PSU tier list 2.0

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Hey, I'm planning to put a Thermaltake TR2 500W Gold Psu into a system with a max power draw of 160w.
Thought I would give myself some wiggle room so I can buy a more power hungry graphics card in the future or power USB 3.1.
I live in Australia which has the same high 240v voltage as UK.

Where would you rate it?
Tier 3?
Its Haswell compatible, doesn't have Japanese caps on secodary side and voltage variance (hope I said that right) isn't amazing, but its under 3% at least.
 


Ah, you are right. I got caught out with the weasel words "Haswell ready". Still going to be safe in my low power system?
 
It is Haswell compatible (C6 and C7 sleep states) it's a half bridge LLC resonant converter design with DC-DC converters. It's the Sirfa HPM platform - same as Rosewill Photon 550W, just with Teapo capacitors instead of NCC.
 


Hmm then that TR2 is good. It's hard to keep track of what is what with Thermaltake when new units replace the old ones with the same naming scheme, etc.
 
That one is actually made by Yue-Lin, not ATNG (RealHardTechX is wrong), although they did just copycat ATNG's platform (ATM G v2.0). It's only available in the APAC region, so I don't think Justin Millard is from there.


The certification is in fact copied from Sirfa's 2012 HPB platform, but it's not actually that model. When Sirfa made the HPM platform (first time used in their Astro Lite series) in 2015, they simply told ECOVA "don't measure the efficiency of these new units, just copy the results from our 2012 Gold models, trust us they're similar". That's why the date stayed the same as well. Some other brands do this too. That's how ECOVA works, you can release a completely new platform and still tell them to copy the results from older ones since that's cheaper than paying for a full new testing and certification.

Other companies that do this are Raidmax, Andyson, HEC etc.
 


So corrupt!
 
Thank you so much for doing the extra research.
It was really interesting and I am fascinated that there are dedicated people out there who can find that information.

I think I'm going to grab it as its the best budget power supply I can buy at a local store. Its $69 Australian and I seem to need to spend $110 to get something noticeably better.
 
@justin

option 1 budget and acceptable.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Power Supply: Antec 500W ATX Power Supply ($59.00 @ Scorptec)
Total: $59.00
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-12-06 07:03 AEDT+1100

option 2 and solid.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Power Supply: SeaSonic 450W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply ($93.50 @ Skycomp Technology)
Total: $93.50
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-12-06 07:04 AEDT+1100

yes u can hook a 1080 with ease on the seasonic.
 
I checked reviews of another Antec at the same price and it didn't seem any better, but I will double check in case this is a different model. I also saw the skycomp seaaonic and it seemed fantastic until I realised what an unreputable site that is.
When I say buy locally, I literally mean a store in my city for RMA purposes. Thanks again for the help.
I will investigate the Antec.



 
Compared to Antec VP500P, the Thermaltake TR2 Gold 500W is miles ahead in terms of performance, technology and longevity. The Antec is based on the FSP APN platform, which is a really old and basic design. It uses group voltage regulation on the secondary side, where one choke generates both +12V and +5V - which means when there's a big load on the former, and little load on the latter rail, then the voltage on the +12V can deviate beyond the maximum allowed in the ATX spec. Modern computers put almost all load on the +12V rail and hardly anything on +5V (especially if you use an SSD), so the PSU must work with such unbalanced load.

Thermaltake uses DC-DC converters on the secondary side, which means every voltage is generated and filtered separately. It doesn't matter if you have 100% load on +12V and zero on the others, it's still straight. Because of this it also supports the C6 and C7 sleep states - group regulated units can't do that.

It's design also includes MOSFETs used to rectify the output voltages (instead of Shottky diodes in the Antec) and an LLC resonant converter on the primary side for higher efficiency. It will last longer as well, since the secondary side capacitors can handle more stress and are well ventilated, and also most of the caps filtering the minor rails are polymer instead of electrolytic.
 
How is my new PSU I just got in the mail and installed yesterday:

CORSAIR CX-M series CX650M 650W 80 PLUS BRONZE Haswell Ready ATX12V & EPS12V Semi-Modular Power Supply http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139148

I'm running this with:

GTX 750ti
AMD FX-4300 quad core @ 3.8ghz
8GB DDR3
Win 7 x64
1920 x 1080p

For gaming. I had a crappy stock PSU in this comp for almost 3 years come April 2017. I have to think this new one is better... but did I read correctly it's Tier 4?
 
It's definitely overkill for my system, but I plan to keep this new PSU I just got for my new build which is a ways off yet... How high can I go on a GPU/CPU with this?

My plan is to get into the new 1070 or so GPUs.
 
Guess it depends on the model. The CX 650 M reviewed quite well, so I'd Hazard a guess at probably a solid tier 2, but the CX750M didn't review all that well at all, kinda mediocre, so it'd probably ring in a solid tier 3.
 
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