Originally posted by: doc2345
I could/would state that from personal experience that the Antec PS's are crap..... I've never had a product with a higher failure rate nor have I had to deal with worse tech support!
Never dealt with their tech support. Have only owned their TruePower line and all worked as advertised. A friend of mine has a TruePower and it works very well. The company he works for utilized a bunch of Antec Phantom units (the 300-ish watt passive one) and
every one of them is dying. Why? My theory is that they are passive, the systems are P4 Prescott and they are being run in outdoor conditions in SoCal. So far they have all been dying over this past summer. No great suprise. Is it Antec's fault? Not sure since I've never used a Phantom, but I do know it was the
wrong choice of PSU[/u] to run a passive power supply for a P4 Prescott in SoCal summer outdoors.
Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
Originally posted by: Heckler 5th
where can i find the most complete, unbiased power supply reviews/tests on the web?
While they dont do many reviews. Silent PC Review, is hands down the best reviewer out there for PSU's. They are incredibly detailed and comprehensive. They even provide MP3's of what the PSU sounds like at various loads.
I can hardly call the SPCR reviews unbiased. I do think they do a great job, but
their conclusion is definately biased. Why do I say this? Because the best PSU in the world will get a bad review from them if it is noisy. Otherwise, I do like their reviews.
Originally posted by: JEDIYoda
Its not incombent upon me to prove that Tom does not take kickbacks etc...
But it is incumbent upon the people who say he does to back up there words!
Yes, I would like to see proof. Now, I do realize that
taking advertising dollars can create undue skew on a review, but that doesn't mean such-and-such company is actually going, "Hey Tom, I'll write you a $3000 check right now if you, ahem, you know, with the upcoming PSU review." Some sites may be swayed more than others from advertising dollars, but it should be safe to say that
any site taking in serious advertising dollars may be swayed in their choice of wording for a review. This means Tom's. This means Anandtech. The outcome may be the same, but wording will change. For instance, "this PSU blows goat balls and I wouldn't use it to power an eMachine" is a bit different than "this PSU is suitable for the typical consumer system but may disappoint the avid enthusiast." I'm using a made-up statement to demonstrate that a negative review can be emasculated to provide a pseudo-endorsement. I think anyone writing a review for a publication that gains income from advertisements are guilty of this to some degree. That degree can be a lot (as many suspect Tom's) or a tiny fraction of a fraction, but that sway is still there. In addition, we should all suspect reviews of provided products as well, because if a site absolutely depends on review samples provided by manufacturers (and to a much lesser degree, from vendors) then they cannot afford to piss off the source of thier review material.
An organization such as Consumer Reviews would be ideal, except computer industry moves too fast for such reviews to be timely. I do not have an encompassing solution for this, though one drop-in-the-bucket would be peer reviews from people who purchased review units from their own pockets. However, that has the danger of people thinking more highly of what they've spent money on than they otherwise would. Still, I'm thinking of doing this on my own web site. Remember, you heard it here first... well, second. Karaktu was first in a PM.
Originally posted by: biostud
Don't confuse the article with a PSU review article, it only tests wether they can deal with the maximum load for a periode of time. Basically if the label on the side matches to "real world" performance.
This is a great observation. Indeed this observation immediately gives value to the Tom's article. Why? Well, isn't it good that some site looks at a manufacturer's claim and validates or invalidates them? For instance, I recall reading in some article that any water sold as "spring water" in the state of California has to pass a simple test to allow for it to be sold with that explicit statement. The state of California will ask the water bottler, "where's your spring?" Basically water cannot be represented as "spring water" and sold in California if it doesn't come from a spring.
What if there was something similar to prevent power supply companies from overstating their wattage rating? Wouldn't that be great? Right now we have companies mostly adding together power output from various voltages to get their total regardless of whether that total can be achieved when all voltages are used simultaneously.
What the Tom's article is doing is saying, "your label states these numbers, our results show same/different numbers." Nothing wrong with that.
Originally posted by: wyrmrider
Tom's may screw up stress tests but their methodology in their power supply tests is way above the usuall "testimonial" type reviews
I'm not intereste in fan boys "I have one and it works just fine" comments. These systems are not really stressed.
Tom's tersts do not show...
Tom's tests do not show...
More great observations. Let me invent a PSU review that may sound familiar to many...
Zap's Fake PSU Review Brand XXX Model XYZ-550W
This PSU has these numbers on voltage... see how it has enough power for any system?
Here are some pictures...
Here are the voltages that Motherboard Monitor tells me...
This PSU runs my system great. I highly recommend it and give it 8/10 stars!!!
Sure, Tom's review/tests isn't the end-all to PSU testing, but it is a major step above the majority of "reviews" of PSUs I've seen, and thus it does have value.
... as long as none of the results are invented, as some imply. I do not know how to prove one way or another.
Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
From what i remember Tom himself is very very smart, however, the people who do his reviewing are morons.
I agree with this statement. Tom Pabst is at minimum somewhat academically intelligent since he has a PhD. He has at minimum some business sense since he's making about five trillion times more money off his web site than most of us make off our own. I personally would say just these two facts (yes, I'm 99.99999% sure these are facts, as computed by my Pentium 90) would be enough to mark him as "very very smart" in my mind.
His reviewers are a mixed bag.
I don't know enough about the CPU stress test, though if indeed numbers were changed and covered up then the whole article should be invalidated.
I do know that I was very put off by a recent article titled
Up And Down With Antec's P180 Case. Reading that was... a waste of time for expecting a review... almost made up with by entertainment value for laughing at the 'tard who wrote it.
What do people think of Tom's Networking? IIRC he "acquired" a networking review site and added it under his umbrella. I have found the Tom's Networking reviews/articles to be of interest to myself. Indeed the author of that section seems to have a consistent "review recipe" and seems to make attempts at providing good information.
EDITED: Accidentally forgot to close a bold tag.