Don't Be Surprised When Your Cheap PSU Blows Up

[aaron88_7]

I recommend Corsair power supplies. The one I have been using for about 3 months was so quiet I couldn't even hear it when it died....

 

[Guest]

I too have a cheap PSU, called ANS 550W, it was about 10 bucks, and it stood for over 3 years now.I use it with an AMD Athlon II X2 OC 3.6Ghz, on a Gigabyte M56S-S3, 2Gb of ram, an nvidia 9600GT OC to 800/2000, 500Gig Seagate HDD, Asus Dvdrw, an Creative Audigy SE, and that's about it.So I think cheap PSU's can be pretty good, when they are chosen carefully, and used in a light system.

 

[rohitbaran]

Sutai! What a name! Well, I used a cheap PSU in my first PC build, but later on changed it to a Corsair. It runs pretty fine and hasn't given any trouble for the past one year.

 

[joytech22]

Now I feel lucky to own an AX1200

 

[fordry06]

[citation][nom]shades_aus[/nom]I have had Everything from No brand to Antec die on more than one occasion.I thought with a name like Antec, I would be safe. So not true.Now I only buy SeaSonic. I have not had a problem since. I understand they are expensive however, so is my data. I have had too many bad experiences from cheap power supplies. Anything under $100 I think is a waste of money.[/citation]
Heh, Seasonic makes most of Antec's mid-range and high-range power supplies. They also make most of Corsair's power supplies.........

 

[yyk71200]

I looked, my Antec Earthwatts 500D green is made by Delta. I read thai it is a decent PSU. Can anyone confirm?

 

[shadowryche]

I once had a client who brought me their first build. Wouldn't even post. I opened it up to find some quality components, two EVGA GeForce 8800's, ASUS board, enthusiast RAM with fancy heat spreaders, and a Intel Q6600 with a huge assed ThermalTake cooler. I noticed though they had the switches miss wired, and the ATX power connector wasn't plugged in. Hooked everything up fine, plug it in and as soon as I throw the switch on the power supply there is a flame blowing two feet out the back of the power supply. Took me two months to grow the fur back on my hand and fore arm, but about 10 seconds to get the guy to buy a $200 power supply from us. The original power supply in the box was some knock off in a language I couldn't read. Fortunately all his components still worked with the new power supply.

 

[Guest]

Anything made by the slant eyed chinks WILL FUCK UP in a short peroid of time

 

[mitch074]

@4chon4life: then you can throw away your Apple stuff, half your car, your coffee maker, your microwave oven, your TV... Racist comments like that don't have their place on a tech forum.

I usually buy cheapo PSUs (usually, from the HEDEN brand) for EOL office desktop systems that need a replacement, but I buy them from respectable resellers. They are used at rates far lower than their defined (often fantasy) specs, but all those I've used still run now years later - some cheapo PSU makers make better cheapo PSUs than those marked here.

Of course, I'll spend closer to a hundred for a new/critical system.

 

[dalauder]

My friend gave me his Logisys PSU for free because it made a weird whirring noise. I found out that was because the one fan's sticker came off inside the PSU.

Last night it made the noise again and sure enough, its other fan was attempting to sabotage the unit with a loose Logisys fan sticker. WTF? Seriously, these cheap PSU's are crazy.

 

[txsouthpaw]

[citation][nom]4chon4life[/nom]Anything made by the slant eyed chinks WILL FUCK UP in a short peroid of time[/citation]

So what brand of motherboard do you use? Do you whittle your own components from balsa?

In all seriousness, both of my rigs use PC P&C Silencers (750&910) with great results. They are the real PC P&Cs and not those bastardized Sirfa jobs (MKII). I will only buy PSUs w/ Seasonic guts.

 

[martel80]

This article is missing one of the most important points:
What happens on the rails when the unit blows up?!! You should have identified any potential voltage spikes as this is what actually matters (losing the rest of the PC, not the $20 PSU).

 

[jsc]

Most of the motherboards we use come from Taiwan, home of the Nationalist "slant eyed chinks".

 

[txsouthpaw]

4chon4life sounds enlightened. I have decided to throw my desktops of my balcony and torch my flat screen.

 

[dirtmountain]

Although i couldn't find a Delta made review of the EA500w (used to be manufactured by Seasonic) here's what was said at jonnyguru's about the Delta made D EA650.

"The EA650 is the new flagship of the fleet, and it too is Delta sourced. I'm sure you're all anxious to see how it does in load testing, which will be on the next page. But, I'm going to try and cram a few box pictures into your eyeballs first.

