Is the Acbel 500W iPower 80+ Psu any good?

[lordmemus]

I am just building a small budget system so I won't push it too hard but I was just wondering if it is okay for this? The 80+ rating is good also right? Thanks in advance

 

[Snipergod87]

No

 

[DSzymborski]

A thousand times no. AcBel Polytech is one of the capital red letters "DO NOT BUY" manufacturers.

I'd rather connect my components to a banana. A banana won't fry anything.

 

[logainofhades]

Do you want to set your system on fire, because that is how you set your system on fire.

 

[CaptainCretin]

Interesting, all three of you violently agree that they are crap; yet I cannot find a single bad review for any of their psus after going through 4 pages of Google results.

 

[jankerson]

I wouldn't trust one to power an LED light.

 

[Corwin65]

Interesting, all three of you violently agree that they are crap; yet I cannot find a single bad review for any of their psus after going through 4 pages of Google results.

Ok, did you find any good reviews, and if so, can you share?

 

[DSzymborski]

Nobody wants to even risk their equipment goofing around with power supplies like AcBel. They use low quality parts, especially an array of horrible capacitors. Gabe Torres at Hardware Secrets ripped one down for fun some years ago and the "660W" PSU couldn't even maintain 400W without the protections shutting it down. I once tore down one I found in a PC left out for the garbage in my neighborhood and I found capacitors from a company I couldn't even verify existed.

Regardless. Unless something's on a proven platform that *has* been reviewed or even opened up and evaluated by somewho who knows what htey're doing, a power supply is guilty until proven innocent. And no, random consumer comments on a commerce website, 99.9% from people who are not equipped to do anything but say if the power supply turns on or not, is not a review.

 

[DSzymborski]

I wouldn't trust one to power an LED light.

I wouldn't trust one in the same room as an LED light. I could be on vacation and a family member coming over to feed my cats and might get curious and plug it in!

 

[jankerson]

I wouldn't trust one to power an LED light.

I wouldn't trust one in the same room as an LED light. I could be on vacation and a family member coming over to feed my cats and might get curious and plug it in!

Yeah, true.

Might burn down the house if they forget to unplug it.

 

[jankerson]

And no, random consumer comments on a commerce website, 99.9% from people who are not equipped to do anything but say if the power supply turns on or not, is not a review.

Exactly.

Anything cheap will get good reviews so they mean absolutely zero.

But then again we see some budget PSU's get recommended here a lot that I wouldn't buy or put in any system of mine under any circumstances .

Gives me a headache every time I see one get recommended for a gaming PC.

 

[logainofhades]

This is a quality, and not stupid expensive, psu.

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Tc3RsY/seasonic-power-supply-ss620gm2

 

[Karadjgne]

https://youtu.be/f6snWfd1v7M

This is why we say No. Vehemently. Same psus, different names, all junk, all possibly affect components installed to the psu. Like your $150 mobo, $400 cpu, $1000 gpu.

Argue if you wish, but there's solid reasons why some lines of psus are highly recommended, and reasons why others are not.

 

[CaptainCretin]

I wouldn't trust one to power an LED light.

Interesting, all three of you violently agree that they are crap; yet I cannot find a single bad review for any of their psus after going through 4 pages of Google results.

Ok, did you find any good reviews, and if so, can you share?

Not for this specific model, but....

https://pokde.net/tech/acbel-ipower-90m-600w-80-gold-overview/

https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/720/acbel_450_watt_intelligent_power_series_psu_review/index.html

Oh, I have found some bad reviews as well, but mostly on forums like this one, with nothing to back them up.

From what I have read, they started life making cheap OEM parts, but started making better psu's a long while back

@ Karadjgne, the following is exactly what I thought after watching that video...

"This video is just as garbage as those PSU's. No mention of methodology used to get these results. Did you power just +12v rail? Did you use different rails in combination? Did you exceed any of the max outputs of the rails? "

Now, I am not saying this brand is any good, just that without citing a properly documented test, you cannot base a good/bad result on anything.

Try this kind of sloppy citation on a University course and you get an "F"

 

[Karadjgne]

There comes a time where ppl just have to take it on faith that somebody else has a clue what they are doing, without full explanations. Just because they didn't go into lengthy procedural documentation to justify results to your satisfaction doesn't invalidate the results.

I smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. Having made that statement, you just have to take it on faith that I have a clue what I'm talking about, without me having to explain the procedure of how I smoke a cigarette, how long it takes, tastes, temperatures of the cherry, lighter used to ignite the cigarette, photos of butts before and after, averaged results per hour with graphs showing peak smoke times etc etc etc.

