Which PSU brands are best?

[QUOTH]

I've had two motherboards die on me, people have suggested it's the PSU.

Are there any brands that should be avoided? Any that you'd reccomend? Or is it just a case of throwing as much money as you can at one.

ocz, tagan, corsair, seasonic, antec, coolermaster, enermax, ect.


Also, will you ever need more than 700w if your only using one pci express card [no sli gaming]?

Q

 

[MarcVenice]

You can't completely rule out one brand of PSU's. Some cooler-master units aren't particularly good, but a different line, like the real power pro's, are real qaulity units.

No you won't need more then 700w for a single GPU gaming system, assuming you are also running a single CPU. But even then 700w should suffice. Anyways, just state your budget, and some people will give some nice suggestions. 500w is all you really need btw. This is a hot deal btw: http://www.buy.com/retail/sear...e&display=col&dclksa=1

 

[QUOTH]

Thats probably a good Idea

I'm looking for something modular. Running a single dual core processor and a 8600gts evga [yeah, a 4 pin molex power connecter. crazy evga] 2 dvd drives and 2 hard drives.

Plan Is to buy something good quality and with enough watts so I won't have to opgrade if i ever go for more hard drives oand graphics card upgrade. So 600w+ to be safe, modular if possible. I was thinking coolermaster realpower 620w modular.

I'm in the Uk so my shop of choice is ebuyer. [modular PSU's by price]

 

[MarcVenice]

You could buy here as well, no ? http://www.overclockers.co.uk/...=701&catid=123&subcat=

I'd get that one. No clue how 'good' the cooler master real power MODULAR units are. The real power pro's are qaulity units, but that doesn't say anything about these 'modular' units. Either get some more information from someone who does know if those modular units are any good, or just go with the 520hx, which is a proven unit, and is plenty of power for you.

 

[QUOTH]

Yup, but I like ebuyer, theres a few thing's I need off of there site, may aswell get them all at once.

So is the corsair HX series reliable/good? Or are you only vouching for the 520 non modular. This looks neat, even has pretty red stickers

 

[MarcVenice]

No 620hx is very similar, just capable of putting out 100w more. That would be a good pick to. It's 13 pounds more, which is why I picked the 520hx from overclockers.uk.co, which was 70 pounds just like the cooler master you linked to.

 

[QUOTH]

Weight dosen't bother me. It's on ebuyer and it's modular. It's a bit pricey but it should last. Any idea what corsair's warranty is like? how many years?

 

[QUOTH]

review of the coolermaster 620w modular

 

[MarcVenice]

Sterling pounds, is what I ment ? Pound sterling ? Like, great britain's currency ? Corsair's warranty is 5 years.

The review you linked to is worthless.

 

[QUOTH]

Pound sterling or Great British Pound [GBP]. I'll take a penny over a cent any day. [See the slang

Did you see the second page? Lol, thats all I could find. Ive no idea what to look for, obviously.

 

[jdkick]

I have always been happy with Enermax.

 

[HOOfan 1]

Originally posted by: jdkick
I have always been happy with Enermax.

Yet here recently Enermax's reputation is going down due to numerous Libertys going BOOM

 

[tomoyo]

Still speculation at this point, but I get the feeling the new enermax models will be a lot more reliable than their liberty series. The high efficiency and all japanese caps must help in some form. we'll see in a year or so though...

I hate that reliability cannot really be determined until years after the fact

 

[Puffnstuff]

I've used enermax for several years. I really like the galaxy unit in my machine. I recently had a liberty 620 let go in my youngest sons machine which took out his mb and dvd-rw drive however it left everything else functional. I replace it with an ocz model. I have another machine using a liberty 620 and this weekend it will get replaced by a coolermaster model. I'm sorry but I've lost faith in the lower enermax models. I would buy another galaxy but not anything less.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Originally posted by: tomoyo
The high efficiency and all japanese caps must help in some form.

Higher efficiency will reduce operating temps, but using Jap caps is mostly marketing.

The temperature of caps in a PSU rarely hit anywhere near 85°C and there's lots of 105°C Taiwanese caps out there that are just as reliable as the Japanese ones. Thing is, people started taking notice of caps when they started failing on motherboards left and right about five years ago. And then the icing on the cake was the epidemic of Antec's with swelling Fuhjyyu caps. At that point, people just became "Japanese or nothing!" when it came to cap selection.

FWIW: I've yet to see an Enermax with failed caps. Even when they use those crappy no-name Chinese caps. When they fail, it's typically a rectifier on the primary side blowing up. Caps survive outside of some char marks from the exploding rectifier.

 

[tomoyo]

That's very useful information to know. Sounds like what we need more is a teardown that looks into the primary side components for the new enermaxes. Hopefully we'll see some positive changes from the liberty.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Originally posted by: tomoyo
That's very useful information to know. Sounds like what we need more is a teardown that looks into the primary side components for the new enermaxes. Hopefully we'll see some positive changes from the liberty.

Yeah. Well, that's what Gabriel Torres and Oklahoma Wolf are good for!

