Brand Names Take On Generics In PSU Showdown

The Raindog writes "The power supply is perhaps the most overlooked element of a modern PC, and yet it's the one component that can irreparably damage the rest of a system. The market is littered with generic PSUs that are often much cheaper than name-brand alternatives, but can you trust them? The Tech Report aims to find out in its latest power supply round-up, which compares the performance, efficiency, and noise levels of a collection of reputable PSUs with some budget, no-name competition. As it turns out, any money you save on a generic PSU purchase will likely cost you more in the long run."

Comments

Re:Antec is the worst

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. Bose is one of the best brands of speakers, and neon lights make your computer go faster. Sorry, but Antec is all marketing and no quality. All the ricer overclockers want to believe that Antec PSUs make their computers +0.2% faster, but the truth is, Antec uses some of the lowest quality parts in their PSUs and if you check something like badcaps.net, you'll realize that Antec is one of the most commonly reported brands in the PSU category, and most widely complained about brand in the forums.

Re:Antec is the worst

[Ungulate]

Except, of course, for the Antec EarthWatts. And the TruePower series. Both of which are... made by Seasonic.

If you have any interest

[linzeal]

Taking an old 300 watt atx power supply apart to make a variable 0-5v and 0-12v bench power supply for electronics projects will teach you what you will need to know about quality of components if you have a decent DMM, or better a USB scope to see the difference when you switch out caps and other components. An often overlooked problem with cheap power supplies is that bad soldering and cheap PCBs cause the capacitors to work harder to move the same amount of charge. This effects voltage as it relates to capacitance's formula C = Q/V and its integral (dammit give me MathML) sigh read Wikipedia's definition. Doesn't matter how good your caps are if the circuit was soldered by someone being paid slave wages working 14 hour shifts. The real cost of the plenitude of cheap electronics is going to be an interesting story. Besides the obvious horrors of the places of manufacture in Asia and the dumping grounds in Africa where similar autoimmune disorders, cancers and genetic abnormalities are rampant is the story of what happens between those two places. It is not just the disposable aspect that technology plays in our culture that fascinates me but how little knowledge of the design and manufacture of technology is present in the people that purchase it, sell it or even repair it. PC techs without any electronics understanding are the worse, "Who needs an anti-static work area when I can use any flat surface including a pizza box?" and than wonder why they have half a dozen motherboards laying around the house that won't work. /rant If I have the time before Xmas I will post my pics and schematics on my blog. Did it for an EE project. Working on LCDs and circuitry to display voltage and amperage (currently have 4 lobotomized dmm pcb w/ attached backlit lcd doing a reading each.

Re:What does HP use???

[Alioth]

We've had the opposite experience of HP power supplies, we just had to replace 70 HP supplies. When machines started failing in the field, I found that there was massive amounts of ripple on the 12v and 5v lines. When I disassembled the PSU it wasn't hard to tell why - bulging and leaking capacitors.