Thirty Four PSUs Tested - Is Biggest Best?

SteveK writes "Hexus has been testing some 34 PC power supplies to see which is best. There are some interesting results. An Enermax 535 Watt PSU couldn't deliver much over 450W, while a cheap 250W PSU did exactly what it said on the box. There's also a video of a (very cheap) 650W PSU under 400W of load, requiring over 1kW of input power to sustain the load, before blowing up."

Comments

Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[jgaynor]

Mod me down for slander, but I don't understand why we keep linking to Hexus reviews. Their content quality is high but their servers can't take a slashdotting for more than 3-4 minutes. 0 comments and it's taken over a minute to load as it is :(.

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[LiquidCoooled]

Chicken and egg.

Lots of slashdotters go there because there are lots of reviews.
When a new one is posted, it gets submitted and because its good gets posted here...

Either that or Hemos is taking backhanders from the hexus BOFHs to push for extra server upgrades "Boss, the servers keep going down, we need more power".

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[unts]

Steve from HEXUS here. :)

We've got new kit going into place soon, but that's not my department. We've taken measures in the meantime to cope with any traffic surges, like Slashdottings, but with a massive article like this one, it's tricky.

Thanks for your patience, guys.

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[LordSnooty]

Why doesn't the submitter just post the Coral Cache link straight off? Then we wouldn't have this problem. Or am I being dense? Surely there's no point pushing a server over if it's obvious to all that it will not survive the slashdotting.

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[eclectro]

but with a massive article like this one, it's tricky

Are your power supplies blowing up??

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[markov_chain]

Would you consider posting the text of the article as a comment?
It's not like you'll be getting hits in the meantime anyway and it
might bring people back for the pictures later.

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[BrynM]

Hi there "Steve from HEXUS". Just a thought: This is a great idea for a follow up article... 'cause you know... you've got a few PSUs around. Since it was posted AC, I'll just quote it.

To be honest, at the moment my needs are more focused on the quietness of a power supply, I can quite easily cope with 300W on my main PC.

Sorry about your server. I didn't get the chance to read the article, but I'll be back for it.

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[OverlordQ]

AFAIK, none of the coral servers talk/share cache, so for each different coral server it each needs to cache a copy of the content, so the server *does* need to be still up by that point.

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[halleluja]

Steve from HEXUS here. :) http://www.stevekerrison.com/

Looks like your h/p will continue to lack development ;)

Thanks for the info, I'll try and fetch the article later.

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[tolan-b]

here's the mirrordot link

http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/2400897cd3c6f4ab7 791acee73a8c04f/index.html

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[tolan-b]

replying to self sorry...

that only works for the first page, still you can read the intro.

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[ZorinLynx]

Tell me.. Why does Hexus, and so many other sites, divide the articles into so many small pages?

This review is 26 pages! That's at least 26 pageviews to read the whole thing for each user. Multiply that by slash dot and... Well, let's just say the server is KO'ed.

Instead, why not have several reviews on each page? Just doubling the size of each page halves the number of page loads needed for each user. This applies for news sites and such too. I don't get why they split the articles into three or four pages, when you could easily have one big page to scroll through. Less pages also means readers will be less annoyed having to click and wait for the next page when the server is bogged down.

-Z

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[grazzy]

Two reasons;

1) Templates. A template for a large article wouldn't be usable for shorter (1-page) articles.
2) Pageviews. Equals money in pocket.

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[OverlordQ]

one or two words depending on how you look at it, but let me put it in slashdot style

1) Split story onto many many pages
2) Sell more ads
3) Profit!!!!

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[Shaper_pmp]

Funnily enough, this actually encourages the Average User (a mythical beast, only whose footprints have ever been found) to read the whole article. Usability reports I remember reading a few months ago indicated that on an interactive medium like the web, users get "bored" if they don't have to interact with a page for too long. If you don't provide regular user-interaction (eg, by making them click for the next page) they get fractious and are more likely to drop out of reading the article.

I've actually noticed this myself a bit - if I've got a long page (> 5 screens) to read I'll often find myself double-clicking on words/lines in the text or highlighting them with the mouse. I don't really even realise I'm doing it, but when an article's split into several shorter pages (although it annoys me slightly having to click "Next" all the time) I don't find myself doing this.

Of course, it also inflates "page-views" and ad revenue ;-)

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why we keep linking to Hexus reviews. Their content quality is high but their servers can't take a slashdotting for more than 3-4 minutes.

Perhaps because quality is ultimately more important than reading a review in the first 12 hours it was released. I don't care if I have to wait until tomorrow to read a high quality review on power supplies. Honestly, who can't wait for that?

This is a far better situation than some of the crap "reviews" out there that may stay up during a Slashdotting but aren't worth reading or basing purchasing decisions on.

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[bogado]

I usually read like this, selecting what I am reading or about to read, on the web or any other texts on the computer. It helps me to find, vewry quickly where I am in the text in the event that something distracts me while reading.

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[poot_rootbeer]

1) Templates. A template for a large article wouldn't be usable for shorter (1-page) articles.

Whatever. A well-designed, liquid web template will be usable whether there's 1 paragraph of content or 100 paragraphs.

2) Pageviews. Equals money in pocket.

Not when the server rolls over because it's getting more page requests than it's capable of delivering, it doesn't.

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[MCraigW]

Funnily enough, this actually encourages the Average User (a mythical beast, only whose footprints have ever been found) to read the whole article. Usability reports I remember reading a few months ago indicated that on an interactive medium like the web, users get "bored" if they don't have to interact with a page for too long.

And clicking on the "next" button is somehow more interactive than clicking on the scroll bar?

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[fshalor]

In this case... it gives one time to use the restroom, make coffee, enjoy half a cup and then take a 10 minute break before loading the second page.

All about the suspense. ;)

Ironically, I'm going through one of those "is it the PSU" issues this morning with a Tyan server. If it is the PSU, it'll be the very first Antec TrueBlue I've had die in under two years of 24-7 opps.

I doo need to get a few more PSU's soon and will probably buy them off of what the article says.... well, when I get the chance to read it that is. hehe...

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[trex005]

Firefox...Antipagination.... nuff said course, I couldn't get to the artical, so I'm not 100% sure it'll work

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[grazzy]

You need to place those ads somewhere, it's hard designing with both content and ads in mind. Much easier to make a template for 1000 words with the appropriate banner-sized ads.

We're talking about averages here, not min or max.

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[rafa]

Use the add mirrors /. greasemonkey script to add mirror links to every link in the blurb.

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt it's the PSU, I bought a Tyan Tiger 133 a few years back. it was buggy as hell and only ISA and AGP would work. RMA'd it and I got another one. This one was missing a memory slot (never soldered on) and had wires manually soldered on to the back of the board and still suffered from compatibility problems. RMA'd that and got a board that was kinda stable untill you used it with a 2nd CPU.

Tyan is crap.

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[FLEB]

Still, though, it's less than a Slashdotting.

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[dajak]

Funnily enough, this actually encourages the Average User (a mythical beast, only whose footprints have ever been found) to read the whole article. Usability reports I remember reading a few months ago indicated that on an interactive medium like the web, users get "bored" if they don't have to interact with a page for too long. If you don't provide regular user-interaction (eg, by making them click for the next page) they get fractious and are more likely to drop out of reading the article.

Because they can scan through the article faster, and use ctrl-f on the whole article, they will find out quicker that the article was a false positive on their search. It has nothing to do with preventing boredom: Most pageviews on the Internet are more or less accidental, and bad design is rewarded with more clicks. The reader is still bored.

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, the nice "Enter username and password" box is a little interesting after attempting to just link to the story...

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[Jherek Carnelian]

Usability reports I remember reading a few months ago indicated that on an interactive medium like the web, users get "bored" if they don't have to interact with a page for too long. If you don't provide regular user-interaction (eg, by making them click for the next page) they get fractious and are more likely to drop out of reading the article.

Seems to me that occasionally pressing the page-down key or clicking in the scroll-bar should provide the same level of "interactivity" as clicking on "next page" at the same frequency.

At least some websites are smart - they provide two ways to view the story, one for stupids who have to click something to stay interested and a second "print" mode for people who can actually focus on the content and want to see it all at once, even if they have no intention of actually printing it.

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[AthenianGadfly]

I couldn't disagree with you more. People who read articles online are not the sort... Oooh, look - a button!

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[hisstory student]

Fewer

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[Shaper_pmp]

You're assuming the study was done as part of a search for a specific answer to a question, and not on, y'know, just reading text on-line (as I suggested). You're assuming this is during the "is this actually the page I want?" stage of browsing, when what they're actually studying was how people react when they have found a page they want. You're also assuming the average user uses ctrl+F to search a page, whereas most non-techie people I know are hardly aware it exists unless it specifically occurrs to them.

IIRC, the studies I read all gave recipients standard texts to read (avoiding the additional complication of your first point), and monitored their attention-levels while reading them. Since the study deliberately avoided confusion by removing the choice of text to read, the researchers concluded that, all things being equal, people seemed to prefer their on-line textual information in smaller hyperlinked chunks.

This actually makes sense when you think about it - why are the overwhelming majority of films roughly 1.5-2 hours long? Why don't people mind TV adverts too much, but hate them on the web? Why do books commonly have chapters?

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[dajak]

Since the study deliberately avoided confusion by removing the choice of text to read, the researchers concluded that, all things being equal, people seemed to prefer their on-line textual information in smaller hyperlinked chunks.

I have a little niece who likes books that make sounds and have things popping out of them. She can't actually read, so we can safely assume normal books would bore her. I don't think the ceteris paribus generalization is valid.

I do think most readers (and dyslectic readers in particular) find pages with less text on them easier to read, but that has little to do with boredom or the benefits of clicking occasionally.

This actually makes sense when you think about it - why are the overwhelming majority of films roughly 1.5-2 hours long?

1. Because some people's bladders only last that long.
2. Because some people's brains only last that long.
3. Because watching long movies with partner or friends is difficult to plan if you have a life. Movies that are too long don't leave time for a real dinner.

Why don't people mind TV adverts too much, but hate them on the web?

This year our football competition television rights were sold for the first time to a commercial channel (instead of public television who could no longer compete with taxpayers money). Number of viewers on sunday evening dropped from 1.5 million to 300.000. Guess why? Besides that TV adverts are usually easier to avoid, and there are other things to do to fill that time.

Why do books commonly have chapters?

To help people remember where they stopped reading, and what happened before they stopped.

Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers.

[tolan-b]

pardon?

" Is Biggest Best?"

[netfool]

Yes, always. If you're told otherwise, it's because they feel bad for you.

Re:" Is Biggest Best?"

[Bogtha]

I always heard that it wasn't the size of the PSU that mattered, but the power in the box.

Re:" Is Biggest Best?"

[marom]

And it had better have a big load.

Re:" Is Biggest Best?"

[bjs555]

If the plug reaches the socket, it's long enough.

Re:" Is Biggest Best?"

[Jendi]

This is true, but there is such a thing as "scary big".

For example, if you take 3-phase power, that's a pretty good indication that you've crossed the scary threshold.

Re:" Is Biggest Best?"

[dAzED1]

not if there isn't enough length so that the box can move around...

Re:" Is Biggest Best?"

[Anonymous Coward]

I always heard that it wasn't the size of the PSU that mattered, but the power in the box.

My girlfriend keeps telling me that, "It's not the wand, it's the wizard".

I don't know why she tells ME this though.

Re:" Is Biggest Best?"

[darkjedi521]

Run of the mill three phase isn't scary. Just a few extra pins to deal with. Now having to tie in via camlocs or similar high amperage (>=100A/phase) connectors, that's scary.

Re:" Is Biggest Best?"

[MCraigW]

My girlfriend keeps telling me that, "It's not the wand, it's the wizard". I don't know why she tells ME this though.

Gee, that's not what she told me...

Speaking of power packs

[Anonymous Coward]

To be honest, at the moment my needs are more focused on the quietness of a power supply, I can quite easily cope with 300W on my main PC.

Slighlty offtopic, does anyone know where I can get a 250W power pack in the UK for my iDeq 200N?

Re:Speaking of power packs

[Anonymous Coward]

Try PC Ideals www.pcideals.com . We have 250W Dell PSUs which are very reliable. Disclaimer: I work for PC Ideals.

Re:Speaking of power packs

[Anonymous Coward]

ebay

Re:Speaking of power packs

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. I was overrated at a score of 0. Let me guess... the guy from pcdeals or whatever below me modded me down. Care to explain how your linking to Dell PSUs was any better than my linking a specialist SFF site with PSUs for his specific system? Tool.

Re:Speaking of power packs

[bleckywelcky]

Well, 350W has been good enough for me for the past 2 years, but the next generation of video cards are actually demanding 400W and 450W power supplies (with auxiliary 4 pin molex power connections). And I'm not talking bleeding-edge graphics cards either. I'm just talking a fairly new GeForce 6800 for $140. Manufacturers could be overstating things, but if functions on my cards start fizzling out because they aren't getting enough power ... then what?

Re:Speaking of power packs

[SatanicPuppy]

I haven't had problems with power supply noise for years...It's almost always dwarfed by the sound of the CPU fan. That's where the real bottleneck has been...if you don't want to go liquid or nitrogen, then you're stuck with a perpetual irritating hummmmmmm.

And god help you if you have an intel processor...The fans on those damn things are like jet turbines. I hated installing the Socket A fans, but god, at least they were freakign quiet.

The only power supply I have now that even registers over the cpu fan of the one modern intel box is an old dell with a power supply that really should just go ahead and die, but seems to be hanging on to piss me off...It's been making dying power supply sounds (high pitched whine) for months, but it won't DIE.

Re:Speaking of power packs

[Anonymous Coward]

We already understood when you said "we".

Where's Antec?

[tgbrittai]

It's a fairly popular high-end PSU brand. Seems like it should have been included in the review. Hmmm...

Re:Where's Antec?