 

[DoctorDeath]

I own two Silverstone 1200w with 90 amps on a single rail.Even running TRI - SLI did not slow down this beast at all. It also powers a 12TEC Boreas chiller / 4-140mm fans @ 3000 rpms / 4 HDDs / and two Lite On 20X DVD burners,plus a ram fan and theres still plenty of power to spare.

 

[Martimus]

It really depends on your situation. I have had nothing but trouble with the two Antec PSU's that I bought, while ethe PC P&C PSU has been great. Of course the price difference between the two isn't anything to sneeze at. When I lived in Saginaw, my Antec TruPower (420W if I remember right) PSU literally blew up (big puff of black smoke) after trying to get get all of my drives working (4 HDD's, 2 Opticals). But I think that had to do with my power input from the wall. It was out in the sticks a little bit, and the power was somewhat dirty, and was prone to sudden spikes and brown outs. The Antecs did not have good protection against that, in my opinion. I did go back through the computer to make sure that I didn't have any shorts anywhere (I am an electrical engineer and did a large amount of system and component level testing on our systems, and was rather good at trouble shooting these kinds of problems) I found no shorts anywhere on the system, and it took me a while to come up with a plausible explaination. The dirty input made sense, so I figure that they just don't have a very good filter for their input voltage.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Originally posted by: Martimus
....I have had nothing but trouble with the two Antec PSU's that I bought.....

.....Antec TruPower (420W if I remember right) PSU literally blew up (big puff of black smoke).....

Apples and oranges. Those True Power's were truly crap. That's no secret.

Even though Antec's current offerings are significantly improved by using Seasonic OEM with some decent component selection, they're still "cheaper" offerings than other Seasonic builds like Corsair, PCP&C, etc.

 

[Martimus]

Originally posted by: jonnyGURU

Originally posted by: Martimus
....I have had nothing but trouble with the two Antec PSU's that I bought.....

.....Antec TruPower (420W if I remember right) PSU literally blew up (big puff of black smoke).....

Apples and oranges. Those True Power's were truly crap. That's no secret.

Even though Antec's current offerings are significantly improved by using Seasonic OEM with some decent component selection, they're still "cheaper" offerings than other Seasonic builds like Corsair, PCP&C, etc.

Do the current Antec's have better transient input filters? I currently avoid them like the plague, but if they are ok now, I wouldn't mind getting a Sonata III for an extra computer (That case comes with a Antec Earthwatts 500W PSU).

 

[jonnyGURU]

Originally posted by: Martimus

Originally posted by: jonnyGURU

Originally posted by: Martimus
....I have had nothing but trouble with the two Antec PSU's that I bought.....

.....Antec TruPower (420W if I remember right) PSU literally blew up (big puff of black smoke).....

Apples and oranges. Those True Power's were truly crap. That's no secret.

Even though Antec's current offerings are significantly improved by using Seasonic OEM with some decent component selection, they're still "cheaper" offerings than other Seasonic builds like Corsair, PCP&C, etc.

Do the current Antec's have better transient input filters? I currently avoid them like the plague, but if they are ok now, I wouldn't mind getting a Sonata III for an extra computer (That case comes with a Antec Earthwatts 500W PSU).

Well actually, the MOV's on the current Antecs were just as good as they were on the past ones. The problem with the past ones was cap failure (overheated, under-rated, cheap caps.)

The problem with your old True Power was because of inadequate transient filtering or is that a guess?

 

[Martimus]

Originally posted by: jonnyGURU

Originally posted by: Martimus

Originally posted by: jonnyGURU

Originally posted by: Martimus
....I have had nothing but trouble with the two Antec PSU's that I bought.....

.....Antec TruPower (420W if I remember right) PSU literally blew up (big puff of black smoke).....

Apples and oranges. Those True Power's were truly crap. That's no secret.

Even though Antec's current offerings are significantly improved by using Seasonic OEM with some decent component selection, they're still "cheaper" offerings than other Seasonic builds like Corsair, PCP&C, etc.

Do the current Antec's have better transient input filters? I currently avoid them like the plague, but if they are ok now, I wouldn't mind getting a Sonata III for an extra computer (That case comes with a Antec Earthwatts 500W PSU).

Well actually, the MOV's on the current Antecs were just as good as they were on the past ones. The problem with the past ones was cap failure (overheated, under-rated, cheap caps.)

The problem with your old True Power was because of inadequate transient filtering or is that a guess?

That was just a guess, as I couldn't find anything that would cause such a large load on the supply that would cause it to blow up. I had no shorts anywhere in my system, and it happened during bootup. I figured my crappy power did it in.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Originally posted by: Martimus
That was just a guess, as I couldn't find anything that would cause such a large load on the supply that would cause it to blow up. I had no shorts anywhere in my system, and it happened during bootup. I figured my crappy power did it in.

Ah.. a guess. So you didn't actually open it and see blown out MOV's?

Yeah... The old Antec's had problems with blowing caps on the secondaries. Had nothing to do with load or dirty power or anything. They'd just overheat and pop their tops. I'd bet that's what happened to yours.

Antec's past and present always had adequate transient filtering.

 

[jonnyGURU]

DP