If the name Delta sounds unfamiliar to you, it's because they don't have too much presence in North America yet. But, as we found out with the Signature 850W, they are capable of some fantastic units indeed. I confess I'm looking forward to page two myself. "

full review here.
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=110

 

[PreferLinux]

[citation][nom]IT_Support[/nom]All I know is that every single Antec supply I have bought over the years never made it past the five year mark before blowing up due to cheap Chinese caps.[/citation]
They use Japanese capacitors now, I believe.

[citation][nom]haplo602[/nom]I guess you found out the explanation of the Double Power in the name (at least for the 500W one). The manufacturer simply double the construction rating in the marketing [/citation]
Exactly what I thought!

[citation][nom]dirtmountain[/nom]Although i couldn't find a Delta made review of the EA500w (used to be manufactured by Seasonic) here's what was said at jonnyguru's about the Delta made D EA650."The EA650 is the new flagship of the fleet, and it too is Delta sourced. I'm sure you're all anxious to see how it does in load testing, which will be on the next page. But, I'm going to try and cram a few box pictures into your eyeballs first.If the name Delta sounds unfamiliar to you, it's because they don't have too much presence in North America yet. But, as we found out with the Signature 850W, they are capable of some fantastic units indeed. I confess I'm looking forward to page two myself. "full review here.http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.p [...] y&reid=110[/citation]
I believe Delta is one of the big makers of server PSUs and such.

 

[Guest]

Have a corsair 550vx. Three upgrades later (cpu, ram, graphics card) and a lot of overclocking and the PSU goes strong after 3 years.
Was pricey but worth it.

 

[spacefrog]

lol, the LPK-225 looks perfect for my AMD Fusion build with 6 Hdds
Is it loud?

 

[Guest]

this help. test all cheap brand psu and recommend the best one. it's just a suggestion.

 

[Guest]

Had a cheap one years ago that caught fire. Luckily it didn't spread. Learned my lesson the hard way and bought a Corsair TX.

 

[Sgt Moo]

This is getting bad, Toms Hardware are being paid by hardware manufacturers to put these sorts of articles up. When you spend that little ammount of money on a PSU of course it's gonna blow up. A computer store I used to work at had a PSU we called Ol' Goldie, it was some no name brand piece of crap (with gold paint on it hence the name) rated at I think 400W...this crazy sucker ran anything, it was at least 5 years old, probably more, it didn't even have SATA connectors and it had run systems that any sane person would stick a $150 PSU on (Australian $). It would still be alive today if we hadn't connected it to a seriously screwed up system a customer brought in.

The regular PSU I sell to people for basic systems these days is a no name brand 550W that I've had running systems with 5750s. If you tried it for an extended period of time then I'm sure it would give out so it never gets sold with one. I've been putting them in systems systems with 5670s since release and havn't seen any come back with dead PSUs yet (excluding the odd death by blackout or brownout)

I'd say Toms put this up because PSU manufacturers want people to spend unnecessary money on a brand name PSU in a system that obviously doesn't need one. Cheap PSUs are fine...but not this cheap...oh and if you live in Australia the brand SHAW is this cheap (the Sutais look like rebadged SHAWs)

 

[mosox]

The last one is a Linkworld. From their site: "Power supply is the supply of electricity." Can't argue with that.
http://linkworld8.com/power_supply/power_cover.htm

 

[NuclearShadow]

I've had a quality PSU blow up on me once back in about 2005 ago. I got unlucky with the PSU but thankfully everything else survived. It was quite amusing I was playing F.E.A.R. when it was just released and during a horror event in it my PSU exploded thus scared me enough to leap out of my chair. It was a loud bang accompanied by many and large sparks flying out of the back. I never played F.E.A.R. again I know it isn't the game's fault but I have developed a irrational fear of F.E.A.R.

Now that I have shared such my outlook on the subject of buying a PSU is if my expensive and well praised PSU back then did that to me just imagine
the chances of a cheap one failing. This article and test results obviously prove my thoughts to be correct.

 

[plandream]

This is probably a rebadged and ancient 250W unit. The "420Watt" version of LPK is LPK12-23 with a 12" fan. I haven't seen one of those in ages...

 

[Olle P]

[citation][nom]Sgt Moo[/nom]This is getting bad, ... a PSU we called Ol' Goldie, it was some no name brand piece of crap (with gold paint on it hence the name) rated at I think 400W... this crazy sucker ran anything, ... The regular PSU I sell to people for basic systems these days is a no name brand 550W that I've had running systems with 5750s.[/citation]I think this is the real problem!
Computer components typically draw much less power than you might think, 200W high load with 250W peak would be a decent computer.
This cheap PSUs can deliver that much, but quite often at very low quality in terms of voltages and electric noise/ripple, which ends up frying the other components before killing the PSU.