19 Power Supply Round up on Anandtech!

[Adul]

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1841

In case you guys missed it

 

[Chaotic42]

Surprise, surprise.

PCP&C kicks ass all over the board. Especially in loudness. It's the winner!

 

[Schadenfroh]

heck, i always buy generic PSU. mine has been running flawlesly for over 2 years

 

[ArmchairAthlete]

Where's my "Austin" (no name?) one?

Oh well, it came with my case so it cost very little, and has worked flawlessly even with an OCed system. Couldn't afford to pay a bunch and buy one seperate.

 

[Mitzi]

Cheers for the heads-up. I'll read it at lunch and see how my TruPower 430 stacks up

 

[l3ored]

bah, you someone said the allied 400 watt was a good choice, now i read this...

 

[Corporate Thug]

this was a great article

 

[Acanthus]

agreed good article, they complained about Antecs pricing a little, but if you buy an Antec case it comes with a truepower PSU .

Edit: some are trueblues now as well.

 

[Corporate Thug]

i complain about antec and enermax pricing all the time as well but i alwas find myself purchasing them when putting together a system

 

[Czar]

yess, my sparkle does well

 

[magomago]

Originally posted by: l3ored
bah, you someone said the allied 400 watt was a good choice, now i read this...

I'm reading it right now and I was just about to buy the 400 watt Allied....so thank god this came out

but makes me wonder if it does bad why so many would reccomend it

 

[RalfHutter]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42
Surprise, surprise.

PCP&C kicks ass all over the board. Especially in loudness. It's the winner!

That's weird. The Anandtech PSU article I read gave the Fortron top honors ("Editors Choice"). The PCP&C "suprised them the most" but "sounds like a train" when running.

 

[randomlinh]

he was joking.

anyway, i'm a bit disappointed in my power supply (TT420)..... seems like it's not as good as people had recommended. It's starting to sound like a HD constantly reading too oh well... i hope more sites do something similar.

 

[John]

Originally posted by: l3ored
bah, you someone said the allied 400 watt was a good choice, now i read this...

I still stand behind my recommendation to use Allied psu's. Has it ever crossed your mind that a "weak & rare" specimen was tested? As with any other hardware that is ever reviewed, YMWV when using the actual product.

 

[pelikan]

I think the Fortron FSP-350BN is also a good choice. It powers my system very well and is cheaper than the model with the 120mm fan, or the 400W model.

 

[DurocShark]

Even though Allied has produced a lot of good power supplies in the past, this is not one of them.

It's a specific model/unit that doesn't meet expectations.

 

[Blooz1]

I'm still very happy with my $19 Lite-On from the deal at Directron earlier this year. Specs like a rock runnin' SETI 24/7, even through the recent heat wave. I just wish I had bought a couple more!

 

[Alkali]

I aint had anything go wrong with my Vantec Stealth 520Watt, I think its because I use the 5v more than most....

 

[zephyrprime]

I think this article sucks. There's no explanation of how the figures were arrived at. Are the figures tested or quoted? What's "combined theoretical"? Is it just the higher of the 12V and 5v lines plus the 3.3v line? How was "actual combined" determined?

And lastly, even though the Antec's don't have a combined rail, they should still have figures for max theoretical and actual wattage.

But I think the interference test was enlightening. It's the first of it's kind.

 

[bigpow]

Too bad they don't include some plain vanilla power supply for comparison.
I'd like to see how bad my Pro Source 480W is compared to Fortron.

 

[Dug]

I like those Fortron power supplies. Got one myself and its very quiet.

 

[jaeger66]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime
I think this article sucks.

Sadly, it seems AT is fully aware that they can now print pretty much anything, true or not, and people will believe it. The well deserved respect has unfortunately bred arrogance and sloppiness.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

2003 Power Supply Roundup Part II: Better Faster Cheaper
Review | Jul 31st, 2003 1:58 PM
Several months ago, we published our first power supply roundup. With a little more experience we took our second stab at the power supply industry, with over 18 units from vendors like Vantec, Enermax, Zalman and Antec.

:Q

- M4H

 

[Tab]

I agree with zephyrprime even though he was a total ass about it. What does combined theoretical, actual combined, advertised total mean to me? What should the perfect powersupply number be? I kinda wish we had a TruBlue Powersupply tested

 

[JPSJPS]

Kristopher ? I am not trying to be cruel but you are way out of your field of expertise.
You would do yourself a favor to find a technical person to work with you as you obviously are a nice guy who has a lot of energy and willingness to work and produce reviews.
This is brutal but, from an electrical engineering viewpoint, your review is a complete disaster. jaeger66's and zephyrprime's comments and critiques on the other hand are pretty much on the money. Also, most of your cutie explanations are amateurish at best and many are not close to being technically correct.
There are too many faults in this review to address all of them, but following are a few technical comments:

1) Wattages (page 20) ? Where did these test numbers come from? What test procedures and conditions? What do they mean?
It would be much more convenient to specify current for each voltage output since that is what we work with.

2) Your measurements (page 26-27) do not measure ripple! Ripple is the steady state AC signal riding on the DC voltage. The ripple frequency components are N times input AC frequency (N X 50 or 60 Hz) and N times the DC to DC switching frequency (N X maybe 100 KHz give or take a bunch).
Ripple is usually measured/specified as Peak to Peak AC volts.
Ripple is NOT "essentially the measurement of tolerances on a power supply". It is NOT caused by "natural and man-made interference". And, it has NOTHING to do with "AC signal coming in the power supply is never perfect"
It is not clear what you describe in your ?Ripple? chart on Page 26 and your ?Fan Control out of Place Ripple? chart on the next page. Those DC voltages are *WELL WITHIN* the ATX spec and should cause *NO* problems. In fact, those voltages are much closer tolerances than those I have measured in many PC power supplies.

3) DC Regulation is worst case DC output voltage variation while simultaneously varying input AC voltage, DC current load, and temperature over the full specified ranges. AC Voltage is varied between 90 & 135 VAC, DC load currents are varied over full spec, and temperature from +10° to +50°C ambient.
DC Regulation, as well as ripple, is very important.

Your statement on page 27 ?With a power supply running so far out of specification, the CPU cache, system memory and video memory are in serious jeopardy of corruption.? Is just plain *COMPLETELY WRONG*!
These voltages are *EXCELLENT* and not close to being out of spec.

This statement is half right: ?Newer motherboards attempt to purify signals coming on the motherboard to prevent catastrophic failure?.
In fact, critical operating voltages are regulated again on the motherboard to eliminate any problems due to ATX Power Supply voltage variations and voltage drop in the wires between power supply and motherboard rather than to prevent catastrophic failures.

3) Your ridiculous ?Interference? stuff on pages 25-26 is a something that you pulled out of left field. You have a great imagination but it does not belong in a technical article. There is no reason to conclude that these errors were caused by interference. Possibly some supplies handle input AC voltage transients better than others and these transients cause the problem. There are numerous other potential causes.

Following are a few references that are worth reading:
Download PDFs here:
http://www.formfactors.org/developer/specs/atx/atxspecs.htm
Especially:
http://www.formfactors.org/developer/specs/atx/atx2_1.pdf
http://www.formfactors.org/developer/specs/atx/atx12vPSDGV1.pdf
Antec specs (that they took off their site I used to visit):
http://www.lewisvpr.com/VPRlogin/US/clients/Antec/PressKit/truepower_US.pdf

Good luck in the future.