[pmc]

Nope - don't go for Antec if you live in the UK. I bought one of their 430W power supplies, and after eight months it died. Fine, I thought, it is under warranty. So went to the web-site and after a bit of mucking about I managed to get an RMA. Or thought I did. I actually had filled in a form to request a form to request an RMA. Pointless bureaucracy gone mad. Still I got the form. Or rather excel spreadsheet. So now I need a) a working computer (erm, guys, the power supply's gone) and a copy of excel (probably an other speadsheet would have done) to tell them who I was, what I'd bought and when I'd bought it. Oh - they also wanted a scanned copy of the receipt sent back to them too. I did have an electronic copy that could have sent them, but it was on the computer that was dead. (They did suggest I could take a digital photo of the invoice and send that instead, but this was getting too Alice-in-Wonderlandish for me.)

But all this was just slightly stupid and annoying. What was very stupid and immensely annoying was that I had to send the power supply to them at my own expense to a different country. The power supply originally cost about 50GBP - to post it to the Netherlands (for that is where their warehouse is) from the UK cheaply (but insured) would cost about 25GBP. And they would not send me a new one until they had the old one back and checked out. I would end up out about half the cost of the power supply, and be without one for possible a couple of weeks. Suddenly, paying a premium price for a quality product did not seem to be such a good idea when faced with a avaricious and slow customer service department based in an entirely different country.

So my advice is avoid Antec if you live in the UK - you effectively pay about half the cost of the power supply if you need warranty repairs/replacement.

The story does have a happy ending - I bought the supply thought Amazon originally, and so phoned them up. After a bit of reminding them of their duty under Sale of Goods act (basically a quality brand should last longer than eight months) they agreed to replace it. They dropped the ball on the first attempt, so I actually ended up with a better spec'ed supply. Still an Antec, so if it dies it hits the bin rather than muck about with any ludicrious postal demands.

Re:Where's Antec?

[bigtrike]

So my advice is avoid Antec if you live in the UK - you effectively pay about half the cost of the power supply if you need warranty repairs/replacement.

This is the case with almost every product $100 and under in the US. They want you to pay for postage both ways, which tends to be about $30 total. Even with this expenditure, they still may decide not to fix your product. I don't bother filling out warranty information any more, it's usually not worth the time required.

Re:Where's Antec?

[Dogtanian]

The story does have a happy ending - I bought the supply thought Amazon originally, and so phoned them up. After a bit of reminding them of their duty under Sale of Goods act (basically a quality brand should last longer than eight months) they agreed to replace it.

That's what I thought in the first place; I'd be interested in finding out what the legal position was w.r.t. stuff like this, bearing in mind that the UK has had fairly good consumer protection for a long time, and it's now even stronger (w/ the new EU rules).

If you bought it in a shop, is it reasonable to expect to have to ship it halfway across Europe at your own expense, especially if this wasn't made clear on the box?

If you bought it mail order, is it reasonable to be expected to ship it outside the country of purchase?

Re:Where's Antec?

[WarwickRyan]

Ahh, that's the old "IBM" trick.

Back in the day of their trusty old DeathStars, IBM ensured that in order to receive a warranty replacement you had to send the drive to their warehouse in Netherlands. Fine, that's £10 in postage, right? Oh no, this is IBM. Standard package post won't do. No, they require you to use their suggested delivery partner, DHL.

So given the option of sending IBM a drive worth £50, and paying postage of £70, I decided to go with the new drive option. As did the rest of IBM's customers, I guess.

Re:Where's Antec?

[Junior J. Junior III]

I've had to RMA a failed Antec PSU, too, but I didn't find the process to be nearly so bad.

I went to their website from a working PC, downloaded the RMA form, filled it out, and faxed it back to them. Got an RMA number from them same day. Shipped the dead PSU to them, got a new one back in a few weeks. In the meantime, I installed a spare PSU I happened to have on hand and got the down system back up within hours.

It's not Antec's responsibility to minimize your downtime with their RMA process -- it's their responsibility to repair or replace their product under warranty if it fails. Systems that depend on their product are not their responsibility. If you're building your own systems, you should know that shipping isn't instantaneous, so if you want to have high reliability and low downtime, you'd better stock some spare parts.

You actually got very good customer service through Amazon, but because you don't understand what the expectation is, you're disappointed. You shouldn't be.

Re:Where's Antec?

[Junior J. Junior III]

If you want them to pay the postage on the RMA, then you're going to end up getting that rolled into the up-front retail cost of the item. So you'll end up paying for an RMA on EVERY item, whether you actually need to RMA it or not. If you only pay for the RMAs that you actually NEED, then you'll end up coming out of it on top in the long term. $30 for RMA shipping is STILL cheaper than $100 to buy a brand new replacement.

Re:Where's Antec?

[pmc]

I have done lots of RMAs before - both personal and business. The previous one, Netgear, for example, the process went

1) Phone them up
2) They issue the RMA and stick the new part in the post
3) It arrives
4) You use the box to send the broken one back (at my own expense) with the RMA on it.

That, or something close to it, is my expectation. I do not expect to wait a few weeks for an off-the-shelf part. I particularly do not expect to ship to an entirely different country. I wouldn't have minded as much if it was dodgy Joe's Ropey power supplies, but by buying Antec is was expecting (and paying for) "Best-of-Class customer service" where "my satisfaction was their priority".

Let's See:

Netgear: phone call resolution, 2 day turn-around, low postage cost
Antec: 2 days (and lots of e-mail tennis) before I would have been able to get the process started, several week turn around, very large postage cost.

Now, call me Mr Picky, by I don't think they are giving "Best-of-Class customer service".

I did not "actually get very good customer service via Amazon" - I got exactly what I should have got (although one can certainly argue that getting what one should have got is actually very good). Under the relevant law durability is a factor - if the power supply stops working long before it should (which it did) then I am entitled (under the law) to have it fixed or replaced at minimum inconvenience and expense to me (i.e. realistically in this situation they would have to replace it).

Re:Where's Antec?

[Jesus_666]

I'm not from the US, but I have had very a good experience with Maxtor. Exactly five days before the warranty would have run out, my hard drive (a 120 GB DiamondMax Plus 9 with liquid bearing) started to spontaneously corrupt files and shut down while the computer was running. Mator's diagnostic utility told me that the hard drive was damaged and needed to be replaced. So I went to the Maxtor website and requested RMA. They offered to send me the replacement drive first and give me 30 days to send back the old one using the same package they used to send the replacement drive. This required me to give them a credit card number (so they could bill me the HDD in case I didnn't send the old one back).

I still had to pay for shipment to them (in Ireland), which cost me about ten Euros. But being able to copy most of my data from the old drive to the new one was definitely worth it. I don't know if this is common among hardware manufacturers, but I certainly wish it was more common among hardware retailers.

Re:Where's Antec?

[pmc]

The law is "The Sale and Supply of Goods to Consumers Regulations 2003". A rather good guide can be found at http://www.dti.gov.uk/ccp/topics1/guide/saleslong. pdf

When I buy quality brands this is a useful stick to beat the company with. For example I have a Bosch Jigsaw which died (the thing that holds the blade in had failed). I was getting static from them until I pointed out this act, and that they advertise themselves as a durable brand, and it was unreasonable to expect the product to fail in this time. Result: new jigsaw. I got my coffee maker (Dualit) repaired for free after two years for the same reasons (don't know if our US cousins are familiar with Dualit but they make a big, big play about how rugged their appliances are).

I quite like how this act has brought about "truth in advertising" in at least a small section of the market.

Your contract, you'll find, is with the shop you bought it from. But generally customer service departments are wise to the fact that it is better for them to fix it rather than you having to go back to your vendor. The end result is that you'll have a working product, and direct will probably be cheaper for them.

Antec, however, are unusual in that they don't have representation in the UK. But I still think that this will cost them more than the 25GBP they were trying to save by making things awkward for me. Probably on average they find that it saves money in the long run, but it will hurt their reputation (as word gets out that their warranty outside NL in Europe is essentially useless).

Re:Where's Antec?

[glesga_kiss]

after eight months it died. Fine, I thought, it is under warranty. So went to the web-site and after a bit of mucking about I managed to get an RMA. Or thought I did. I actually had filled in a form to request a form to request an RMA. Pointless bureaucracy gone mad. Still I got the form. Or rather excel spreadsheet. So now I need a) a working computer

Under UK law, your issue is with the company you bought it from, not the manufacturer. This is why you got a better result when you contacted Amazon in the end. Check out the Trading Standards website for more info, but basically when something dies, go back to the shop.

Re:Where's Antec?

[Dogtanian]

Very interesting, thanks. I haven't read it fully yet, but doesn't that mean you have a contract with the UK supplier unless they made it clear otherwise (or you imported the PSU)?

Re:Where's Antec?

[michrech]

Antec can bite my ass.

I had two power supplies here that were dead (imagine that!) and they wouldn't take them back because I couldn't find the receipt. Even going by just the serial number, and the manu. date that goes along with it, they still had over 1 1/2 years warranty left.

I ended up throwing BOTH in the garbage; along with two others that had died while I was waiting for Antec to even reply ( They NEVER answered their support line phone, I left a message every time only to be ignored. It took me sending an email to their *complaint* email address before someone responded!)

Antec can take their power supplies and shove them where the sun don't shine. They are absoloutly the worse company I've ever dealt with (and I've had the displeasure of doing on site WARRNATY work for Packard Bell!!)

Mike

Re:Where's Antec?

[tenton]

Actually, I find that most of the time, companies won't pay for shipping to them, but you don't have to pay them to ship the replacement back.

If you ever see the phrase in the warranty "postage pre-paid", that just means that you need to send the old unit back and pay for the postage on that, as opposed to sending it and having the company pay for the shipping when it's delivered. If you send it that way (not paying for postage and sending it along, with the postage to be collected when the package gets delivered), expect to get the package right back. ^_^

Re:Where's Antec?

[Anonymous Coward]

Under UK law, your issue is with the company you bought it from, not the manufacturer.

I'm not in the UK, but I agree 100% with what you said. Even if the law states the problem is with the manufacturer, you should use a dealer that will handle the problem for you.

when something dies, go back to the shop

BINGO!

I work in the industry, and when something dies, we'll take it back. We keep copies of customer invoices, so that if the customer has lost theirs, the warranty is still valid.

If it's something that the manufacturer will replace (rather than repair) we'll even replace it out of our own inventory (so you don't have to wait for postage.)

We don't sell junk (we'd go out of business if we did), and we cost a bit more than the Bargain-Bin-Bob down the street, but some people still appreciate service, and will pay more for a quality product.

Before you buy something, check to see if the place you buy from will handle warranty details on your behalf - if not, consider taking your business elsewhere.

Re:Where's Antec?

[pmc]

Well, that's debatable.

My initial contract is with, in this case, Amazon. My warranty is with Antec. Amazon's terms and conditions state 90 days, and this was more than 90 days. So, in this case, who I could get redress from was a bit ambigious. The 2003 Consumer Act does allow you a lot of scope in certain specific circumstances, one of which happens to be durability (or rather failure to meet claims of durability). In this case Antec was claiming "ultra-reliable", I bought under this understanding, and the product did not meet the description (as it failed), so Amazon were probably on the hook.

This is all a bit vague in the law so Amazon could have turned round and said "Sorry", and then I would have really only been left with the option of small claims court and there is no way I'd have bothered for fifty quid (and I probably wouldn't have had that good a case anyway as I had other redress in the form of the manufacturer's warranty).

If the product had failed after a reasonable length of time (say two years) then Amazon wouldn't be on the hook any more, and my problem would be with Antec and their useless warranty.

Re:Where's Antec?

[bigtrike]

Why would it be rolled into every product? That doesn't make any sense. Even if purchase price was related to production costs, they're still going to make you get a valid RMA before shipping it back.

Re:Where's Antec?

[Junior J. Junior III]

It's called overhead. It gets amortized into the cost of every unit. If they're going to pay for RMA shipping on any RMA'd part, they're going to have to collect that cost somehow.

It's either:

$15 from the person requesting the RMA, at the time they issue the RMA, paying for their own shipping,

OR

$afewdollars from EVERYONE who buys the part, whether they actually RMA the part down the road or not, to cover the cost of the people who do get an RMA for which the manufacturer "pays" for the cost of the shipping.

Re:Where's Antec?

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

but the extra amount added to the price of each unit will likely be less than the cost of return postage, since only a fraction of the people do that.

$20 postage * 35% return rate = $7 per unit to recover costs.

Of course they could increase it by more, because they can, and people will expect it to be $20 more instead of $7 more in the example above, etc.

Re:Where's Antec?

[Junior J. Junior III]

Yes, but then, as I've been saying all along, you're paying for RMAs that you are not using. You, and some unspecified number of people, are paying for someone else's RMA shipping. You all chip in whether you want to or not.

Re:Where's Antec?

[glesga_kiss]

Amazon's terms and conditions state 90 days, and this was more than 90 days.

Not relevant. The terms and conditions might suggest you owe them your first born, but it doesn't change the law! ;-) "your statatory rights are not affected".

Even without the "ultra-reliable" claim, you are still under waranty for a "reasonable" period, which really is debatable on a per-item basis as somethings clearly should last longer than others. Under Scots law (ever so slightly different from English), the upper limit for a claim is six years after the fault. English law is six years from purchase IIRC.

Not that I'm pointing out anything you don't probably know, looks like you managed to get a result through looking into it. "Sale of goods act" and "trade descriptions" act are good quotes to use should you ever get any hastle from a vendor in future. :-)

No Antec or PC Power & Cooling?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a pretty worthless comparison without even one sample from Antec or PC Power & Cooling.

Re:No Antec or PC Power & Cooling?

[Noehre]

Funny, I'm running dual 2800XPs, MPX chipset, SCSI drives, 6 PCI cards, etc. on an Antec 550W and I haven't had a single problem.

PEBCAK perhaps?

Re:No Antec or PC Power & Cooling?

[Malor]

That is so frustrating... I've been using PC Power and Cooling supplies for years. I have always liked them a lot, and I've always wondered how they'd rate compared with other "good" supplies. But these sites NEVER rate them. I wonder why?

Re:No Antec or PC Power & Cooling?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/200507111/index. html

Re:No Antec or PC Power & Cooling?

[Grishnakh]

And where's the Seasonic and Cooler Master power supplies? They sure left out a LOT of big names in this review.

For PSUs, these days...

[Silverlancer]

Quality usually goes hand in hand with price. The best ones are usually the most expensive (PC Power and Cooling). The cheap ones do stupid crap like toss 400 watts onto the 5 volt rail and then call it a 650 watt power supply, when it might crash when you put in that 7800 GTX. Cheap supplies also often are very inefficient, dissipating huge amounts of perfectly good elecricity as heat. There are some exceptions to the rule, but in general I've found that the better ones tend to cost more.

Re:For PSUs, these days...

[dusanv]

The only PSU that ever died on me was the most expensive one:
Topower 420. It was in my gaming PC to protect the expensive components. I turn that machine on once a week at best. And no, it wasn't the dust that killed it - it popped a cap and was completely dust free. I also have a no-name PSU that cost me $30 with the case that has been on since mid 2000 (Linux server) with no problems.

Re:For PSUs, these days...

[Eil]

Where I work, our rule of thumb is that heavier power supplies are higher quality than lighter ones. While I'm sure this isn't going to be true in every single case, it makes a certain amount of sense. A manufacturer of cheap power supplies is going to try to put the least amount of material and labor into their units as possible. Quality PSU manufacturers tend to put in better components and beefier heatsinks. (Hence the fan(s) can spin slower, resulting in a quieter PSU as well.)

Re:For PSUs, these days...

[Dogtanian]

And no, it wasn't the dust that killed it - it popped a cap

...in your ass?!

Amazing speculative conclusion

[tomstdenis]

like all things in life, if you cut corners [price wise] you'll get burnt...

Though to be honest I've always gone with Antec cases [Sonata series for instance] and never once had a problem with the case or PSU [specially on things like dual-core AMD and Intel processors with multiple drives and PCI-X cards].

If you paid 30$ for your 400W supply and it doesn't work ... don't act very surprised.

Tom

Re:Amazing speculative conclusion

[Tony Hoyle]

Round here the 'name' brand is Enermax (the cheapest brand is coolermaster, which have a habit of exploding a couple of months after you bought them, and sound like an aircraft taking off...). Never managed to get the enermax to perform as it says on the tin - I have a 550w enermax that can't drive a 6800GT for example. They consistently overrate their PSUs, cover them with gold paint and sell them as 'premium' when they're nothing of the sort.

OTOH the 'no name' PSUs seem to perform much better.. they're also cheaper to replace when they explode (about once a year seems to be average).

Re:Amazing speculative conclusion

[bjs555]

like all things in life, if you cut corners [price wise] you'll get burnt...

Not in my experience. I usually buy the least expensive components I can find and I've rarely been burned.

I've designed lots of small switchers and the (usually field effect) transistors that block and pass current through the magnetics are very sensitive to the waveform on their gates. My guess is that supplies that die have out-of-margin or overly temperature sensitive wave shaping circuits within. Some manufacturers of expensive supplies no doubt design and test to higher specs, but some just spend the extra income on marketing (not against that but it doesn't do the end user much good).

Re:Amazing speculative conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

If you paid 30$ for your 400W supply and it doesn't work ... don't act very surprised.

Why shouldn't I expect a product to perform as advertised? Isn't that the point of the article?

Re:Amazing speculative conclusion

[MikeBabcock]

You haven't lived in the free market world very long I guess.

Companies lie.

Companies sometimes lie without engineers initially knowing they're lying.

Government regulations do little to stop it.

Buyer beware.

Re:Amazing speculative conclusion

[tomstdenis]

You should.

However, if it's too good to be true...

Re:Amazing speculative conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazing. Quoth the befuddlement: the 'no name' PSUs seem to perform much better.. they're also cheaper to replace when they explode (about once a year seems to be average)

WTF? So you normally wait for a cheap PSU to risk taking out your entire system? Or are you one of those types who blows $1500 on go-faster hardware yet is too anal or ignorant to buy a power supply, the heart of your system, from a reputed manufacturer? Also, regarding the 6800GT + Enermax comment: What the hell do you have in there that a 550W supply won't cover? Though with nvidia making the GPU equivalent of a P4, I can almost understand your situation.

Re:Amazing speculative conclusion

[Thalagyrt]

To reinforce what you're saying, I have a PSU from a manufacturer that isn't well known, and before that I had an Enermax PSU that didn't work properly.

I've got an Ultra X-Connect 500 watt PSU running dual 3.2 GHz Xeons and a 6800 Ultra. I only have one hard drive and one DVD burner in the machine, and I'm fairly sure that makes a difference.

I was kind of surprised though, I didn't expect it to be a great PSU. So far though I've had zero problems with it. Before I bought the Ultra X-Connect PSU I was running on a 600 watt Enermax PSU. My PC would completely lock up five minutes after I fire up say Unreal Tournament 2004 or WoW. It took me a while to realize that it was the PSU causing the problem, but as soon as I swapped it out it worked like a charm. You'd think Enermax would make good PSUs but no, we can't have that!

Re:Amazing speculative conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

If you'd read his comments or TFA, you'd realize that it's because Enermax overrates their PSUs. They're probably dumping a couple hundred watts on the 5V and 3.3V rails and calling it a 550W. Almost everything in a PC with a significant power draw pulls from the 12V rails these days.

Congratulations, you've proven yourself a complete tool.

Re:Amazing speculative conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that nothing prevents JoeCorp from taking advantage of this and selling $30 PSU's at $100.

Re:Amazing speculative conclusion

[InvalidError]

If you designed switchers, then you should know about ripple current.

Take a cheap PSU then check the specs for their output filter capacitors. When I see a flyback PSU with 20A outputs and filter capacitors rated for less than 1A ripple, I am mostly surprised that they lasted that long given that flybacks have the worst ripple currents of all switchers. While forward converters have much lower ripple, their 20-30A outputs often use 1A-rated caps... at ~50% load, the ripple current would still be over 5A RMS or worse if the 50% load point is too far below 50% duty cycle. (For universal PSUs, the 50% load point may even be below 25% duty cycle.)

If you have a 3+ years old $20 PSU (or free with $30 case), open it up and you will probably see that the output filter caps have leaked on the 12V and either 3.3V or 5V rails.

PS: In case of purists, I mean combined duty cycle rather than individual transistors/halves.

Re:Amazing speculative conclusion

[tomstdenis]

and selling $30 PSU's at $100.

That's capitalism.

I'm sure the 130$ Antec Case+PSU I can get locally doesn't cost Antec 130$ to produce. It probably costs them on the order of 65-90$ at most and the rest is profit+delivery+retail markup.

Tom

Re:Amazing speculative conclusion

[countzer0interrupt]

like all things in life, if you cut corners [price wise] you'll get burnt...

This, on a Linux advocacy site... oh the irony!

Re:Amazing speculative conclusion

[tomstdenis]

How is that remotely the same? There is no cost for Linux in terms of $$$ so there is nothing to "cut".

And I didn't say "if something costs less it must be inferior". I said if you cut corners. E.g. a quality case+PSU costs roughly $130 CAD. Deal with it. If you spend $30 on the bundle then you're cutting corners because the only way to get cost down like that is to cut quality.

Now, if a company comes out and finds a way to make quality bundles at $30 then you're not cutting corners are you? You're paying what would be normal.

I mean there is no comparison. An Antec Sonata vs. the $30 Chinese Special is no question. The average $30 case is more maleable than a coke can, has a power supply engineers of the 30s would call dirty and fans with a mean time to failure measured in weeks. A Sonata case on the other hand is sturdy, doesn't bend when you pick it up, has a power supply designed for strict tolerances and has case fans that run smoothly for as long as I have had them [start of the year].

If Antec started pushing 30$ case+psu combos that were effective then yea, I'd pay 30$ for a case and not think I'm cutting corners.

Tom

Re:Amazing speculative conclusion

[bjs555]

Yes, filter capacitors are probably more likely to fail than switching transistors. Exceeding the ripple current rating is just asking for trouble. It's a wonder anything works.

I'd be interested in knowing what the most common failure mode is for PC supplies (article slashdotted - don't know if they mentioned that).

Re:Amazing speculative conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

What I'm usually faced with is a scenario similar to the following:

Noname A costs $30 and sucks.
Noname B costs $90 and sucks.
Brand C costs $90 and is okayish.
Noname D costs $60 and is basically identical to C.
Noname E costs $90 and is just perfect.

Now, if I pick randomly one from B, D and E, I'm taking a huge risk.
If I pick C, I'm basically getting screwed.
So I pick A and get what I'm paying for.

Mmm.. capitalism..

Re:Amazing speculative conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

So, let me get this straight:

The cheap-ass power supply explodes, smokes your parts, and maybe sets on fire every once and a while.

The Enermax power supply instead is overratted and shuts itself off when you draw less than the full rating from it. However, it doesn't explode, smoke your parts, or set on fire.

To recap:

Exploding/setting on fire: Acceptable.
Items with incorrect wattage ratings that do NOT set on fire: Unacceptable.

Your rating for quality of your product reviews from me? 0/10. I tend to prefer something that doesn't explode ever, thanks, even if it means I have to buy a higher rating than I expected.

Re:Amazing speculative conclusion

[Castar]

like all things in life, if you cut corners [price wise] you'll get burnt...

Well, to an extent that's true, but it's also the case that you often end up paying inflated prices for brand or advertising, not quality. In some cases, the more-expensive product can actually be inferior.

For instance, several companies just rebadge computer components, and sell them for a higher price. You're not getting anything different, but you're paying more.

So how do you decide when the extra money is worth it, and when it isn't? Let's say you're willing to spend for top of the line - how do you decide what's top quality and what's just top price?

You do what these guys did, and test them. Or you go on the internet and find someone who tested them.

So these articles ARE valuable!

Re:Amazing speculative conclusion

[Reziac]

Enermax apparently has two distinct lines.

I have two of their PSU in the parts pile. One is rated 350W, weighs a ton and has a big thick bundle of wires with enough plugs for the most ridiculously over-equipped system. The other is rated 150W, looks and feels like any typical cheap (if not bottom-end) PSU, ie. lightweight with a few thin wires and minimal plugs.

Clean input

[P-Nuts]

Why did the testing procedure involve powering the supplies from what looks like a serious piece of kit delivering bang on 230Vac/50Hz. Surely an important consideration in choosing a power supply is how well it copes with a dirtier mains input?

Re:Clean input

[ettlz]

In order to make it a fair test. There's no way this could be achieved with the crappy quality of supply sometimes found coming out of sockets all over the UK.

Re:Clean input

[GeekDork]

Well, I can't RTFA due to some other people trying to do so, but a good test setup usually includes a "clean" primary power supply for fairness as was already suggested and then some fun add-ons to simulate controlled SNAFUs like bursts, surges and very short interruptions of up to, say, 100ms.

Re:Clean input

[heson]

I thought most developed countries had good mains, and that the rest have to use ups.

Re:Clean input

[canavan]

That's what mains simulators are there for. You can control exactly how dirty you want the supply voltage to be. Drop the voltage a bit, increase it a little, add spikes of precisely defined voltage, skip half a cycle or more. Power supplies have to pass such tests to be allowed to carry the EC logo (and be legally sold to consumers in the EC), and sadly, a number of PC power supplies just die when subjected to them - even expensive brand name ones.

Re:Clean input

[budgenator]

Personaly I don't care about "fair" if it negates valid, I want a PSU that excepts dirty power full of spikes and sags and drop-outs and turns it into nice clean VDC that's with-in my 'puters tollerances while running quiet, cool, efficient day after day. I've repaired power supplies that used 4CX1000's to drive the plate tank, 1KW of plate dissipation on those babies, flat response from 0Hz to 500MHz. One of those bad-boys blow it a lot louder than popcorn!

Re:Clean input

[fshalor]

They used Intel's ATX 2.0 testing method off intel's site.

I was able to read enough to tell they powered the PSU's from an HP 6842A, and used a grid of 9x 300w prodigit load modules for the load on the individual rails/connectors.

Nice test... can't wait to read the other 24 pages of the article.

Re:Clean input

[runderwo]

UPS (even so-called "line-interactive" types) won't help you with dirty power. You need an on-line power supply for that.

fsp makes great quiet PSUs

[rd4tech]

I have a PSU from FSP, 350 W extra quite. Paid over $50CDN for it but I can't hear it at all when the computer is on.

Real Geeks

[Anonymous Coward]

Build their own power supplies.

Re:Real Geeks

[m85476585]

That's actually a good idea. But you would probably have to be an electrical engineer to make it efficient/safe/cold-running, and all the other important features of a good PSU.

External Power Supply Macho

[MosesJones]

INTERNAL power supplies? Bloody hell is this really what we've come down to. If its not external and capable of re-starting a dead body then its not a power supply.

Seriously though, its a wonder to me that each device continues to insist on its own PSU, if you are running 3 servers (surely a minimum for the slashdot crowd), then 2 external supplies (main/redundant) should be all you need with a lightweight re-route internally to get the power onto the rails. This should be more efficient than multiple seperate boxes as it can level the load more evenly, and being external it can be cooled seperately as required.

Always suprised me on these new pizza box servers that I can't buy a pizza box PSU or two and save space enough in the main box for an extra CPU or two.

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[Anonymous Coward]

And you wouldn't waste a ton of power converting from AC to DC to AC to DC when you are using a UPS. UPSs waste a ton of power in all these conversions. Assuming 70% effiency each time, you're getting .7*.7*.7 = 34.3% percent effiency by having internal power supplys when you have to switch over to battery power.

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[interiot]

Always suprised me on these new pizza box servers that I can't buy a pizza box PSU or two and save space enough in the main box for an extra CPU or two.

