Let this be a lesson to anybody who has built a computer.

[Ampera]

It is one to me. One that I knew when I bought it, and one I should have followed.

My power supply is dying. It hasn't taken anything with it (yet), but it is shutting off and restarting my computer when it goes under load.

And I want to stress this is NOT a cooling problem. I have a 240mm AIO cooler on an Intel chip. It's not going anywhere over 70c

I just bought an EVGA PSU, 750w, semi modular. It has all I need, and it's one I should have bought in the first place, as it's probably cheaper than the one I have in there, and from a better brand, but I was enamored by my PSU's many connectors (I think around 4 molex and 6 SATA)

My computer still works, and if I don't stress it, it will stay on. This is to you building a computer, I am lucky. A large number of things could have happened, including the destruction of any and all components in the machine. Buy from EVGA, Corsair, Cooler Master, Thermaltake, and that's around it. There are a few other brands, but those four, especially EVGA, will not lead you wrong.

[xrunner]

My power supply is dying. It hasn't taken anything with it (yet), but it is shutting off and restarting my computer when it goes under load.

And I want to stress this is NOT a cooling problem. I have a 240mm AIO cooler on an Intel chip. It's not going anywhere over 70c

I know of this situation myself.  I've gone through several PC power supplies in the last 6 years. I'm not learning as fast as you are. 

[Monkeh]

The last person I need to be taking lessons from..

Especially when you've named four upstarts, none of whom design or manufacture any of their offerings.

[Ampera]

The thing is, it's REALLY REALLY TEMPTING to spend 10 dollars more on a nicer CPU than a good PSU when your budget is around 300-400 bucks (As mine normally is). This PSU has seen around 3-4 different configs, and has had years of reliable, undisrupted use.

However there is extra salt on this wound. The power supply I am using is one that completely died straight up even behind a UPS in a machine I built for my grandfather. It's an Apevia PSU, and one I never should have bought.

The last person I need to be taking lessons from..

Especially when you've named four upstarts, none of whom design or manufacture any of their offerings.

I stated brands, I never mentioned manufacturers. Those companies have managed to source decent power supplies, and are a reliable resource for decent power supplies. And as you are probably aware, most power supplies are OEM parts that those companies buy and sell off, the only difference being some companies sell crap, like my PSU, and some companies sell decent OEM parts, like the companies I mentioned.

There has rarely, if ever been a shit power supply from EVGA, and if there has been I have never heard of it. The same goes for Corsair, Cooler Master, and a few other brands.

But if you think you know a good brand or re-seller, or wish to buy direct parts, go ahead.

And in the same logic, don't ever buy from a supermarket, as they do not grow nor package their food.

[Red Squirrel]

I seem to have gotten lucky with PSUs, had a few failures but never catastrophic.  I do more research now, but when I was newer I would not really do as much research, I'd basically sort by price, skip over the cheapest or "too good to be true" specs/pricing then start looking at mid end models from company names I recognize.

What's crazy is how many computer PSUs can't even handle their rating.  There are review sites that load test PSUs and a lot of them fail before they even get to their rated wattage. 

[john_c]

I agree with Monkeh. Why not cut out the marketing companies, and buy from FSP or Seasonic. All that a company like Cooler Master (to take the most questionable of your recommendations) is doing is putting their badge on and putting it in a box (and handling warranty claims also, I suppose).

[mariush]

Buy from EVGA, Corsair, Cooler Master, Thermaltake, and that's around it. There are a few other brands, but those four, especially EVGA, will not lead you wrong.

You couldn't be more wrong on this one, sadly.

EVGA has a HUGE amount of series of power supplies, and a lot of  budget power supplies models these days, that are literally bottom of the barrel, made by very cheap OEM resellers, with cheap capacitors, barely achieving 80+ bronze and with at most 2 year warranty.

Thermaltake also uses A LOT of OEM manufacturers and they make the model names so similar that it's very hard to keep up with them, to know which model was made by which OEM, and for example it's very difficult to look for reviews for a particular model in their offerings.
Cooler Master also has some great power supplies but they also had some really bad designs in the value range. They don't shy away from using cheap OEM manufacturers, like EVGA.

