Question Why is it hard to find brand new 400W PSUs from reputable brands nowadays?

[zwtch_17]

I just noticed that many brands like Corsair, Seasonic, EVGA and be quiet! At least in the Indonesian PC market, don't make 400W PSUs anymore. Is it because the parts are more power-hungry nowadays? Or is it not even worth it to manufacture them in 2024?

 

[TerryLaze]

Yeah that would be my guess as well, why make a 400w model if the 500-550W model is just as expensive.

 

[zwtch_17]

Yeah that would be my guess as well, why make a 400w model if the 500-550W model is just as expensive.

Many of us are still using a 3rd generation Intel CPU or even the LGA 775, combined with the GTX 1060 or Radeon RX 550, and probably will never upgrade it. 500-550W PSU is twice as expensive here. So yeah, the market is now flooded with rebranded Chinese PSUs with questionable reliability and safety protection.

 

[DSzymborski]

The margins for those cheap PSUs have always been quite ugly because so many of the costs don't scale well, things like packaging, inventory, customer service, advertising, shipping, and so on. And with aftermarket PCs using a lot more power, you have fewer customers of those cheap PSUs you can eke out small gains with.

This isn't just PSUs, but all PC parts, really. While there's no doubt some old-fashioned greed involved, this is one of the causes of the entry-level GPU market disappearing; integrated GPUs have gotten good enough to bleed off much of the market for these cheap discrete GPUs with small margins, which causes the GPUs to be more trouble than they're worth for most companies. You'll still see these types of GPUs with prebuilts, but it *is* worth the effort when you know Dell or HP will buy a whole boatload of them from you.

 

[PEnns]

With the ever escalating power requirements for many PC vital parts (CPU, GPU, SSD, etc), the demand (and the market) for anything less than 600+ W is becoming smaller.

On the other hand, if you go to partpicker and set the PSU slider to 400 W you'll find quite a few actually, and many are from reliable / reputable manufacturers

 

[dos_box]

Enermax seems to have an assortment of under 500w PSUs.
Along with Corsair my favorite manufacturer when it comes to PSUs