I think it's a basic issue of amperage and voltage drop?

You take the same wattage of power, coming in over 120v, and output it at various voltages under 12v, and your cables coming out end up being pretty large if you need to go 4+ feet. Cable size and weight varies with amps, not with volts or watts, so for the same wattage, lowering the voltage makes the cable size grow, so it's more efficient to transport electricity around at >=120 volts rather than <=12 volts.

There might be more details like the PSU not being able to respond to spikes in current draw fast enough because of characteristics of the line too, but I bet the cable size/weight is the biggest part of it.

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy enough, look to the telcom world.

Get some nice -48V atx dcdc converters for your boxes, and a couple of really nice rectifiers.

Makes battery (and generator) backup so much easier, and it's much more efficient.

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[Ayanami Rei]

You can.
http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hw/network ing/120/
http://store.sun.com/CMTemplate/CEServlet?process= SunStore&cmdStartWebConfig_CP&familyCode=RACK90036 N&baseSelected=1

Expensive as hell though.

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[hackstraw]

if you are running 3 servers (surely a minimum for the slashdot crowd), then 2 external supplies (main/redundant) should be all you need with a lightweight re-route internally to get the power onto the rails.

I've thought about this, and it has been discussed on the beowulf mailinglist. And, in fact, APC has products that do this, but the number of computers that have direct DC inputs are few and far between. Usually, they are "telco" grade computers.

Anywho, I think it would be awesome to have one hot swappable and redundant power supply _and_ a UPS that takes 5U or so in each rack. It seems as though it would be so much more efficient, especially when involving a UPS. Think about it you have AC voltage coming into your UPS which goes from AC->DC which goes to the batteries, and then the DC->AC again to go to the computer, and then the PSU in the computer does AC->DC again to distribute it to the internals of the computer. Now multiply it by each server you have.

Any EE types out there that have any justifications for each and every gizmo that you plug into the wall having its own power supply? I would really like to get rid of all of those external AC->DC adaptors that come with smaller electronics. Those get to be a pain real quick, especially when they are fighting for real estate on a power strip.

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[Intron]

Telephone systems do it right. Power supplies charge battery, 48VDC. Each unit has an efficient DC-DC converter from clean battery power down to their working voltages. No surges, no dropouts. If Bell had designed the first PC, it would be modular, run on 48V and have a cool black Bakelite case.

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[Lehk228]

i think for small electronics it is merely an issue of nobody taking the initiative to create and promode a standard low voltage DC format

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[Pontiac]

Funny thing is they do make em like this..

HP's Blade servers run on a 48v bus. The PSU's are in a seperatly racked case. You can power an entire rack full with 2 PSU cages.
You can get up to 6 enclosures in a 42u rack for a total of up to 96 blades.

Each PSU cage holds 6 PSU's and has 2-220v feeds so you can power a full rack with 4 220v circuts. The PSU's just deliver 48 volts so you could drop them entirly and use whatever 48v PS you have (telco anyone??) When were evaluating them we gave some serous thought to powering them through the Telco power supply.

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[GigsVT]

Seriously though, its a wonder to me that each device continues to insist on its own PSU

Because a redundant 1000 watt power supply costs a whole lot more than 3 times more than a 350 watt one.

Distributed power conversion is (generally) a good thing.

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[Waffle Iron]

That sounds cool, but IMO the batteries would end up being more trouble than they're worth. Consumer gear would likely come with el-cheapo batteries that fail every couple of years, so you'd frequently be heading down to the local computer mart to plop down another $70 on fresh batteries.

I need to do just that with my lawn tractor battery. After only 3 seasons of use, it's now as dead as a doornail. I saw a Consumer Reports article a while back that rated lawn tractor batteries, and their conclusion was that they all sucked. Hypothetical consumer-grade power supply batteries would likely be similar.

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[artifex2004]

If Bell had designed the first PC, it would be modular, run on 48V and have a cool black Bakelite case.

Actually, it would have been hardwired in, you wouldn't have been allowed to use third-party equipment, and you'd have been charged a monthly fee for rental :) You're right, though, about using batteries in line. Even without all the other benefits, like conditioning, it's a built in UPS, if the battery set is large enough. :)

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[David Horn]

Also, if you have your rack of pizza box servers running from the same power supply, and something very big goes very wrong with the PSU, you might end up frying a lot of servers.

Nothin' like the smell of charred components in the morning... ;-)

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[TheHawke]

Heh, sorry to say this, but I've lost two PRI cards and a pair of smart jacks due to power transients because the CO switched from battery to generator and back agian. Idiots had the gall to bill us 500 bucks for the calls to come out and swap out the fried gear so that we could diagnose the PRI cards. Glad we went wholesale on our dialups for that area, let a bigger company deal with a bigger idiot of a telco.

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[Agripa]

In general, each voltage conversion introduces it's own losses so if you can do it all in one jump you tend to be better off from an efficiency standpoint. For standard PC power supplies, the manufacturing volume leads to an advantage in per unit cost that is very difficult to compete against using a different architecture.

48 Volts DC is the obvious alternative standard because of the telecommunications infrastructure but the newer automobile DC standard which is lower is a possibility also.

The best bet for something to replace all of those external adaptors is probably the USB or Firewire connector. The problem is that USB is limited to 5 volts at 2.5 watts and Firewire has a wide range of 12 to 36 volts which complicates the internal design of anything using it. One reason manufacturers use external adaptors is that they can be used to get around UL certification because their product then only uses a low voltage supply.

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[Anonymous Coward]

Your CO sucks, therefore all CO's must suck?

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[InvalidError]

In some installations, a 400V DC bus is used for simpler, more efficient and more reliable power distribution. By centralizing line inputs, it is easier to do power factor corrections, power conditioning and since it is all DC, a battery bank directly across the DC bus can replace the UPS. Each (sub-)system afterwards has it own DC-DC converter.

Why is power distribution done at high voltages? Simple: to reduce conduction losses in wires, semiconductors and other devices. Old systems were based on 5V until ATX came along, at which point 3.3V systems became the norm for a short while - stepping down from 3.3V involved too high currents to be practical, this is how we ended up with ATX-12V and today's 12V-based systems where most/all MoBo regulators are fed off the 12V rail.

In the near future, every device will have some form of on-board power regulation - many chips already do have built-in linear regulators for their more sensitive circuits. The trend to ever more localized power regulation is required by high-performance/high-speed circuitry which needs very fast transient response. Look at Intel's recent mobile CPU announcement: the next Pentium-M generation will be multi-chip modules containing, in addition to the CPU, both the north bridge and Vcore regulator.

If you go from line to load, power goes through 3-6 voltage regulators before reaching the target:
1- active PFC (relatively few PSUs where not required by law)
2- bulk transformer
3- magnetic regulator (for most PSUs that actually regulate auxiliary rails)
4- MoBo regulators
5- on-card/device regulators
6- on-chip regulators

Modern CPUs and GPUs require microsecond-scale response time from the bulk PSU when going from idle to 100% load. Failure to deliver will cause crashes. Integrated regulator can have sub-microsecond response times, local board-level regulators are at the microsecond scale and response times quickly climb in the tens of microseconds afterwards due to wiring impedance.

So, the DC-bus is pretty much as close to centralized power regulation that would be practical with high-speed loads.

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[interiot]

Granted, some <=20v bricks transport electricity for several feet (especially things like laptop bricks), but I think they usually have a final power supply in the chasis itself, so that the voltage drop over the thin wire is basically inconsequential. The PSU inside the chasis is going to need some voltage overhead that it lops off anyway, so as long as you have a sufficient voltage overhead (or it's a boost converter), everything works out fine.

But maybe the same kind of laptop-brick PSU arragenment would work for racks... eg. have a couple slots for the larger/hotter 120 => 20v converters, and then have the standard laptop 20v => ATX converter in each individual unit.

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[Phreakiture]

Seriously though, its a wonder to me that each device continues to insist on its own PSU

I have a project on the drawing board to deal with this. The power supply will primarily be 12V, with the primary being a mains-powered converter, and the secondary being a bundle of batteries. A Mini-Box DC-DC converter will be snapped to each motherboard (these are about 95% efficient), cable modem already runs on 12VDC (so it would just be tied into the power rail) and I have some custom work on the drawing board to set up a DC source for switches, etc.

Also, high-efficiency lighting and some other non-computer equipement (CB + 2 ham radios) are in the plan also to run off of these 12VDC rails.

Before anyone mentions it, no, POE isn't in my plan, nor is it likely to be.

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[InvalidError]

There is a simple reason: "Using non-approved chargers voids your warranty, may damage the device and cause the battery to explode."

Funny thing is that some cell phones' "chargers" are only step-down transformers feeding ~9V AC, with the rectifier and charge controllers either built into the phone or battery.

Because manufacturers do not want consumers to use any random adaptor with their products, most use custom plugs and sockets. If everybody used the same connectors, devices and/or adaptors would routinely be destroyed by incorrect pinout and/or voltage. Using custom connectors also creates a market for overpriced replacement adaptors when the cables get munched by the pets/pests, severed in a domestic accident or conductors break from fatigue.

It would be nice if there was a single barrel connector (center-positive) for each of 3.3V, 5V, 9V and 12V... but this is the real world.

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[budgenator]

I guess that means the batteries in your UPS are much better, yeah right. Try this, fire up the ol 'puter and yank the UPS cord out, see what happens, very few of us get the 5 minutes promised.

OBTW, look into getting a desulphater for the tractor battery, they're reported to charge some hopelessly dead lead acid batteries; $5.00 worth of parts or a $25.00 pre-made vs. $70.00 tractor battery seems like a reasonable gamble to me.

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[Chad Page]

... and it'd almost never crash. ;)

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[GuyverDH]

Look for the telecom version of the pizza boxes - they run off of pure, externally powered, DC.

No AC adapters there.

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[hankwang]

2 external supplies (main/redundant) should be all you need with a lightweight re-route internally to get the power onto the rails.

in addition to what other posters mention, there are technical reasons that most equipment must have individual power supplies. Because ground is shared through the power supply among all connected devices AND through the signal cables, you will get lots of ground loops that act as antennas for radio signals and 50/60 Hz. Moreover, it won't take long before someone tries connecting his computer speakers to the 12 V from the main PS, thus burning both power supply and speakers because the ground for the audio input is connected to the ground of the computer, but to +6 V of the speaker power supply.

I wonder why people need 200, 300, 400 W power supplies in their computers. Do you know what that means for your electricity bill to have 300 W running 24/7? Hint: it's about 1 dollar per watt-year...

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[Grishnakh]

Any EE types out there that have any justifications for each and every gizmo that you plug into the wall having its own power supply? I would really like to get rid of all of those external AC->DC adaptors that come with smaller electronics. Those get to be a pain real quick, especially when they are fighting for real estate on a power strip.

I'm a EE. The problem you're referring to has little to do with computers (at least the parts that fit within the case), but a lot to do with other small electronic devices used in homes and offices.

The problem is partly technical, and partly economic. From the technical side, to power all these small devices, first everyone would have to agree to standardize on a particular voltage (or set of them), perhaps +5V, +12V, and +18V. But having low voltage wires running around your house would suck for efficiency, which is one of the main reasons for having a centralized systems instead of lots of power-wasting wall-warts. Low voltage/high current equates to high I^2R losses: the power wasted in the wiring goes up with the square of the current. This is precisely why power companies like to boost the voltage on long-distance transmission lines to insanely high levels (like 2 MV in some other countries; I believe the USA is limited to 765 kV).

You could standardize on a higher DC voltage like 48V as some have suggested, but (I'm not a power engineer so I may be missing something) then you'd have less losses in the house wiring (but still more than 120V/220V), but you'd still have to deal with some conversion losses since most devices operate on 5V or 12V. And to convert DC to DC you'd need a DC-DC converter which is typically much more expensive than cheap Chinese-made wall-warts which are just a crappy transformer and a diode and capacitor. So I'm not sure how much efficiency you'd gain; probably a fair amount by forcing everyone to go to higher-quality switching regulators, but most companies would probably then just not even use this new DC standard, and would still stick with wall-warts because it'll save them a few bucks.

The other problem is that we have a standard in place (120VAC in USA), and that once something like that is so entrenched, it's nearly impossible to change. What you're proposing would require a special power supply in the house's utility room, and then lots of extra wiring, new special outlets, etc. All this would add a lot of cost to the price of a house, and would only help new houses. People with older houses wouldn't be able to use these devices, and would have to buy adaptors (bringing you right back to the problem of numerous wall-warts), and people with newer houses would probably not want this new expensive crap installed unless it's forced on them by the government. People (especially builders, who have money for lobbying and clout) would yell at the government that we don't need this thing, and the government wouldn't require it in building codes.

So basically, while it might make some sense at a technical level, for social and economic reasons it will never fly. Because of history and inertia, we're still all using different power outlets, different voltages (120 vs. 240), and different frequencies (50Hz vs. 60Hz) in different countries, because each country started out differently. We all use the same kind of electricity-consuming equipment all over the world; wouldn't it be nice if we could just standardize on one type of power distribution so we can bring our devices anywhere without needing converters, and so manufacturers don't have to make different versions of things? But if we did that, it'd require someone to change all the outlets in their country to the new standard, and to throw out a lot of their electrical equipment because it won't work any more. No one will go for this.

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[Grishnakh]

Economically, perhaps. But not for reliability. A redundant 1kW supply will be of far higher quality than your regular cheapo 350W ones, and if it does fail, it is redundant after all, so you just replace the part that failed, and experience zero downtime. If one of your cheapo power supplies fails, something is going down.

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[Grishnakh]

I wonder why people need 200, 300, 400 W power supplies in their computers. Do you know what that means for your electricity bill to have 300 W running 24/7?

No one needs, or uses, 300W for a whole year unless they're running a render farm. This is just for peak power, when your computer is actually doing something. Since the computer spends most of its time idle, it consumes much less than 300W (or whatever the peak power rating is) normally, but the power supply must be able to go from idle current to peak current levels extremely fast.

With more focus on power consumption recently, expect this trend to continue; ideally, we'd have CPUs which draw nearly no power when idling, so you really can leave your computer on 24/7 without worrying about wasting electricity, and then whenever you do any computation use a lot of power, but only for a very brief time before immediately returning to the low-power state to await more work.

Re:External Power Supply Macho

[GigsVT]

Sounds like it boils down to the classic "clustering vs big iron" argument. Just apply both sides and we are finished. :)

Even mirrordot.org doesn't help much on this one..

[Cronky]

... as it [mirrordot.org] doesn't cache the linked pages ;-(

In related news SUVs are better than cars

[Junks Jerzey]

Yes, even though only some people need 4WD and high ground clearance, SUVs are clearly the better vehicle and we all should have them.

(Mod away!

Re:In related news SUVs are better than cars

[jacksonj04]

Moderators obviously suck today, this is called an analogy or a metaphor. This means that it is in fact on topic.

Parent was saying (sarcasm on) that even though very few people need 600W (SUVs in the analogy), they are obviously far better than 300W/400W PSUs (Efficient city cars in the analogy) and therefore we should all buy them.

This highlights the fact that you don't need a 600W PSU for your office machine, much as you don't need an SUV for city driving.

Re:In related news SUVs are better than cars

[karnal]

But, if you do buy a 600 watt power supply that is 10% more efficient than the 300/400 watt power supply you're not necessarily going to use all 600 watts all the time. In fact, if you put the same load on the 600 that you were going to put on a replacement 300/400 watt supply, you'd come out ahead.

So, the SUV comparison isn't exactly valid, unless the 600 watt is horribly inefficient.

Re:In related news SUVs are better than cars

[moonbender]

The thing is, typically PSUs are most efficient at something like 80% of their rated power. At lower power - and most PCs use less than 200W most of the time - their efficiency gets worse. All things being equal, a PSU rated for up to 350W uses less power to deliver 250W than a PSU rated for up to 600W. Of course, a modern 600W PSU might beat an old 350W PSU due to overall increases in efficiency; some modern PSUs get 80% efficiency and above under nearly any load, no PC PSU did this 5 or 10 years ago.

Re:In related news SUVs are better than cars

[necro81]

The problem is, as moonbender already pointed out, is that PSUs (not just for computers, but power converters of almost any sort) have wrose efficiency the farther you operate from their rated load. Stated differently, their peak efficiency usually comes near max power output. So, that 600 W PSU, even if its rated efficiency is 10 percentage points higher than that 300 W unit [note that, in either case, the rated efficiency they stamp on the box is almost categorically a lie], the smaller unit will more efficiently deliver the ~200 W needed to actually run the computer for most things.

Another thing that one ought to consider when buying that ultra-mega-PSU, aside from whether it can actually deliver the power it claims, is what its standby power draw is. When operating under no-load conditions (such as when the computer is on standby, or off), those larger PSUs will tend to draw more power than smaller ones. That power is a complete loss, because it's not actually doing anything useful except keeping the transformer nice and toasty. The best thing to do would be to simply unplug the computer when turned off, or flick the switch on that power strip.

Any idea how much power your house uses even when everything in it is "off"?

Coral Cache link

[grimwell]

Maybe try a Coral Cache url instead of linking directly to Hexis http://www.hexus.net.nyud.net:8090/content/static/ psu_roundup.html

Re:Coral Cache link

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't even get it from Coral Cache. Let it load for 10 minutes and all I had was the header and sidebar. Tried loading it again and it finished in about 3 minutes. There are like 20 or so pages in the article, and page 2 doesn't seem to be loading any faster.

Re:Coral Cache link

[OverlordQ]

AFAIK, none of the coral servers talk/share cache, so for each different coral server (the whole DNAME "find a local server" bit) each needs to cache a copy of the content, so the server *does* need to be still up by that point.

Re:Coral Cache link

[Anonymous Coward]

That'd be because Coral Cache is a worthless piece of overrated shit.

Re:Coral Cache link

[gid]

Use the print article link instead. That just loaded up for me after several attempts. The images are still linked to the main server so it'll take awhile.

Re:Coral Cache link

[IceFoot]

Huh? The Coral servers are actually slower than the Hexus site!

Antec

[p51d007]

I noticed that also....no Antec must mean they didn't get a "free" one :) I had to pull my 430 Antec out because when I popped out my GeForce 5700 Ultra to replace it with a 6600GT (no laughs now!) it wouldn't handle: 4 Hard Drives 2 CD/DVD Burners 1 Water Cooler 2.8 HT P4 TV Tuner 6 USB 2.0 devices I just don't know why? LOL Anyway, popped in an Antec 480 and it's runnin' like a champ The 430 is still ok...kind of screwed up in reverse too... I thought the power supply "might" be bad so I went to best buy on a sunday (and we all know how painful that is) and bought another 430 watt antec...didn't fix it.....so...boxed up the 430 and took it back and exchanged it for a 480 watt, which fixed it. When I was cleaning up the mess, I took a look at my "old" 430 watt supply and realized that I took my OLD 430 watt version ONE power supply back to best buy, and kept the version TWO one. Oops! I thought about calling best buy but figured what the heck, they've got enough of my money over the years, kind of nice to come out ahead once in a while.

Re: Antec

[morgan_greywolf]

Best Buy wouldn't care. They just need a product to ship back to their distributor, who'll likely only look in the box to see that "yup, it's an Antec 430 PSU all right!" Anyways, your problem was most likely with your drives. Running 6 drives puts quite a drain. Seeing as how a an Intel P4 system needs 350W-400W minimum, 430 just ain't enough to run 6 drives, a power hungry GPU and a water cooler. But even without the 6600GT, you were definitely pushing the limits of the PSU for sure.

Re: Antec

[LordKronos]

no Antec must mean they didn't get a "free" one

From TFA:
We were very careful to use retail power supplies for our testing, mindful of not falling into the trap of asking manufacturers for supplies only to have special units sent which stand up more than a retail unit would.

Re: Antec

[MikeBabcock]

Just for the sake of sharing, I'm running an Antec Sonata with its included (not available seperately) 380W PSU with an AMD Barton 2500+ and 5 drives (3 IDE, 7200 RPM and 2 SATA, 7200 RPM).

pictures of hardware

Re: Antec

[InvalidError]

It depends.

The PSU market is looking a lot like the amplified speaker market... in the sense that the marked figured is either a non-standard measurement, completely off the mark or, sometimes, true. As all the PSU reviews I have ever seen showed, many if not most PSUs come short of their markings as far as sustained output is concerned... either that or they do not stay within specifications across the load range.

My Northwood-3G/HT has a 300W PSU... and the Antec Aria case (a thermodynamic and assembly nightmare) in which it is becomes warm enough with only one drive, I would not dare putting three HDDs and a high-end video card in there. Since the wall power is around 170W at full load (2xSETI + Half-Life 2), it seems like I am only about half-way. Drives are around 15W each on average (desktop HDDs idle at 7-8W, seeks go up to 20W) so having four more is only about 60W, leaving ~90W extra (on top of my Radeon 9600XT) for a high-end video card and other accessories. So, a true 300W PSU should be able to handle such a load - as long as you do not have a Prescott.

I suspect the main reason why nVidia and ATI recommend supersized PSUs is because the average supersized PSU is a piece of junk that can sustain only a fraction of its rating. If all PSUs were able to deliver 100% of their rated output and still meet specs, graphics card vendors would not have to recomend so outrageously supersized PSUs. But the reality is that most PSUs will prematurely produce magic smoke at substantially less than full-load and many major-brand PSUs will shutdown or blow up well before delivering full-load even if you disregard specs compliance.

Re: Antec

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting as AC because I moderated.

I really wish there was a -1: Asshole moderation. Seems like the same guy that posted "Don't lie. You stole that software" in a previous article today.

Re: Antec

[SatanicPuppy]

Ha! I have that exact box, except it only has 4 drives. Just put it together recently as a replacement production box, and it's been running great.

Re: Antec

[Lumpy]

Antec Aria case with an AMD64 3700+ processor with a geforce 6600GT video card. I keep it around 104 deg F easily inside with 2 hard drives in there.(BTW, Processor and Motherboard aew within 4 degF with processor a tad hotter)

I only performed 3 small modifications that are barely visible.

1 - cut out the fan guard at the back, you lose most of your airflow through that damned honeycomb mess over the psu fan.
2 - mount 2 40mm fans in the front of the case inside. cut out the aluminum where they would pull air in from the front slot vents.

3 - throw away the crap they give you for the slot fan. a $6.00 replacement moves 2X the air.

I went from regular thermal shutdowns during gaming to running at massively heavy loads for days.

yes, it feels like a space heater blowing heat out the back but the processor and motherboard stay within decent tempreatures. you have to replace the PSU fan with a high flow fan and add a side fan exausting where the processor is to lower tems farther.

Re: Antec

[InvalidError]

The idea of modding the case to make it more proper crossed my mind a number of times... but I decided to leave the exterior look intact. Last year I tried modding the fan control circuit to see if the fan could go faster than 1800RPM and as you said, the stock fan is no good. I ended up soldering a 10k resistor in parallel with the thermistor, this increased the baseline RPMs by ~200, just enough to keep my CPU fan around 2800RPM while idle instead of whizzing at an intolerable 3800RPM... but still no cigar compared to open-case's 2200RPM idle, 2800RPM full-load - I remember reading one Aria review that said the same thing: Aria is quietest when you ditch the noise-dampening side-panels. Kudos to Antec for creating the most extensively vented heat trap.

BTW, there are two PSU case designs for the Aria: one that has only four small intake strips and the other that has strips arcross all sides. My model (the former) has around three square inches worth of intake strips while the other has closer to ten... so, the loose 10+ square inches honeycomb at the rear is a non-issue for me until I do something about the intake.

It would have been a nice case if Antec paid a little more attention to assembly and cooling. For example, simply having the top support bar lay on top of the lateral supports instead of hanging under them would have already made installation much easier - no need to unscrew the PSU from the support bar then wiggle the two back into place over the CPU's HSF during case re-assembly that way and similarly for de-assembly.

If I wanted to (Part II): craft a flexible duct that sits on top of the Aria and put my 200CFM 120mm steel fan on that... but that would be a "little" too loud.

Well, winter is almost here again so cooling is soon going to be the last thing on my mind :)

Truepowe

[metricmusic]

ah the site is slashdotted. Anyone lucky enough to have got ther before it caught on fire could they answer this for me: did they test the Truepower 2 550? how did it go because I just put in a order for one no longer than 10 minutes ago.

Re:Truepowe

[Mr. Underbridge]

It electrocuted the installer on first boot under half the rated load.

PSU, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently their servers used one of the "bad" PSUs...

Dell 250W

[AmiMoJo]

I work in a computer repair shop. We use Dell 250W PSUs - they are reliable and do what they say on the box.

We had one guy buy a motherboard from us. He couldn`t get it to start up. We tested it, it was fine. He took it away, came back saying it was definately buggered because it wouldn`t even start with his mates £65 super 650W mega-PSU that makes the lights dim when you turn it on. We showed him it working with a £15 Dell, and he was sold. Tail firmly between legs that time.

Re:Dell 250W

[io-waiter]

Doesnt dell has a remapped pin layout that breaks the ATX specification ?

Re:Dell 250W

[Minwee]

Not on all of their PCs. Some, like the Dimension 4x00, 8x00 and Optiplex GX400, use real ATX power supplies. Most of their other models require a rather inexpensive adapter in order to run with a standard PSU.

Re:Dell 250W

[SatanicPuppy]

Yes, though I had a dell support tech swear to me that this was not the case once. Proved him wrong at the cost of one slightly singed motherboard.

Re:Dell 250W

[Chad Page]

I think Dell gave that up when they unfortunatly moved away from Intel-built motherboards. So the Dell 4100 is the last dimension with the proprietary supply, I think.

Re:Dell 250W

[daft_one]

Just OOC, did you ask him how many screws he'd been using to hold the board in?

Re:Dell 250W

[AmiMoJo]

The first time he came in, he had the board in his tower, and it looked okay, all screwed in properly.

We did the test with his PSU and ours on a bench.

As a side note, we use these PSUs for our own machines. For example, one engineer runs a 64-bit Sempron 2800 with three hard drives, a DVD-ROM, DVD-RW, GeForce 5200 128MB graphics card, ITE "RAID" card and several USB devices from one. A real 250W supply can run a lot.

Re:For PSUs, these days...HEC/Sparkle

[Tmack]

Quality usually goes hand in hand with price. The best ones are usually the most expensive (PC Power and Cooling)....

Not always, and not what I buy. ALOT of powersupplies these days are way overpriced. They focus more on inflated power ratings on the cover and bling like LED fans and chrome gratings (who is even going to see that, the fan usualy is in the back??). A better way to determine quality is weight comparison. The ones that work better generally weigh more as they actually use real components rather than single-chip regulators. The brands I have stuck with are Sparkle and HEC, two brands that are rebranded by several other companies after inflating the price for their company's logo or the bling they add to it. 3 HEC's to replace cheapo came-with-the-case PS's, and all three are still running strong, several years longer than the ones they replaced. Best part is, they dont cost that much. Most reviews that include them (no I didnt rtfa on this one) take note of it, and they usualy wind up near or at the top, depending on how the test was done.

tm

Requesting BT of video

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone have a BitTorrent of the video? Seeing the magic smoke being let out was really the only reason I was interested in the article.

Re:Requesting BT of video

[JulianOolian]

The clip just shows the power meter reading increasing to a bit over a kW. No smoke, no explosion, not even a PSU in shot. Not sure why they bothered really - it's a waste of bandwidth they don't seem to have spare.

Re: suggestion for next Hexus review: bandwidth

[halleluja]

I am about to fulfill your request just after I've finished loading the article...

Now we're at it, could you have known "Captain Stitch Me Up" is possibly sexier than CowboyNeal??

Question on slashdottings.

[Grendel Drago]

I assume you guys are server-limited, not bandwidth-limited, when the Slashdot beast comes around. So why don't you put up a static version of the page when the Slashdotting hits? Why don't you at least use some sort of caching to reduce the load on your servers? Is there something obvious that I, not being a mighty server admin, am missing?

Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the hardware, a 200Mhz P2 could easily saturate 100Mbps. Unless you have insufficient bandwidth, it's your CMS that is failing the slashdot test.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if it's serving 100% static content. Dynamic content, on the other hand....

Re:Eh?

[budgenator]

It was a static page! www.hexus.net/content/static/psu_roundup.html

Coral Cache Link!!! Use this!

[cbiltcliffe]

Coral Cache link, and at least page one is there.

Use this one instead of the submitter's link!

http://www.hexus.net.nyud.net:8090/content/static/ psu_roundup.html

Re:For PSUs, these days...HEC/Sparkle

[slaker]

I'd just like to add that HEC power supplies are also surprisingly quiet and generally very reasonably priced. Sparkle PSUs are loud SOBs, but the parent here is absolutely right: Sparkle and HEC units are generally so reliable that they verge on boring. Which is very good thing to say about power supplies.

Tom's Hardware's PSU Strees Test, Aug. '05

[PoisonousPhat]

Only 19 PSUs tested, but you can still get to the site (for now).

http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/200507111/index. html

To cut to the chase, TH recommended the Fortron FSP300-60GNF and the Seasonic S12 600.

Re:Tom's Hardware's PSU Strees Test, Aug. '05

[Txiasaeia]

No idea why Hexus didn't review any Seasonics, especially given their reputation in the SPCR community. Yes, some people just care about pure wattage and 12v rails, but Seasonics have accurate wattage, high 12v rails (my S12-380 has 25a on the 12v rails) and are nearly *silent*. Yet nobody seems to have heard about the company because relatively few mainstream sites review their PSUs. Go figure.

Re:Tom's Hardware's PSU Strees Test, Aug. '05

[leighklotz]

The test show that the Fortron has low ripple in addition to being fanless.
Is there anybody with one who can comment on RFI/EMC?

Re:Truepower

[Lost_In_Specs]

Funny you should say that... On Friday I was helping a friend put together a cheap e-mail box for another friend. He'd ordered all the parts online and was using the PSU that came with the very cheap case. We plugged it in and then got a nasty surprise when we touched the metal. Luckily it wasn't pouring out every watt into the case. It was just enough to be mighty uncomfortable. I'm now a true believer in better power supplies. If the site ever comes back, I'll be reading it.

1KW input?

[NoseBag]

The Slashdot effect is in full force so I can't RTFA, but given the 1KW in / 400W out description, I would venture to guess that either someone didn't measure or account for power factor on the input current waveform, or the thing was significantly glowing prior to smoke-release. 40% efficiency at that power level - ahem - sucks mightily.

Re:1KW input?

[queazocotal]

I have measured several power supplies, using 2 different models of mass-market power supplies.

Compared with actual measurements with a scope, they read high by 50-100%.

Looking at the waveforms on the scope, they were really strange, with the current resembling a sharks fin, with a really sharp attack, and a slow decay.

Re:1KW input?

[NoseBag]

What you're observing is the classic (and typical) full-wave-rectified-and-pumped-into-a-capacitor current waveform of an un-PF-corrected power supply. The waveform has an inherent PF of about 50-60% (if I recall correctly - its been a while) or thereabouts - depending on parametric details. So any input power calculation based on simple RMS measurements could be off (high) by 40-50%. Thus...a 1KW measurement instead of (perhaps) 500-600W input. Correction would yield a conversion efficiency in the high 60's (still low) or low 80's (about right). Bottom line: IMHO something's seriously wrong with the measurement/data given.

Re:1KW input?

[queazocotal]

Nope.

Pumped into a capacitor from a diode looks like a clipped sine.

Like (drawn from memory) http://www.mauve.plus.com/sine.gif

Not http://www.mauve.plus.com/shark.gif .

Which is quite different.

The meters both read the first correctly, but were unable to accurately integrate the second.

Re:1KW input?

[NoseBag]

Afraid so... (advanced-degree'd hardware design engineer, 20+ years in mil/aero custom switching power supply design).

The half-sine you are drawing is the current into a resistive load. The second waveform is more consistent with rectification into a very large energy-storage cap - like those typically placed on the input stage of a switcher.

Re:1KW input?

[csirac]

I think you're confused or you woke up to early.

Pumped into a capacitor from a diode looks like a clipped sine. Like (drawn from memory) http://www.mauve.plus.com/sine.gif

You've got it backwards, parent poster was right.

No, I think you'll find the "clipped sine" is just half-wave rectified AC. That's what you get with just a single diode, nothing else, no capacitor involved. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectifier.

Your second diagram resembles the half-wave rectifier with a "smoothing capacitor" (or as Wikipedia calls it, a "Resevoir capacitor"). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservoir_capacitor.

The worst switch-mode PSU we have built at university (2nd year) had the most embarassing efficiency ... of around 60%. I made various improvements and got the efficiency to around 75%, IIRC.

From memory, if the inductor coil (gauge of the copper, turn radius, etc) and its core can be chosen carefully with a high-frequency switching design (250KHz and beyond) then efficiencies greater than 95% can be achieved.

I'm with NoseBag on this one... something is completely screwy to get a 40% efficiency. I'm not the most experienced SMPS designer in the world, but the DC-DC converter's I've built usually collapse way before you load them down hard enough to end up with 40% efficiency - the feedback loop in the switching circuit just can't do its thing any more.

Of course, the designs I did are probably quite different to what we find in an ATX PSU...

Re:Yaaawwwwnnnn. Could there be anything more bori

[Shakrai]

Jeez christ , what next , the top 10 power cords?

I'm sure the top one would be a Cisco power cord.

Back in the day when I worked in a Cisco shop/ISP I was flipping through a Cisco Router parts catalog. I came to "Power Supply Cord" under one of the sections -- it was $50!

I asked my boss what was so special about a Cisco power cord. He said, "Cisco sells it to you", and proceeded to show me how a Cisco power cord is exactly the same as a normal power cord but with a slightly heavier gauge (14AWG vs 16AWG) of wire. When I pointed out that I could buy a 50 foot long 14AWG extension cord for less then $25 he said, "Yeah, but not from Cisco."

Two words

[Bimo_Dude]

I don't get why they split the articles into three or four pages, when you could easily have one big page to scroll through.

Ad Revenue.

Obvious Joke

[cgenman]

What power supply was the server using?

Fraudulent Labeling , Consumer Safety - Who Cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Australia, reported several brands that blew up (.au on 240 ac. Vic, NSW, ACT and QLD consumer protection bodies did nothing = useless. Inside, a wire jumper was substituted for a fuse!
The 240v surge blew the caps off, landed, and stuck in the cooling fan, while the PCB cooked a real stench with some more bangs (louder than popcorn).
Self regulation/certification sucks. Will lay bets those CE marks certify the stickers only. About time they read some reviews, and decide to act. Nowadays the PSU's fail before the fan gets noisy.

No Seasonic, Antec or PC Power & Cooling?

[Anonymous Coward]

That was a bad on their part, but they do have alot of the other "major" Power Supply venders. Q-Technology, Hiper and Fortron are respected brands. Antec is our company's main PSU and we have never had a problem with them. Too bad they weren't there.

My external power supply/UPS

[linuxpyro]

At home I run a Web/Mail server. It uses a 1 GHz mini-itx board which I got from a friend who planned on using it in his car. So, I got it along with the power supply that uses a 12 volt input. Rather than pick up a 120 volt PSU for it, I decided to try something new, rather than just plug it into my UPS with my router, cable modem, and other server. I looked around and found this (sorry, the data sheet's in PDF format). It's a small DC power supply that can also charge a 12 volt battery. It can act like a UPS as well, so in the event of a power failure, it will switch my server to battery power. It's not bad; the server typically takes about 3 amps at 12 volts. So far it's been very reliable.

As for powering other electronics and replacing the wall transformers, this would be a good idea and could be easily done. Most of them take a small amount of current at about 12 volts, so all you'd really need would be a decent power supply (Astrodyne's got a lot of them), some kind of regulator circuit to keep the battery from overcharging, and wiring to all the devices. It would be a lot more efficient than each device having its own separate transformer.

Let me get this straight

[Psionicist]

The review tested all these products in FSG Groups facility, an employee of FSG Group is said to be "sexy" in the review, and a product from FSG Group won? Yeah, right...

Re:Let me get this straight

[irf]

BEGIN QUOTE
The review tested all these products in FSG Groups facility, an employee of FSG Group is said to be "sexy" in the review, and a product from FSG Group won? Yeah, right...
END QUOTE
to be fair, the only product from FSG that won, was the "Low-end supplies", namely, the FSP300-60GNF.
hexus.net were very critical of the other FSG offerings.
PS:
i'm in no way affiliated with hexsus.net, FSG, or any of the products reviewed, and derive no pecuniary benefit from the reviewer's, or the companies whose products are being reviewed.
HTH

Re:Let me get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

If you were a shady manufacturer who didn't know if your PSU's would survive to the end of the testing without a meltdown, would YOU volunteer your lab? (PS, if you say yes, you're not very good at cheating)

So you think a cheater is really going to help someone catch them... ?

I think it's to be expected that the only maker of PSUs that was willing to loan their lab UNSUPERVISED for UNRIGGED TESTING would come in near the top somehow.

Re:For PSUs, these days...HEC/Sparkle

[Solder Fumes]

Sparkle all the way...never tried a HEC but I'll take a Sparkle-user's word on what constitutes a good power supply. In all benchmarks I've seen, Sparkle gives what the nameplate claims, and sometimes more. Right now I have a 300W Sparkle supply running an Nforce4 motherboard, Athon 64 3200, two CD/DVD writers, two hard drives, and a Radeon x800 plus a tangle of USB devices. Should I be using a 400W or above supply? Probably, but the Sparkle is marching right along.

Important things in a PSU

[hattig]

1) Noise - should be as silent as possible
2) Reliable supply of power - amount of power isn't an issue because if I want low noise I'm not going to be running a processor that has a jet engine attached to it! 250W should be more than enough, but I'd prefer 150W systems or 80W systems in the long term.
3) Life expectancy. I'd like 5 years at least.
4) Ability of a single Power Supply to supply power to more than one system. Especially if it is a 450W+ beast. I imagine that this would go hand in hand with being an external power supply however.

After that come things like those fancy removable cables, and last of all comes bling. Bling matters for the outside of the case if it isn't small and sexy so you have to make up for it with bling.

Re:Important things in a PSU

[AlbieWK]

Reliability is a big requirement too. And by reliability, I don't just mean it turns on. I had a cheapo power supply fry my motherboard, hard disk and cd drive. It was a very costly experience which I will never forget.

Re:Important things in a PSU

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to add (even though it affects all the other points you make, especially the noise levels)

5)Efficiency - a power supply that is rated 80% or greater efficiency at 20%, 50% and 100% of rated load with a Power Correction Factor as close to 1 as possible (Check out the program http://www.80plus.org/www.80plus.org). The biggest things this gives you are less heat output, meaning less noisy fans, as well as a reduction in you power bill, saving you $$$.

Coral cache

[sshore]

Some networks don't allow requests to nonstandard ports like 8090 that Coral Cache uses.

Re:Coral cache

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't bother wasting your breath. I've said it 1000 times, and people still just manage to ignore it.

Re:Coral cache

[Anonymous Coward]

So what? You shouldn't be reading slashdot from work anyway. Or are you telling me that your ISP (AOL?) is blocking non-standard ports?

Re:Coral cache

[FLEB]

Then you rewrite the link to drop the 8090, and go to the original page, which is not Slashdotted.

Re:Yaaawwwwnnnn. Could there be anything more bori

[ghost-maker]

Next to CPU's and motherboards...your PSU is a very essential and pivotal component of your computer. And with all the new changes in format (going from ATX to ATX 2.0, the increased power demands of dual cores/sli/crossfire) I think MORE needs to be written about PSU's. Many times instability, computer issues that are blamed on everything else come down to PSU's. There are so many things that most people still don't know and isn't enough information about on these websites. Like: 1) Exactly what kind of issues derive from bad PSU's 2) Rated wattage for PSU's are usually tested at unrealistic temps (like 20 degrees celcius) when in all honesty they produce much less than that at nominal internal computer temps...why isn't there a standards body like JEDEC or the ones for displays..that will have more adequate information going to the consumers? 3) Clearer exploration of active PFC, cleaner power sources and how they effect performance. 4) Are having 2 PSU's handling load a better or worse alternative in terms of power and usage to using 1 larger more expensive one? and others. Its weird that one of the most essential parts of the computer is usually overlooked or considered trivial by people. I mean if you bought an expensive car..and it had a totally generic battery that undervolted and was of dubious quality you would go bonkers. But for a substantial moentary investment like a computer I see people do that all the time.

PSU power ratings

[Epsillon]

I had this out with a major case importer here in the UK whilst I was in charge of production for a box-shifter. The PSUs they were supplying us were supposedly 300W units, but the number of returns we got because of these units was unbelievable. Furthermore, the silly bastards had supplied these things with a label giving the output currents for the various voltages, which only supported my claims that these supplies fell woefully short of their claims.

Working with the simple VI=P formula for the DC side, our calculations put the output of these things at somewhere close to 125W maximum. Nowhere near 300W, yet the sales droid still insisted they were 300W PSUs even after explaining our findings. I then told her we were going to stress test a couple. We did so, and most failed catastrophicly at around 150W drawn from the 3.3, 5 and 12V rails in the ratio indicated by the labels, which I took to indicate the ratings for current on the labels was probably correct and their figure in watts was a fib. Given that they knew the current ratings (if you print something on a label, you can't subsequently deny any knowledge of it), I then contacted the supplier again.

Needless to say we got the lot replaced without question when I sent three blackened PSUs and my report back to the supplier, but let this be a lesson to you: PSUs and PC speakers share one thing in common: Their ratings in watts are pure mythology. I was tempted to say that the 300W they claimed was *input* rating, but a PF of .5 is a bit of a stretch of the imagination even for a non PF corrected PSU.

Wizard of OZ said it best

[Batman64]

LiOnS aNd TiGeRs AnD ... ExPLODING PSUs... OH MYYY!

Re:Wizard of OZ said it best

[slavemowgli]

Lions and tigers and exploding PSUs... only in Kenya!

(For those who don't get it, it's a pun on one of Weebl's cartoons).

Warranties and big/heavy/sensitive products

[artifex2004]

I prefer to think of warranties as a practical gauge of how much a manufacturer trusts its own workmanship, rather than something I will necessarily choose to exercise rights under.

If one of my 5-year Seagate hard drives fails, I'm probably not going to ship it back to them for "repair," or at least I'm going to eBay whatever refurb they send me -- but I know from experience not to trust drives with 1-year warranties, any more, and 5 years tells me that if it's not DOA or within the first 30 days, it'll probably last a while.

If my CRT dies, I'm not going to ship it out, especially not at my own expense, and definitely not when it's big enough that the shipping company might destroy it in transit. If I can, I'll take it to a "local authorized repair facility," and I would be a fool not to have looked to ensure there was one before buying the CRT. Again, though, if it's not DOA or dead in 30 days, the warranty tells me how long it will probably last.

On the other hand, sometimes it does pay to go premium and get a product that has free shipping and even pre-ship as part of the warranty coverage, if the price difference isn't too great. At the time I bought some memory from Mushkin, I was paying a premium, but they had a good rep, and hand picked their own chips and boards, etc. I expected to never have to use the warranty before I obsoleted the equipment, really. Several years later, though, the memory failed. They sent me new memory as soon as I told them of my Memtest86 results, letting me ship the defective memory back afterwards, so my downtime was minimized. Obviously, memory is easy to ship, but still, FedExing back and forth, on top of the cost of another vendor I might have gone with with a long warranty but no shipping, would have been more than the cost of what I paid for the premium brand. And if I had bought cheap memory, and it failed a couple years later, I'd have had to just buy new sticks all over, which certainly would have been more.

Oh, yes, I have an Antec True 430, also :) It's probably about 4 years old, now. I bought it because it had the best reviews and a good warranty. I live in the USA, too, so theoretically I could ship it back easily. I've since heard some people claim their cases have caught fire, etc., but I really think they had to have been misusing the equipment by overloading or not venting properly, or not paying attention to warning signs. In my case, pun intended, I've never had a problem. Maybe because it's an Antec tower case, too :) (the case came with a smaller PSU, originally, but I wanted more power)

Re:Warranties and big/heavy/sensitive products

[Anonymous Coward]

re: CRT's dying... Purchase Samsung CRT's!

They have at least a 3 year warranty, no questions asked (you don't have to be the original purchaser, or provide any purchase info, or anything) and they ship a new one out to a Mailboxes Etc (now the UPS store) near you, you just take the old one in, leave it on the counter, and take the new monitor home. No downtime, no cost (they arranged it all over the phone), and they sent a better model than the one I was trading in. SUCH GOOD SERVICE!

Re:Warranties and big/heavy/sensitive products

[Sycraft-fu]

Just a note on CRTs: If you are a CRT guy (like me) look at NEC or Lacie CRTs. They are the same thing, actually, as NEC makes Lacie's CRTs for them it's cosmetic mostly. At any rate they stand behind their products to the point that if it breaks, they pay shipping. I got a new Lacie 22" and it seemed screwed up. Lacie authorized a return, at their expense and sent UPS out to pick it up. They actually managed to tell me how to fix the problem, so I was able to cancel the pickup, but they were willing to pay the whole charge, both ways.

Their tubes are also of exceptional quality.

Re:Truepower

[GigsVT]

The computer wasn't properly grounded, I see.

If you plug a computer into an ungrounded outlet or use one of those 2 pring cheaters, often the case will float up to around 60 volts (in the US, 120 volts if you have 240 power!) at 1-5 milliamps.

The reason for this is the power supply forms a capacitive voltage divider with the chassis ground in the center, it's part of the filtering.

If you had proper grounding you wouldn't have been shocked.

It wasn't the power supply's fault. Most of them are designed that way.

Re:Yaaawwwwnnnn. Could there be anything more bori

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent (ghostmaker) is exactly right. Despite 10 years of computer building experience, I spent a good part of last week diagnosing what went wrong with my 3.2Ghz P4 'baby' that I built a year ago. The intermittent startups, shutdowns, and freezes screamed "RAM problem!" but even after swapping out the RAM, the problem persisted. Not wanting to believe that it could be a CPU or Mobo related problem, I scoured the internet for symptoms of a faulty PSU, but there is surprisingly little information. Before dropping 150-300$ on another replacement part, I hooked up a friend's 300W PSU, and VOILA! Sure enough, my cheapo 400W PSU was throwing out crazy, fluxuating voltages, thus freezing the CPU. This accounted for the highly variable success in starting the computer.

I purchased a new PSU this weekend based on the PSU ratings at http://www.silentpcreview.com/ because for me (and my roommates), an efficient, quiet PSU was essential, so I settled on the Seasonic S12 300W. It's great to see PSU reviews getting more press these days, as they are probably the last part of computer building that is very, very unreliable. Builders know where to get quality motherboards, RAM, CPUs, drives, and even cases at a cheap price, but power supplies are the wildcard. There is no governing body for PSU quality except Intel's "recommendations", and until lately, very little reviews besides NewEgg.com user comments to guide one's purchasing.

Thanks Hexus, Tom's, and SilentPCreview for filling in the gaps!

Cleaner inputs from UPSs.

[Grendel Drago]

Presumably anyone interested in high-end computing would invest in a fifty-buck UPS to provide nice, clean power to their PSU.

At least, I guess that was their train of though.

Re:Cleaner inputs from UPSs.

[Anonymous Coward]

50 buck UPSes will not supply nice clean power. For this kind of money, you'll only get an offline UPS that may filter a little, but not really achieve anything substantial. If you want 'nice and clean', you will have to invest quite a bit more into an inefficient online UPS that continuously converts the input power to some pretty sine output. Note that the cheaper (probably US$500) UPSes will only provide a pretty dirty rectangular approximation of the sine curve that the should provide, much dirtier than anything you will find in an average household.

Re:Yaaawwwwnnnn. Could there be anything more bori

[Peter Millerchip]

$50? That's nothing! How about paying $1200 for a 6 foot power cord from Dynamic Designs?

Man, Cisco have nothing on those guys...

Re:Yaaawwwwnnnn. Could there be anything more bori

[Viol8]

Yes , the power supply is important. But so is the case and the chair you sit
on when you use it , but I wouldn't want a story about them either!

Finally

[HunterZ]

I'd like to express my appreciation to these guys for performing a much-needed analysis and publishing the results for all to see. It's about time someone called PSU manufacturers' bluffs and published testing results for multiple brands and models. They even made sure to test mostly retail models to prevent the possibility of manufacturers supplying souped-up units.

Looks like the moral of the story is to look carefully to see whether the rating on the box is for peak or sustainable power output. I just had a cheap "550 Watt" PSU blow out on me a few weeks ago after about 8 months of moderate to heavy use (lots of hard drives, ATI Radeon 9800Pro, Athlon XP 3200+, but no neons or anything fancy like that), and bought a more expensive replacement in hopes that it will be of a higher quality. Several friends and family members have also had PSU troubles in the past few months. This article would have been nice to refer to when shopping for replacements.

Like many of the other posters here and in the HEXUS forum, I'm looking forward to future roundups that cover other brands. It was mentioned on the HEXUS forum that Antec and other brands will probably make the next round: http://forums.hexus.net/showpost.php?p=584160&post count=15

my own PSU hunt

[axiome]

Disclaimer: I don't work for any PSU company, just another programmer/puter geek here.

About 6 months ago, one of my cheap free-with-case PSU's died. I went on a mission to find a good bang for the buck PSU to replace all 3 of my systems with high quality PSUs. I read several tests and reviews, including the one on Toms and another http://www.overclockers.com.au/article.php?id=3598 67 and another http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q4/psus/index.x? pg=1 and not to mention http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=-270.

The conclusion? I went with FSP power supplies labeled as Fortron or Sparkle Power. Yes, you can get nicer more expensive ones, but for a very low price, these beasts couldn't be beat for price/performance. I opened up 300w Sparkle, a cheapie 400watt free with case, and my friends ThermalTake which was fairly pricey rated at 350watt. In terms of size of capacitors, mosfets, heat sinks, etc, the Sparkle definately had the edge in size (size does matter with this stuff!). I replaced all 3 of my systems with these and they are humming along great.

the rating often doesn't mean shit on cheap PSUs

[compro01]

on a lot of cheapie PSUs, they report how much power they put out when the thing is running at 25 degrees. it's NEVER that cool inside those things, unless you're working in about 10 degree tempatures. realistic is around 35-40 degrees, and you're getting about 30-40% less power than they say.

and another thing, the wattage is coming to mean less and less. what matters is how many of those watts are on the 12v rails. most of the main draw is on the 12v. high-end video cards, processer, mobo power and expantion cards. good power supplies have more than one 12v rail, with some i've seen having 3 (IIRC, FCC regulations limit the power on one rail to 24 amps)

in general, one of the best ways to weed out a lousy PSUs is still weight. you got two 300 watt PSUs, compair weight. the heavier one is usually better. bigger capasitors and bigger heatsinks (and bigger is better, regardless of any old adages about size and its relitive importance), and additonal power cleaning circits, means more weight.

and modular PSUs are not all they're cracked up to be. the connecters give a big current loss (same as roughly 2 feet of wire) and thats under IDEAL conditions. it gets worse over time. it could be working fine one day a few years from now, then stabilitiy goes out the window and you can't figure out what the problem is.

Re:Yaaawwwwnnnn. Could there be anything more bori

[moonbender]

You wouldn't? I would. I have! Not much of a computer nerd, are you. Maybe hardware.slashdot.org isn't for you.

Power supply ratings - Your daily horoscope

[Anonymous Coward]

I have found power supplies ratings to be as realiable as say, the daily horoscope or a fortune cookie.

Take Sparkle power supplies for example: I had one come in a SuperMicro SC750-A tower (well, three actually) rated at 250W. Rather than go out and replace the power supply immediately, I decided to try it. Dual processor Pentium III, 1GB RAM, ATI All in Wonder Radeon video card (requires aux floppy power connector), FDD, three optical drives, six hard drives. I built three machines with that configuration and the shortest-lived lasted three years before the power supply gave out. One of the others is still chugging along, but the third just died two months ago. I replaced the power supplies with units MGE - one rated at 450W, and I removed a few of the hard drives, replacing them with a higher-capacity lower-power HDD. In the other I removed drives to put them in a server, installed an MGE 500W in that machine. The 500W unit died immediately. The 450W unit died after a month. I had several other high-rating MGE power supplies (various models) on hand so I tried those, assuming the failures were a fluke (based on EXCELLENT ratings on Newegg).

I then reported my experience in reviews on Newegg. The reviews were promptly deleted. Curious, I have since have gone back to read reviews of power supplies I KNOW are crappy, and was surprised to find that they all have great reviews on Newegg. Not a single bad review to be found. Something is fishy on Newegg.

I have since replaced one power supply with an "Enhance" (a whitebox name) power supply. That has worked flawlessly. The other failure left me in a pinch (can't get parts from my distributor on a weekend), so I bought a CompUSA "MadDog" power supply. That power supply is fan-tastic and I'd love to find out who the actual manufacturer is so I can get a whitebox version.

Needless to say, I don't buy from Newegg any more unless I absolutely have to. Their censoring of product reviews cost me a couple hundred in power supplies, and where if they had honestly kept bad reviews, I'd have been inclined to buy an Acer or Sparkle or other big name from them, where the overwhelmingly positive reviews led me to believe that MGE was a brand trying to make a name for themselves and coming in at $10 less to build their rep with quality products (much like Lite-On has done). Not so. In their deceptive practice they have lost a Newegg customer who was previously spending thousands per month, and that former customer (me) is now spreading the word.

Don't believe power supply ratings. They're works of fiction. Buy one, stress-test it, then when you find it's up to par, settle on that unit.

Re:Power supply ratings - Your daily horoscope

[Anonymous Coward]

Ack!

s/Acer/Antec

Sorry about the brain fart, and because I've long forgotten my username and password (and the ISP I had at the time no longer exists), I can't correct or even post an immediate correction. *waits 60 minutes to hit submit*

You get what you pay for?

[unother]

Has anybody considered the wisdom of the old aphorism? Or is it merely a pass-me-by, let's-shave-another-nickel-off-the-price, thing?

I find it instructional that one of the reasons Yankee retailers haven't been able to break into the Japanese market (esp. that Wal-Mart thing), is because the Japanese associate "low-cost" with "cheap piece of crap that breaks". And this is Japan--the nation which some thirty to forty years ago was a byword for cheap crap.

I would estimate they learnt their lesson, which USAians haven't yet.

Re:You get what you pay for?

[axiome]

See my post above. Yeah, most of the high price PSUs are generally good but there are some great pretty cheap bargains out there.

Re:Yaaawwwwnnnn. Could there be anything more bori

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are one of the unfortunate that receives any mail from Dell, look for a USB cable for $25. Sad, but true.

"Sparkle" power supply

[neurojab]

Perhaps it's just me, but the company name "Sparkle" doesn't exactly inspire confidence in a PSU. It's sort of like naming a boat company "Leaky!" or an airline "Fireball Express!".

Re:"Sparkle" power supply

[Anonymous Coward]

Sparkle Power Inc. (www.sparkepower.com)

Very good and relatively cheap power supplies. Nothing fancy, just work great.

