculously low markups and still be profitable.
Are all these people buying this crap form entirely unregulated and obviously sketch-bag vendors the same that buy a genuine Guccci purse or Romex watch from down on Canal street then are surprised they got scammed? Seriously WTf.
I don’t know how much you bill your time for but if your trying to save $1 on an IC or voltage regulator or anything else then spend hours trouble shooting… you’re just screwing yourselves.
*you’re.
No. I buy cheap components off eBay, because I am just mucking about for fun. When there’s a good chance of me killing something anyway, I prefer to get ten for a fiver, rather than 1 for that price, and then have to pay for postage on top. You shouldn’t assume all impecunious people are credulous.
@Walrus said: “If you are going to compare a counterfeiter’s haven like aliexpress or ebay (from china sellers) to a more legitimate source, I wouldn’t compare to LCSC.”
Why? Have you experienced getting dodgy components from LCSC? I buy from LCSC from time to time and so far everything seems legitimate. Maybe I’ve just been lucky though.
However, those IRFP460 MOSFETS [Learn Electronics Repair] got from AliExpress have ancient International Rectifier logos on them. That’s a dead giveaway something is fishy. On 13 January 2015, International Rectifier was acquired by Infineon Technologies.[1]
International Rectifier
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Rectifier
I can’t defend any parts counterfeiters, but I’ve ordered literally thousands of parts (and modules) from several Asian sources over the past 10 years, many of which had no “legitimate” sources (at least that my Google-fu could locate). These didn’t go into critical systems and I never did parametric testing to ensure they were genuine, I found they suited the purpose intended and coming out of my personal budget were way less expensive where there were local suppliers. The only counterfeit part that I know I got was a “new old stock” chip for a retro computer and it came from a well respected source.
If I need something now, I’ll go local, but if I need “jelly bean” parts for my stock, I’ll go with a cheap supplier, if for no other reason than the local supplier shipping is typically more expensive than the parts themselves.
Consider the value of your time, even with a non-critical hobby application. Seems like the authorized distributor makes more sense, especially after you add in shipping.
Don’t need to spend more time because they mostly just work fine. China has free shipping, so adding that in just makes the local distributor even more expensive. It’s usually more than 10 times the price.
Now there’s one advantage of local distributors, and that’s shipping time. But hopefully you have some other projects to work on in the meantime. And it’s a nice surprise to get stuff when you have started to forget a bit about it.
haha i actually have a counterpoint
different kind of jelly bean: i bought a wheel, like a replacement for a wheelbarrow, from an extremely well-reputed local hardware store. it was for a mark 3 trailer for my bike (which is to say, there were two failed trailers before this one). the previous trailer failed because i didn’t engineer the wheel+axle assembly for the weight, so this was a big upgrade…i made sure everything was speced for the weight, instead of using a wheelset i found in a dumpster.
so i take it out on its maiden voyage and it performs beautifully at first but after about a mile one of the four ball bearings self destructs, so now as it rolls, one of the wheels is turning on two axes instead of just one…real wobbly, loud, obviously going to tear the rest of the trailer apart.
a real head scratcher for me. if i had bought the wheel at harbor freight (they do sell the same wheel at harbor freight), it wouldn’t’ve taken me 5 minutes’ thought: defective wheel, try another one. but since i bought it at the reputable store, i was thinking, the wheel is good but my design has somehow put an unacceptable force on this bearing. so it took me more than an hour of active investigation and months of calendar time (idle speculation) to convince myself one of the balls had simply split into shrapnel and left the bearing because of a manufacturing defect, a crack or similar.
and so i did eventually buy the new wheel, and now it has done i don’t know, a dozen trips, more than 50 miles. trouble free, solid, beautiful. by far the best trailer i have ever used.
so if buying from a reputable vendor saved you the trouble of testing and characterizing and troubleshooting the components, then maybe i’d only buy from reputable vendors. but believing in that mythology actually cost me more time. it’s hard saying what is best but believing in the myth is obviously not optimal.
I guess I’m too spoiled from working med and space projects…fake parts are a painful waste of my time; some of which I am paid for 🤠/
In prototypes I checked every damn part before the electrons are loosed!
I suppose I’m over the ‘smoke and mirrors’ part of the profession. Have fun if you can!
During the Covid mess, I had to find some Microchip DAC that became unavailable from the renowned distribution channels.
It is without fear that I turned to AliExpress because such parts cannot be substituted with inferior versions from anywhere. And if replaced with empty or unrelated parts, AliExpress is quite serious against cheaters, as I could experience it in some other occasion.
So, on the end it very much depends on what is the uniqueness of the part you search and whether there are options to substitute it.
I did not want to spend 25 minutes on a video for this, so skipped though most of it.
Looks like the firs 18 minutes is something about explaining how an SMPS works, then around 20minutes some gate threshold measurements and that’s it. No measurement of other parameters, no decapping of the FET’s to see what is actually inside them.
And he does not even use the ubiquitous and very nice transistor tester, but one of those overly expensive “peak” branded things.
I saw a video from Curious Marc recently repairing some old gear that needed some obscure chips. He got them from China and was suspicious but they worked perfectly. Is on of the latest videos from his channel. I some cases there is no other source and chips are fine, albeit a risk.
Anyone that hates on LCSC is a fool, trying to prop up US semiconductor businesses, with anti PRC rhetoric.
Basically US protectionism and Racism.
It’s sad, when US cost out culture has left buyer of US products paying too much for poor, good, or excellent products.