Canard Labs isn't Joe blow's garage. If Linus had tossed out this video, I doubt you'd question it or claim it's invalid since he didn't supply you personally with his testing methodology.

When a 500w psu goes up in smoke after barely passing 50% loads, it really doesn't make a damn bit of difference if all that load was 12v or it was crossloaded since it's a group regulated design. Being group regulated, in order to get a full 500w out of a 500w claim, you must use a variety of rails, since it's physically impossible to pull all that wattage from a 12v rail that's not rated for that wattage. On a 500w group regulated psu, you'll be lucky to see the 12v rail rated 40A, mostly it'll be either a single 35A-40A or multiple 12A-18A rails. The only way to actually pull the full 500w is including the minor rails.

 

[DSzymborski]

If you did go to university (hey, you brought it up), then you should understand what the null hypothesis is. For a PSU, the null hypothesis is always that it's junk. You need professional reviews that demonstrate quality to reject the null hypothesis.

But it's your fried PC, not mine or anyone else's here. If you want to commit the PC builder equivalent of drunk-driving, the only victim here is you. Everyone here has a *lot* more experience than you do.

 

[Karadjgne]

Exactly. That video is put on 'Layman's' terms, meant for use by anyone with any level of education. It's not meant to be a University level Doctorate degree dissertation.

And nor did it need to be.

 

[jankerson]

If you did go to university (hey, you brought it up), then you should understand what the null hypothesis is. For a PSU, the null hypothesis is always that it's junk. You need professional reviews that demonstrate quality to reject the null hypothesis.

But it's your fried PC, not mine or anyone else's here. If you want to commit the PC builder equivalent of drunk-driving, the only victim here is you. Everyone here has a *lot* more experience than you do.

Yeah, there is so much junk on the market these days.

The Companies who make this garbage know that if it's cheap it will both get great reviews on the Ecommerce sites and sell like crazy because people in general are stupid and or cheap and think they can get something for nothing.

ANYTHING cheap sells and WILL get good reviews.

But none of that means it's worth buying or the people giving them good reviews know anymore than how to push the power button on a PC. And that's giving them too much credit.

It also adds to the problem there are way too many YT videos out there supporting cheap garbage telling people how great it is. There are whole YT channels dedicated to this garbage, all they are interested in is views and subs.

And we here on the forums end up with the aftermath of it all when things go wrong.

 

[CaptainCretin]

There comes a time where ppl just have to take it on faith that somebody else has a clue what they are doing, without full explanations. Just because they didn't go into lengthy procedural documentation to justify results to your satisfaction doesn't invalidate the results.

If I thought everyone answering was an expert on the matter, and someone gave even a SINGLE valid test report; that would be different, but there are plenty of people answering questions and spouting bollocks on subjects they know nothing about, so I went looking; and couldnt find anything to back up the claims.

Yes, it is a cheap make, yes cheap makes arent usually as good as a top brand, but companies can turn themselves around and still make decent products for a tight budget, Kia were a joke 10 years ago, and 5 years ago, almost no one had heard of Xiaomi.

The fact that this company has actually sent some of their psus to be tested by various people means they must have some confidence in them.

In that video link, I am assuming the Corsair that went bang was Acbel made; but is it a rebadged AcBel design, or did AcBel build them to a Corsair design spec that cut corners??

 

[jankerson]

There comes a time where ppl just have to take it on faith that somebody else has a clue what they are doing, without full explanations. Just because they didn't go into lengthy procedural documentation to justify results to your satisfaction doesn't invalidate the results.

If I thought everyone answering was an expert on the matter, and someone gave even a SINGLE valid test report; that would be different, but there are plenty of people answering questions and spouting bollocks on subjects they know nothing about, so I went looking; and couldnt find anything to back up the claims.

Yes, it is a cheap make, yes cheap makes arent usually as good as a top brand, but companies can turn themselves around and still make decent products for a tight budget, Kia were a joke 10 years ago, and 5 years ago, almost no one had heard of Xiaomi.

The fact that this company has actually sent some of their psus to be tested by various people means they must have some confidence in them.

In that video link, I am assuming the Corsair that went bang was Acbel made; but is it a rebadged AcBel design, or did AcBel build them to a Corsair design spec that cut corners??

Here is a professional review on the 660W Acbel.

https://www.hardwaresecrets.com/acbel-polytech-ipower-660-power-supply-review/

660W PSU failed at 457W.

 

[logainofhades]

There comes a time where ppl just have to take it on faith that somebody else has a clue what they are doing, without full explanations. Just because they didn't go into lengthy procedural documentation to justify results to your satisfaction doesn't invalidate the results.

If I thought everyone answering was an expert on the matter, and someone gave even a SINGLE valid test report; that would be different, but there are plenty of people answering questions and spouting bollocks on subjects they know nothing about, so I went looking; and couldnt find anything to back up the claims.

Yes, it is a cheap make, yes cheap makes arent usually as good as a top brand, but companies can turn themselves around and still make decent products for a tight budget, Kia were a joke 10 years ago, and 5 years ago, almost no one had heard of Xiaomi.

The fact that this company has actually sent some of their psus to be tested by various people means they must have some confidence in them.

In that video link, I am assuming the Corsair that went bang was Acbel made; but is it a rebadged AcBel design, or did AcBel build them to a Corsair design spec that cut corners??

Corsair doesn't use AcBel. http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page447.htm

 

[Darkbreeze]

Now, I am not saying this brand is any good, just that without citing a properly documented test, you cannot base a good/bad result on anything.

Try this kind of sloppy citation on a University course and you get an "F"

When it comes to power supplies, the fact that you cannot find any bad reviews is not an indicator in absentia that it must be ok, or that you can't assume it's low quality. You can.

When no reputable reviews exist for a power supply model, or in some cases the entire brand, you can be 99.9% sure that it's for one of two reasons. Either it's too new for anybody to have laid hands on it yet for a review, which these days is improbable, or nobody wanted to touch it with a ten foot pole AND the manufacturer tends to not send out review samples because they know how bad the damage will be if anybody actually tears their unit down and writes a review on it.

No reviews equals junk, if the unit has been around for ANY amount of time at all AND is not from an otherwise reputable company. Delta for example has a lot of OEM units out there that have not been reviewed, but since we know most of what Delta puts out is at least fair, we can usually assume those won't be total junk, just that they are probably not suitable for use with an enthusiast or gaming system.

Furthermore, the OEM of the unit usually tells us a lot about it, and if you can find other models that used that OEM and platform, or even just the same OEM, you can at least get an idea of what kind of quality they incorporate into their builds. In this case, I'd have to agree, as I see nothing but junk platforms or unreviewed models coming from that OEM. I'd avoid it altogether much as with Raidmax or Ultra.

 

[Karadjgne]

In that video, it was a CoolerMaster Elite 400w, a well known brand, but that's as far as that goes. Most brands are nothing more than vendors who spec out a psu from the OEM. The CM OEM happens to be FSP in this case. The only OEM represented was HEC as that psu was a house brand. The LC Power are mostly Great Wall, but some models are Huntkey.

I will say, for the most part, there's no firm evidence of anything when it comes to 3rd party psus. Huntkey generally is an abysmal OEM, however, they also put out the Huntkey Jumper line, which was actually very good, got several well received pro reviews. Great Wall can also make very good psus, it's all dependent on exactly what platform and what specs the vendor wants. SuperFlower is quite capable of mass market junk, but Evga spec'd out the Leadex/Leadex II platforms for its Supernova lines.

That AcBel Polytech is just another mass market piece of junk. It's more than likely the exact same psu as half a dozen others under different names.

 

[CaptainCretin]

There comes a time where ppl just have to take it on faith that somebody else has a clue what they are doing, without full explanations. Just because they didn't go into lengthy procedural documentation to justify results to your satisfaction doesn't invalidate the results.

If I thought everyone answering was an expert on the matter, and someone gave even a SINGLE valid test report; that would be different, but there are plenty of people answering questions and spouting bollocks on subjects they know nothing about, so I went looking; and couldnt find anything to back up the claims.

Yes, it is a cheap make, yes cheap makes arent usually as good as a top brand, but companies can turn themselves around and still make decent products for a tight budget, Kia were a joke 10 years ago, and 5 years ago, almost no one had heard of Xiaomi.

The fact that this company has actually sent some of their psus to be tested by various people means they must have some confidence in them.

In that video link, I am assuming the Corsair that went bang was Acbel made; but is it a rebadged AcBel design, or did AcBel build them to a Corsair design spec that cut corners??

Here is a professional review on the 660W Acbel.

https://www.hardwaresecrets.com/acbel-polytech-ipower-660-power-supply-review/

660W PSU failed at 457W.

Thanks for that, it was a very interesting read, they got so much right, but completely messed it up by under spec'ing.

I would point out that was 10 years ago, and a lot can change in 10 years.

As for Corsair, I asked because I did come across a link to Acbel making PSu's for Corsair, however I forgot to look at the date stamps to see when it was posted.

 

[Karadjgne]

Huh. I'd like to see that myself. Afaik Corsair OEMs are mostly CWT, with a scattering of HEC, Seasonic, Great Wall and Flextronics.