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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.
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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
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
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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
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.
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.