Re:"Sparkle" power supply

[Creepy Crawler]

Yeah, or "Snap, Crackle, POP!"

Re:Yaaawwwwnnnn. Could there be anything more bori

[infochuck]

Your ignorance is showing. The PSU is the single most importatn piece of equipment you can by. You've got a spate of delicate electonics equipment that needs a steady and quality flow of well-regulated power to function properly.

The lack of Antec and PPC PSUs tested notwithstanding, I always welcome a critical and tech-sound look at these underappreciated workhorses.

It is, after all, "news for nerds". Perhaps you would be happier here (they have boobies sometimes):

http://www.fark.com

PS - commas are not prefaced with a space.

What about EFFICIENCY?

[spineboy]

Try Seasonic power supplies for 3 reasons. 1 they are recommended by silentcomputing.com (30dB noise) ,2 are over 80% efficiency (most avg 60-70%) and 3 rock solid stable. This means that it will PAY FOR ITSELF over the year. The company is based in Taiwan, and has been making power supplies for 30!!! years. They cost a little more, but the decrease in noise and cost saving over the year are totally worth it. They are pretty much all I use now - rock solid on power hungery systems.

Re:What about EFFICIENCY?

[Grishnakh]

Actually, I just had a Seasonic S12-600W die on me in under one day. But the replacement seems to be fine, and puts out a LOT less heat, running the same system, than my old PS, and is inaudible. I just hope that first one that died was just a fluke.

More PSU heat on 220/240 vs. 110 power?

[freality]

Does anyone know if there's significantly more heat generated by a 110-240V (or 110-220V) PSU when attached to 220/240 voltage as in Europe vs. the 110 power we have here in the States? Most PSUs seem to have this as an automatic capability, though I have seen some that require a small switch be flipped on them.

We've had a bit of a bet going on at the office and while we have found a few theoretical descriptions which say this should be the case, we don't know how much more heat would be expected.

We're thinking the greater heat would come from transforming the higher AC voltage down to the same 3-5v mainboard DC. If there's much more heat, that means we have to plan our racks a bit differently.

Re:More PSU heat on 220/240 vs. 110 power?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, no... having looked inside a PSU, it is odd what they do. If you are running off 110, they voltage-double to about 300VDC and chop that; if you are running off 230, they rectify to about 300VDC and chop that. There is actually slightly more heat loss off the voltage doubler, so a PSU is slightly less efficient running on 110V. Why do they do this? Well, I can't be certain, but I think it's because that way they can switch between 110 and 230VAC with a single-pole, single-throw switch, which is cheap; and the circuitry that either doubles or rectifies is equally cheap (two diodes, two capacitors).

Re:More PSU heat on 220/240 vs. 110 power?

[The One KEA]

I always thought that a PSU got hot due to resistance in the circuitry caused by high amperage draw, and that this was the primary reason for the huge heatsinks seen inside the unit.

Various laws of electricity show that switching to a higher voltage significantly lowers the amount of amperage needed to sustain a given wattage rating at a given load, thereby lowering the resistance in the circuitry and thus generating less heat...

Re:More PSU heat on 220/240 vs. 110 power?

[Teun]

Absolutely true, higher Voltage = less Amperage = less heat by current. (For the same power)
Another matter that is not being mentioned except sideways is the magnetic efficiency of the metal core of the transformer.
The 'sideways' part is that a heavier transformer is by many posters seen as a better transformer.
The amount of core material is a major factor for the efficiency plus it is likely the largest contributor to the weight.

Any inefficiency is primarily transformed into heat.

Re:More PSU heat on 220/240 vs. 110 power?

[RubberDogBone]

This must be the reason why I keep hearing electrical engineers would love to scrap the US 110/120 system and go to 220/240. Reduced line losses, reduced amps, etc.

I think the main objections were that you'd have to use some sort of "smart" outlet to automatically switch between new appliances and legacy 110 stuff, and apparently it's easier to shock yourself and die from the higher voltages. Might be wrong on that.

Timely Review

[asylumx]

This is a good review to see around Christmas time, a lot of people get money as gifts and like to spend it on new PC hardware. I have recently ordered a 2nd HDD and some more RAM and I'm going to need a new PSU to power it, so once the site is done being slashdotted, perhaps I'll check it out to see what PSUs to look at!

Welcome to conditioning

[QMO]

You don't get to wait for the new page to load if you scroll.

website correction

[spineboy]

that should be http://www.silentpcreview.com/

Yes, but . . .

[QMO]

If you find someone that is sure enough that their power supply won't break down that they're willing to pay the postage if it does, then maybe it's a better part?

Re:Yes, but . . .

[Junior J. Junior III]

Yes, but that's a very big "if". Like I said, every company that has that policy will have to pay for it, and they get their money from (guess where) their customers buying stuff from them. It might *look* like they have more faith in their product's quality if "they" pay for RMA shipping costs, but ultimately the cost is always born by the customer. I'd rather pay for only the RMAs that I actually need.

Sparkle supplies are good?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be getting different power supplies from Sparkle then I do. Of the 80+ white box computers in the office most have Sparkle supplies. These supplies are loud, feel cheap, light weight, and start to fail after 8 months. The supplies are 250-300w and should be more then sufficient. The computers are mostly P3 class, with a single harddrive, and boring Ati or Matrox 450 video cards. As office computers most machines are left on all the time. Most of our power supply failures occur when we power cycle the machines.

I would not be surprised to learn that Sparkle is a brand name that gets slapped on any old supply depending on the region. In this neck of the woods Sparkle is considered cheap junk.

Re:Sparkle supplies are good?!?

[Chad Page]

I think there are at least two different classes of Sparkles. You can usually tell them apart by the quality of the fan and vent grillings. If it has little underside venting and a cut-out fan grill, it's a cheaper one. The good ones have a lot of venting and a wire fan grill.

Re:Sparkle supplies are good?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are also a couple of companies with similar names. I've had good luck with SPI power supplies, so I'd like to know which ones are bad. Do you know the model number of the failing supplies?

Re:Sparkle supplies are good?!?

[Tmack]

As mentioned in another reply, the type I reffer to have model/serial numbers that begin with SPI, and have the blue oval SPI logo on them as seen on the company's website. Given the computer industry's willing ness to blatently rip-off other products with cheaply made imitations, it would not supprize me if there were in fact a cheap sparkle knock off. They could even spell their name different, sparkel vs sparkle, or attempt to cause confusion by calling that model or line their "Sparkle" model by acme corp. OR, SPI could actually make a cheapo version strictly for bulk sales to case manufacturers.

My general rule is never trust the PS that comes with the case. Assume its crap since it usually is, and replace it with something you know is better. The shop I worked at sold both HEC and SPI as their "good" brand depending on which was available from the distributor. The white-box cases that were sold with PSU's had a high frequency of return for PSU change cause it blew up after a week. The cheaper "$19 special" PSUs were the ones we stripped out of the cases to sell bare-bones cases. There is a reason the $19 specials were sold with no warrantee.... but both SPI and HEC have warrantees on theirs.

tm

why is my power supply like a hair-dryer?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got a 300watt power supply on an athlon xp 2400, the air coming out of it is like a hair dryer! Should I worry? It's been like that for six months...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

more page requests than it's capable of delivering

[oliverthered]

Well, in that case it's working at maximum revenue. So long as the server keeps serving and doesn't fall over.

I suppose one option would be to dynamically remove any images from the content when the server is under high load.
This could be done by making all image resquests point to small_1x1.gif, or just dropping any requests that come in for images in a specific directory.

Now all we need is the Apache module to do this! Apache module

Re:Yaaawwwwnnnn. Could there be anything more bori

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't get me started on Snap-On automotive tools.....

Re:Absolutely true.

[gkitty]

I was surprised to get a HEC bundled in a cheap case and had read the good reviews of these. The unit runs quietly and has the heft and finish of quality so I plunked it in a server and the unit has been burp free for a year and a half so far.

I have a couple of re-badged Sparkle units that came with quality cases (they say "SPI" for sparkle power, I forget if they explicitly say sparkle) and they come with loud high volume fans and near as I can tell no circuits that slow these suckers down. IIRC the power supplies also say something like "noise killer" but I think this is a warning, not a feature. I have replaced the fans in my OEM Sparkles with lower flow units (careful that the exhaust air is still cool under load) and never had any trouble with these units.

I also have a $30 Sparkle from New Egg with a 120mm fan and it's fairly quiet. So not all Sparkle fans are over-spec'd but anyway I can't be too critical of a cheap reliable power supply with excessive ventilation.

FWIW the HEC came in a 6A19 from servercase.com, this is a good case for modding for good airflow and quiet accoustics. And my favorite quiet cases (the 6919) are cheap there too. Plain but solid, good features and superior airflow.

Re:Absolutely true.

[gkitty]

Ack, replying to my own post, my $30 PSU is a Fortron, another good inexpensive choice. Sorry bout that. In retrospect maybe all my sparkles were loud, but fine units all in my experience.

I gotta ask.

[Grendel Drago]

Are you an audiophile? Do you also need $100 power cables?

Re:I gotta ask.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he's actually telling the truth.

Hear the "click" when you unplug the cheap-ass UPS from the wall? That's the relays dropping in to supply the power from the battery instead of the mains.

If you want power that isn't directly mains power, a $50 UPS is never going to cut it. A few very expensive UPSes ALWAYS supply power from the batteries. Most of the cheaper UPSes don't output a sine wave, but a triangle wave. That isn't normal and isn't what your PSU expects, although it isn't dangerous. You may find if you plug certain equipment into a UPS that doesn't output a triangle wave you'll get buzzing, etc, from it. That's because the input wave is wrong.

Oh well.

excellent suggestion

[artifex2004]

I've been a Viewsonic guy for years, but now that prices have dropped, I might go NEC for my next one. I feel really stupid for letting a CompUSA person talk me into a drop/replace warranty on a Viewsonic LCD 17" panel a couple years ago, in fact... the panel was discounted, but with the warranty it was probably as much as a top of the line one. Not to mention I shouldn't have bought a warranty like that anyway, they're always ripoffs. :\

Western Dig and Apple also

[Kadin2048]

I have had two hard drives die on me, one Maxtor and one Western Digital, and both of them did this same process with me. Send out a new drive (with CC as a "deposit") then transfer the data and send the old one back in the new one's packaging. I can't remember which company, but at least one of them paid the return shipping with an ARS label.

The only other company that's been halfway decent to me on warranty repairs is Apple. I had a iBook with a known display issue, and after talking to a rep on the phone they sent me a big padded box full of foam with prepaid mailing labels, so all I had to do was put the laptop inside, seal it (some tape strips were even included), and call Fedex to have it picked up. Few weeks later I got it back in the same box, fixed.

Frankly I'd be pretty annoyed if I bought a product and had it break on me and the company wanted me to ship it to them at my expense. I guess I've just been lucky so far.

Re:Western Dig and Apple also

[Anonymous Coward]

I got even better service from IBM. Around August, I called IBM because the notebook wasn't seeing the memory I had in both slots. They took my info and the next day I got a padded mailer delivered. I packed up the notebook in the mailer (which also included a tape strip for sealing the box), and called for a pickup the next day. I got my repaired machine back two days later (got the box on Monday, sent it out Tuesday, got it back on Thursday). Shipping both ways was pre-paid by IBM.

When I got the notebook back, I noticed that the HDD cover had a crack on it. I called IBM, told them, and got a replacement cover the next week.

This isn't an isolated incident. I've dealt with IBM before on both desktops and servers, and they always do great in their support departments. I only hope Lenovo can keep that reputation (since we know support is usually the first place to cut when you need profits).

I've also had great experiences with Zoom Telephonics and ATI.

Re:TMM endorses only one PSU

[DupeMaster Donkey]

Stop impostering me! Or at least get the sig right.

Re:Truepower

[Lost_In_Specs]

I would have thought that too. The outlet was a three-prong, and the power strip had a tester light that was showing that it was properly grounded.

from the lame-fluffy-interrogative-headlines dept.

[g0at]

Can slashdot editors stop writing headlines that do not end in rhetorical questions?

-b

Re:Yaaawwwwnnnn. Could there be anything more bori

[Anonymous Coward]

what next ,the top 10 power cords?

Not quite 10, but... Power Cord Shootout (yes, there are people who spend $400 on power cables).

Re:Yaaawwwwnnnn. Could there be anything more bori

[Anonymous Coward]

...importatn piece of equipment you can by.

PS - commas are not prefaced with a space.

Try at least spelling the correct words in your own reply before bashing another person's grammar.

Re:Yaaawwwwnnnn. Could there be anything more bori

[infochuck]

Try at least spelling the correct words...

I think you meant, "Try at least spelling the WORDS CORRECTLY." I'm quite certain I used the "correct words".

Pot. Kettle?

Also, there's a difference between me making two obvious typos and him prefacing FOUR COMMAS with SPACES. One, an obvious and honest MISTAKE. The other, idiocy.

Get a clue.

PC Power & Cooling Warranty

[Anonymous Coward]

The PPC 5 year warranty is the real deal. I just had one go after 4 years and 9 months. It was back to me in a week, repaired. I did have to pay the shipping out (as noted in the warranty), but otherwise free.

Re:Truepower

[Creepy Crawler]

LOL! Thats a cool trick.

I just might be pulling a nice lil prank sometime soon ;)

From my knowledge about what the body can accept, 120v @ 1-5 mA shouldnt do much other than stun.

Re:Truepower

[GigsVT]

The 60v version just tingles mostly.

Re:Truepower

[GigsVT]

You might want to test the outlet with another tester. If the ground were proper that voltage should have been bled off even if the PS were faulty.

Re:Yaaawwwwnnnn. Could there be anything more bori

[runderwo]

The difference with Snap-On tools is that they only ever break if you're doing something wrong. That is a marked difference from run-of-the-mill tools and a potential justification for the price depending on your perspective. In the case of the Cisco power cord, there is no possible justification for that price.