Corsair used to be good, their power supplies were OEM designs from Seasonic , Flextronics , Chicony but lately they've slowly transitions to using mostly CWT for their mid-range designs because unlike Seasonic, Great Wall and CWT are more flexible and allow them to choose cheaper (lower life) fans and cheaper capacitors with not so great reputation. These days their budget power supplies are a mix of Great Wall (OEM) designs and CWT designs, with cheap capacitors and crap fans and small warranties. Basically they're cutting corners wherever they can.

Yes, their power supplies are good and they'll last the warranty time and more but the price per performance isn't there.

If you want quality and relatively cheap, go for Seasonic power supplies. They use quality components even for their budget models.

If you want good but still cheap, consider SOME models made by FSP (sometimes referred as Fortron) and sold under their brand - they often use cheaper capacitors and have smaller warranties but the budget FSP power supplies are often better than the EVGA budget power supplies.

Then there's also SUPERFLOWER which has great mid-range and high end power supplies but the budget power supplies are often contracted and made at other factories because their own factory is too busy making OEM power supplies for EVGA and others

Some Rosewill models are actually quite good for the price. Rosewill is Newegg's brand and they use various OEMs for various series including Enhance (great), Superflower (great)  and Sirtec/High Power (good, better than other budget OEMs imho)

In US, XFX is very good, their power supplies are mostly Seasonic OEM designs.


This website is very good , shows you which OEM makes various series and models sold by brands : http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/PSUReviewDatabase.html

Here's EVGA's page (see how all cheap models are made by HEC which is worse than FSP and Sirtec imho) :  http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page2293.htm

Corsair and their budget Great Wall / HEC / CWT lowest end designs : http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page447.htm

Cooler Master 's mix of OEMs : http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page364.htm

Thermaltake's even worse: http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page680.htm

[Ampera]

Whatever.

Buy from who you want. Serves me right for making a suggestion.

[Vgkid]

When it comes to psu reviews go here first.
http://www.jonnyguru.com
Have a question, ask it on the forum
http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/
---good luck, have fun.

[P90]

I've bought a couple that are made by FSP, and no issues. I've even had some cheapies that came with the pc case, and they worked fine. It depends on how much your system  taxes them.

[Ampera]

When it comes to psu reviews go here first.
http://www.jonnyguru.com
Have a question, ask it on the forum
http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/
---good luck, have fun.

Nahp, they are all resellers and only give you OEM parts. Go to the source and your golden.

[rdl]

At least you didn't mention Antec.

I almost always buy Seasonic power supplies. I think only two in the last 10 years were other brands.

Rosewill can be surprisingly good. I've bought a lot of their stuff. I particularly like Rosewill cases because they almost never spam their company name allover the outside like most others. When you look at a computer built in a Rosewill case you can't tell who made it, which is how I like mine.

[Brumby]

Whatever.

Buy from who you want. Serves me right for making a suggestion.

This response is a little immature.

You made your observations and shared them with us - and that is to be encouraged.  However, you must understand there are very likely others on this forum who have had more extensive exposure to the subject at hand (not just computer power supplies) with possibly time spent directly in the industry itself ... and that their experience differs from yours.

Responding as you did will not serve you well.  You don't know everything - in fact, none of us do.  Even including those things you may have had some experience with, there will always be someone who has had far more involvement and has far more knowledge on the subject.  This is one of the reasons why I only offer input on a few topics - and am always ready to concede to those who know more.


You are an enthusiastic contributor here and I would not want to discourage you in the slightest - but you will find it less stressful when you learn to deal with these moments gracefully.

[Vgkid]

Nahp, they are all resellers and only give you OEM parts. Go to the source and your golden.

Read the reviews. Even the sam oem produces better worse power supplies. It all comes down to the money a original design company is willing to deal out. Some of the best ones are ones most don't know about.

[P90]

I'm more of a Seasonic guy. At least I don't get crap form them, no matter how low end it gets, because it doesn't have bottom of the barrel product lines at all.
Seasonic has its own problems, their hysteresis control is highly optimized for efficiency and aggressive, hence their PSUs whine a lot compared to other brands, especially with highly dynamic loads such as GPU and CPU. You won't see this if you power 20 HDDs, but powering a high end CPU and a high end GPU, you are guaranteed to hear coil whining, a lot, from the PSU.
It sometimes even makes clicking noise when DVFS is too aggressive, as seen when powering AMD GPUs with fglrx driver.
Maybe lower end PSUs don't do this due to lower efficiency requirements, but my 520W 80 plus platinum clicks and whines quite a bit.

