COMMON FETS IN SOUTH AFRICA

#98 Commonly available MOSFETS in South Africa

When looking for affordable and commonly available MOSFETs in SA I came across a few candidates.
Now there are mostly big tradeoffs with N-channel logic level MOSFETs however, I find that most of the time I use them instead of relays for slow switching applications.
Most of my projects have not been using PWM so I have not had any issues using the logic MOSFETs . And I find that I use the N-channel MOSFETs almost all the time.

“real fet” characteristics
“fake fet” characteristics


Finding MOSFETs with decent specs for a decent price was quite tricky but I found a sweet spot with the IRL520N now there’s always the chance of getting fake chips and I might have fallen victim to this but the “fake chip” had specs that were quite close to the “real chip” in a comparison I did between two chips. The fake one also had a slightly larger and glossier form factor.

“real fet” left and the “fake fet” right

These are my top 3 N-channel MOSFETs which are common

  • IRL520N
  • IRLZ44N
  • IRFZ44N

I would like to add some honorable mentions as well. These N-channel MOSFETs are either not common stock with the online stores I use or are way to expensive for a hobbyist however sometimes they are mandatory requirements for specific projects.

  • IRF3710
  • IRF540N
  • IRF3205

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