• Happy holidays, folks! Thanks to each and every one of you for being part of the Tom's Hardware community!

PSU tier list 2.0

Page 265 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Status
Not open for further replies.
Never tried to look into PSU manufacture setup in deep but I would like someone from this forum to explain me why consistency and quality of PSUs of same model differ greatly in different parts of the world. Do PSU manufacturers have different manufacturing setup for different parts of the world.
 
Yes, they often do. Different regions have different quality guidelines/laws, different laws governing manufacturing processes, different electrical codes and voltage requirements and the protections required in specific regions on electronics can vary greatly from one place to another. Absolutely there is much that requires what works in the US won't work/fly/cut it in the UK, or EU or what doesn't work everywhere else might in another country with few or little oversight.
 


That means PSU with same model tag have completely different quality material used to manufacture them in different parts of the world. Now I get the reason why a PSU that works so well and never fails in my region is considered crap in USA. That answers my question.
 


Yes agreed that minimal failure rate has been there in every single manufacturing setup. That failure rate more has to do with luck of a person who gets it. I have my old friend whose PC got damaged badly thanks to the PSU Seasonic Focus Plus Gold and he lost huge amount on that but that doesn't make that PSU bad and it is Tier 1.
 
That would be highly unusual for a non-OEM style Seasonic power supply, but for obvious reasons, could happen. I'd certainly suspect user error of some kind, or failure of another part that made it LOOK as though the PSU was to blame. If he was replacing the PSU because of existing problems, there is always a good chance that something ELSE was the root problem in the first place and that it caused the damage VIA the PSU.

If it was a brand new build, then it could 100% have been ANY other component, or a failure to connect everything correctly. We see hundreds of threads every month where somebody connects something where it doesn't belong and shorts the system out. Generally speaking, with the kinds of protections built into a power supply like the Focus Plus Gold you would be far more likely to have a system that simply didn't work/run/power on at all than you would one that suffered excessive damage by any fault of the power supply, so long as it was a high quality power supply like that one.

If it was a cheap-o power supply, with questionable or non-existent protections, then all bets are off and it could cause just about anything from not powering on, to component failure, to fireworks. Or it could work perfectly fine if the hardware requirement was well below the rating of the unit in question.
 
He used that PC for nearly a year before PSU went up in smoke with a bam. He was also using UPS due to nu-notified power fluctuations. Sadly at that time there was no power fluctuation and the UPS war working fine even after that incident.
He said that some component in PSU failed as per the description he received from Seasonic for replacing the unit. I think it was the PSU that failed. Seasonic replaced it no problem but sadly other components excluding CPU,Memory and CPU cooler went down except Motherboard nothing was replaced sadly he did not have it covered under insurance(did not expect to go down like that and who pays extra to get it covered under insurance I don't even for very expensive builds).
 


I dunno, but it's 500W.
 


My Rocketfish PSU PC has 500 hours worth of GMod and GMod saves on the HDD; if the PSU blows up I'm gonna be pi__ed.
 
Yes all the data on HDD lost(if it was valuable info then it is even bigger loss) and even worse case is when some costly component like GPU goes down with it and unlike Motherboard it is not even covered under warranty for power surge damage.
He had to run his PC for months without GPU before he bought new one. Thanks to the PSU he lost INR50K($800) only on GPU in addition he also had to replace SSD and HDD.
 


This iswhy we can't have nice things. My gaming PC has a 680 and a Core i5 2400 + 8GB RAM. 2 7200 RPM HDDs, each 148GB. It would suck to have it blown up.
 


That would be the Rocketfish RF-500WPS2. The UL File Number of e181356 shows that the OEM is Shenzhen Huntkey Electric Co Ltd.

It looks to be based on Huntkey's Duo He / Multi-core WD500 model.
 


Incidents like this won't stop people from spending huge amount on a build. Even with high quality components and even after using Tier 1 PSU(this being PSU thread) there is a good possibility of failure if a person is unlucky. My friend learnt this the hard way.
 
All things being equal, even in a perfect world, there's always going to be at least a 1% failure rate on psus. Can't be helped, even with the strictest quality control. There's just too many parts like caps and diodes that make up a psu pcb that have no way to get 100% perfect verification.

