Who ? It's a community project, we have people from all over the world, Luke is from Netherlands, i'm from Uzbekistan for example. But i don't see how that matters. It's current in the very direct sense, if you either don't see something here that you see on the market then that something is either ancient or we're not aware of it yet or don't have enough info to add it.
I found Antec Earthwatts Gold Pro Series in 650 and 750 and an oddball EA750G Pro White one.
If these are the units you were talking about then you can see them in tier B.
One of your footnotes indicates "Antec EA Pro Gold has versions for Chinese market made by FSP on competely different, worse, group-regulated platform (tier D)." What does that mean?
Again, what is your question exactly ? What's 'group regulated' ? Old way of regulating 12V, 5V and 3V rail voltages when 12V and 5V rails were regulated together and thus in crossload situations (when one rails is loaded very high and another is very low) voltages go out of specifications (-+5%), any modern PSU should be DC-DC to be concidered good.
If you meant to ask about these units in general there are links to reviews just for that purpose.
How does one determine what "year" the power supply was "made"?
Not very easily, you either ask the retailer for manufacturing date of the units or buy it and then determine that yourself (generally it should be coded in the serial number or LOT code).
Are you recommending buying a "used" power supply? That 2012 model seems like you would only find used ones. That may apply to the pre-2108 ones as well.
To
buy used units ? Definitely not. But old units are there just so people that still use them could look them up.
I posted the following in another thread, but it might be easier to "teach" us how to "fish" rather than "giving us a fish" as in a list of models that becomes quickly outdated.
That isn't that easy as it sounds unfortunately but thankfully you can refer to reviews and other articles from Aris Mpitzopoulos published on THW or TPU, they're very often on point, keep in mind that when he's talking about some pros and cons of the unit he generally doesn't compare it with other units so even if it calls it bad or meh it could be still a decent unit compared to other units in the same price category. Older reviews on jonnyguru.com both from Jon himself and newer reviews from Tazz and OklahomaWolf are good too, but as i said, they're old, and considerably less detailed.
I have two Antec Earthwatts 380W that are 11-years old and have never given me a problem. Are they "good" power supplies?
Today ? No.
I have never had a power supply fail on me. I own 3 or 4 that are each several years old. Are they "good" power supplies? Several of them ran 24/7 for years.
Well, PSUs sometimes fail not as spectacularly as expected, or be bad from the start but you wouldn't notice that. Ripple can be very high, voltages may fluctuate under load or generally be not very stable, you would notice that only as instability of your PC but not always, especially if you have otherwise high-end other PC components that are capable of coping with that.
The original post is 2-years old so are all of those "recommendations" now invalid?
Excuse me ?
1. Definitive recommendations for "good" CURRENT models. And the REASONS why they are "good".
There are layers for that. People have different budgets and a good PSU for 150-200$ would be very different from one for 50-70$, that's why we have three tiers of great/fine/okay units plus gold colored ones which are better than other units in the same tier.
2. A list of SPECIFIC specifications to look for in a power supply to determine if it is a "good" one. Like "Japanese" whatevers. Or this or that type of component.
Again, that isn't as easy as it sounds. But you can look up our methodology in the linked spreadsheet to see what are our requirements for tiers, that would make some idea.
What exactly are we trying to protect against by buying a "good" power supply?
PC (especially high-end one) instability and premature components failing (due to high ripple and bad voltage regulation), in addition to the failure of PSU itself due to high stress or bad input voltage quality.
This thread (the top Sticky Thread in the Power Supply Forum) is now over 50 pages long.
Ah, okay, i get now, you're talking about the other sticky which is isn't exactly current indeed nor very detailed in why it's author thinks the one or other way. And yet you were talking about footnotes, obviously in the tier list so you've managed to mix them up together. To make it clear, this tier list and that other sticky threads aren't related, and we (tier list team and the author of that thread) don't go along well regarding our points of view so you better repeat your questions there again.
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