Still, if I have to choose a PSU for my next PSU, it is still gonna be a Seasonic, or at least equal quality ones, such as a Corsair made by Flextronics or an FSP.
Delta also makes very decent ATX power supplies (they make top of the line server ones, but we are talking about PC ones now), but they don't sell their best ones through retail channel.
So by buying a grey market (since they don't sell high end products to end user market) Delta, you are always risking buying a used one from brand PCs.

Did Delta make most of PSU's for Dell? I'm not sure, just asking...

[james_s]

I haven't had much trouble with PSUs. I haven't really looked for a specific brand, I don't buy top of the line but I avoid the cheapest junk too. I think I've had a PSU failure once in my primary desktop PC since I started building them ~25 years ago.

As far as power supplies not handling their rated wattage that doesn't surprise me. I've noticed a lot of wattage inflation occurring over the last 10 years or so. I've measured my core i7 desktop and it averages less than 140W from the wall with the peak under 200W. It certainly doesn't need a 600W+ PSU, at least not one that is honestly rated. A 250W PSU from the late 90s would work fine in theory.

[P90]

Did Delta make most of PSU's for Dell? I'm not sure, just asking...

I don't know, but I've seen many HP/Dell/Lenovo machines with wimpy 185W/230W Delta PSUs. There are some high end tower servers using standard ATX power supplies, and these are my target, but I don't know how to get new ones reliably, so I chose Seasonic for my build.

True, but some of those small OEM PSUs look like a quality built unit with juicy heatsinks and nice materials, and most likely conservatively rated, where as I've seen cheap PSUs advertised as 600w that look cheap and weight nothing and are obviously way overrated as far as watts. It's like those cheap case/PSU combos for $20 that claim 650W. LOL

[jonovid]

building a computer in Australia?
I got my parts from m.s.y. http://www.msy.com.au  as for the PSU, it pays to have more capacity then you need.
as there is a lot of unpredictable loads hanging off it. especially for a gaming pc.

[Muxr]

It is one to me. One that I knew when I bought it, and one I should have followed.

My power supply is dying. It hasn't taken anything with it (yet), but it is shutting off and restarting my computer when it goes under load.

And I want to stress this is NOT a cooling problem. I have a 240mm AIO cooler on an Intel chip. It's not going anywhere over 70c

I just bought an EVGA PSU, 750w, semi modular. It has all I need, and it's one I should have bought in the first place, as it's probably cheaper than the one I have in there, and from a better brand, but I was enamored by my PSU's many connectors (I think around 4 molex and 6 SATA)

My computer still works, and if I don't stress it, it will stay on. This is to you building a computer, I am lucky. A large number of things could have happened, including the destruction of any and all components in the machine. Buy from EVGA, Corsair, Cooler Master, Thermaltake, and that's around it. There are a few other brands, but those four, especially EVGA, will not lead you wrong.

Hate to break it to you, but EVGA doesn't make supplies, they just take a PSU from one of the other manufacturers and brand it as their own. Also they really aren't renowned for high quality either, they just recently had exploding capacitors on their GPUs.

They do have good support in USA though so that's something.

If you really want to know about a computer PSU you might be interested in, checkout JonnyGuru's (http://www.jonnyguru.com/) website. It's the only person who does in depth PSU reviews and actually does teardowns and real measurements.

His highest rated recommendation as of last time I checked are SeaSonic Platinum series (I have a 650watt version).. power factor correction, nice components and all that jazz.. They are pricey though.

[Testing123]

If you really want to know about a computer PSU you might be interested in, checkout JonnyGuru's (http://www.jonnyguru.com/) website. It's the only person who does in depth PSU reviews and actually does teardowns and real measurements.

His highest rated recommendation as of last time I checked are SeaSonic Platinum series (I have a 650watt version).. power factor correction, nice components and all that jazz.. They are pricey though.

