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Thirty Four PSUs Tested - Is Biggest Best?

Posted by Hemos on from the does-size-matter dept.

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."

9 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers. by jgaynor · · Score: 5, Informative

    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 :(.

    1. Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers. by unts · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers. by grazzy · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  2. Where's Antec? by tgbrittai · · Score: 5, Informative

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

    1. Re:Where's Antec? by pmc · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  3. For PSUs, these days... by Silverlancer · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  4. Coral Cache link by grimwell · · Score: 5, Informative

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

    --
    If the govt becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law, it invites man to become his own law, it invites anarchy
  5. Re: Antec by LordKronos · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  6. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion