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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."
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 :(.
Yes, always. If you're told otherwise, it's because they feel bad for you.
Left 4 Dead Gaming Group - http://www.l4dgg.com
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?
It's a fairly popular high-end PSU brand. Seems like it should have been included in the review. Hmmm...
This is a pretty worthless comparison without even one sample from Antec or PC Power & Cooling.
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.
like all things in life, if you cut corners [price wise] you'll get burnt...
... don't act very surprised.
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
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
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?
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.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
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
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.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/metricmusic
Apparently their servers used one of the "bad" PSUs...
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
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.
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?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Coral Cache link, and at least page one is there.
/ psu_roundup.html
Use this one instead of the submitter's link!
http://www.hexus.net.nyud.net:8090/content/static
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
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.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
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.
Karnal
Only 19 PSUs tested, but you can still get to the site (for now).
. html
http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/200507111/index
To cut to the chase, TH recommended the Fortron FSP300-60GNF and the Seasonic S12 600.
Losers choose to abuse the use of "loose".
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.
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.
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."
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
What power supply was the server using?
The ______ Agenda
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.
Some networks don't allow requests to nonstandard ports like 8090 that Coral Cache uses.
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.
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.
.5 is a bit of a stretch of the imagination even for a non PF corrected PSU.
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
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
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.
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.
:) 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)
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
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.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
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!
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.
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.
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?
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
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