Well... first of all, the actual person who you seem to be referring to is Jon Gerow, who now (or at least last I read) works for Corsair Components where he is the power supply product manager. Because of conflict of interest issues, he no longer does PSU reviews (as of the middle of 2012). Others are now doing the reviews at jonnyguru.com. This is not to say they aren't solid and accurate, only to clarify that Jonny isn't the one doing them now.

As for EVGA PSU's, jonnyguru.com highly recommended an EVGA PSU with a power rating I am interested in. It's their G3 series 1000 watt version. jonnyguru gave it 9.8 out of 10 rating. This sounded very promising, especially with all of the high praise it was getting in the review (with the exception of the capacitors in the cables) and I was all set to purchase one. That is until I stumbled upon a thread in one of EVGA's message forums that referred to the noise level of the fan in the EVGA G3 as being excessive. Interestingly, jonnyguru did not mention this at all and in fact the only negative was what they call the "The Mediocre" portion of the summary (as opposed to the "The Bad") and it merely pointed out the caps in the cables.

Here's a link to the EVGA message thread alluded to above: https://forums.evga.com/G3-fan-noise-m2631908.aspx

Attached is a pic of a small database I gleaned from cybernetics.com listing 3 PSU's I am interested in.

[mariush]

JonnyGuru.com reviews don't have any fan noise and power supply noise notes due to the way they test the power supplies.

They use programmable loads to draw specific current amounts from each voltage rail, and these programmable loads have powerful noisy fans...  remember, when they're testing a 1000w psu those programmable loads have to dissipate those 1000 watts somehow.

Whatever noise the power supply fan makes would be covered/obscured by the much noisier programmable loads.

In order to get accurate fan noise levels and so on, they'd probably have to make a big box with all the walls covered in material to prevent sound reflection and to block noise from outside, then they'd also have to add some kind of air conditioning to the box to be able to set "ambient temperature" and have a microphone inside the box - but usually measurements are done  let's say 30cm away from the fan so the box would probably have to be 1m by 1m by 1m or something like that. All the programmable loads would have to be outside the box, or they'd have to be in a separate room in the house, and just cables passing between rooms. It's a pain in the a#*.

They do talk about the fan short i admit, usually on the dissasembly page. They mention if it's sleeve or ball bearing or other technology, often mention the diameter and some of these details. They also say at what load levels the fans actually start spinning, in the case of hybrid fans (semi-passive).

// ps so basically they didn't omit the fan noise on purpose to make that evga psu better, they don't review fan noise on all power supplies.

[P90]

well that pretty much sums it up

[Testing123]

JonnyGuru.com reviews don't have any fan noise and power supply noise notes due to the way they test the power supplies.

It really doesn't matter why they don't--at least to me and some others I've heard from--it's simply a fact that they don't.
Several other review sites ‘talk’ about PSU noise levels directly, e.g., PC Perspective, tom’sHARDWARE, TechPowerUp. It's one thing to read about sleeve vs. ball bearing vs. magnetic levitation, etc. and quite another to view actual charts and read the db differences.

// ps so basically they didn't omit the fan noise on purpose to make that evga psu better, they don't review fan noise on all power supplies.

No, I don't think so either. My point was and is that it's one matrix that's important to some people and by not including it in their reviews, they are incomplete and can lead people to a purchase they may later regret; as was the case for 3 people in that EVGA thread I pointed to in my message above.

[CJay]

Did Delta make most of PSU's for Dell? I'm not sure, just asking...

I don't know, but I've seen many HP/Dell/Lenovo machines with wimpy 185W/230W Delta PSUs. There are some high end tower servers using standard ATX power supplies, and these are my target, but I don't know how to get new ones reliably, so I chose Seasonic for my build.

In past times, Astec, more recently Delta and they seem to be dominant in most big name brands now.

'Wimpy' they may seem but they're a good match for the machines and seem to last well, rarely have to replace any and I have done on site support for sites with ~600 machines so I suspect they are more than capable of meeting their specs and are of decent quality build.

How they'd perform in a fully loaded hobbyist/engineers machine may be another matter of course.

[madires]

I'm happy with a few SuperFlower, be quiet! and Enermax - all 80+ Silver/Gold/Platinum. But I don't know if the latter two design the PSUs themselves. And Enermax gets only 4 out of 5 stars for a crashed PSU powered via a line interactive UPS (no more Enermax for servers).