If Seasonic puts out 10 million units to the world wide markets they have, at a 1% failure rate, that's still 10,000 doa or units that'll fail quick. In reviews on Amazon, or Newegg or any other etailer, you see 2x reviews. The 'shipped fast, works great' or 'it was dead on arrival'. If Amazon got 1000 of the 1% units, you'll get a bunch of #1 and 1000 of #2, which really looks bad. What you won't see is reviews after 5 years of the 9.99 million users claiming the psu still works great.

What's crazy is that Rocketfish might have branded only 1 million units in the same year, but at a 20% failure rate, getting 20,000 funked units in just the US market. Compared to worldwide Corsair failures of 100,000 units, Rocketfish looks good, until realizing Corsair branded 100 million units at a 1% failure rate instead of Rocketfish 20% failures.

Made up numbers, but the theory is sound. And 1% failure for some OEMs is way high, 20% for some is kinda low.
 
There's a difference between safe and unsafe failures, though.

The number of failures that breach primary-secondary isolation would be much, much smaller in a decent PSU than in an uncertified one. You're basically limited to the transformer isolation failing, a flashover on the PCB itself (good manufacturers have big isolation slots), a couple of very stringently made capacitors and optoisolators, and the housing being bent into the PCB.

Similarly with overheat/arcing related issues: good manufacturers set the safety cutouts, both temperature and total power, well below the point at which components could be expected to fail. And soldering quality is significantly better so you don't have connections overheating frequently.

In a good PSU, the number of points where you could actually have a serious failure that can't be fully tested is very, very small.
 
Yes you both are correct and there is always a possibility of failure no matter how good the PSU lineup is.

This reminds me of a famous tech youtuber from last year SingularityComputers. He said that one of the Corsair high end PSU of his client failed after years(6-8yrs) of usage and that Corsair replaced the PSU with newer model which was closest to its price range and in addition to that Corsair also paid for the GPU that failed because of the surge. I expect the same kind of service from other brands too. As not all other PSU brands are doing that there should be some kind of warranty clause regarding power surge failure on expensive components especially GPU similar to what ASUS is providing for its motherboard how much can it loose if it provides the same for GPU.
 
Manufacturer warranties pretty much never cover and expressly exclude incidental and consequential damages, and all coverage is them being nice.

Some countries do have mandatory warranties that require them to cover such damages, but if they don't want to, forcing them will be an uphill battle.

I'm having trouble finding any actual details on the operation and effectiveness of Asus Anti-surge - no surges should be able to get through a power supply, given that there is full galvanic isolation and driving the transformer to get any power through requires the electronics to actually be switching it. Plus, reaction times in the PSU to the loss of the PS_ON signal plus hold-up times are likely far too slow to prevent any damage that does occur.
 


Anti surge is effective and saved many people from damaging CPU and Memory on the loss of motherboard which was still covered under warranty and got replaced no questions asked. As I said my friend had fried motherboard but CPU and Memory was still working thanks to Anti-surge protection from board. He got it replaced the board for free by visiting local ASUS service center in a weeks time. Sadly the Gigabyte GPU did not have that feature and was missing the clause surge protect from warranty so he had buy new one. Hope brands like ASUS Gigabyte MSI and EVGA start including power surge in warranty for GPU's. Losing SSD and HHD is not as painful as losing GPU which is usually most expensive component of the build.
 
I had a client many years ago (geofelt will love this) who had one of the original Corsair H100's with that awful corrugated tubing. It blew, not a little drip, cracked right after the pump so was still under its highest amount of pressure. Sprayed liquid everywhere. Bye bye mobo, gpu, psu (upside down mount). Corsair replaced everything. All it took from me was a nicely worded letter explaining in full detail all the steps taken to recover the pc. And lots of pictures.

I'm not sure if it was the letter being nice or Corsair being nice (Corsair psu too in a Corsair case with Corsair Ram lol) or if that was part of the warranty (2 yrs old) but everything was replaced with comparable if not exact equipment, regardless of price.

Some companies will go the extra mile, some won't, some will weasel out of everything they can, some won't even answer the phone.

I guess much depends on timing, getting your correspondence at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon or 8:05 on a Monday morning prolly has adverse affects too.

And of course, the spouse (significant other) clause, that fully covers last night's successful or disastrous events...
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom