Discussion PSU tier list discussion thread

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Vic 40

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I'm not sure - I seem to stumble across more questions than I'd expect that ask about a PSU that, when I try to look up some info, have reviews from, say 2012 or earlier. I'm just one guy, though, and NOT a PSU expert at all.
Yeah but most of those questions is from people who are curious about the psu in their pc, so which they already have. For me would this list be beneficial for when people will be buying a new psu for their pc. Or for them for that matter.
 

BlueCat57

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One, simple?, question:

What country are you in?

The list is supposedly "current" but I just did found several "current" Antec units on the Amazon USA site and they do not see to match up with your list.

I found Antec Earthwatts Gold Pro Series in 650 and 750 and an oddball EA750G Pro White one. The an HCG650 Gold which might be on your list.

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?

How does one determine what "year" the power supply was "made"?

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.

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might be easier to "teach" us how to "fish" rather than "giving us a fish" as in a list of models that becomes quickly outdated.

What defines a "good" power supply?

I have two Antec Earthwatts 380W that are 11-years old and have never given me a problem. Are they "good" power supplies?

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.

The original post is 2-years old so are all of those "recommendations" now invalid?

I think that what most people are looking for are either:

1. Definitive recommendations for "good" CURRENT models. And the REASONS why they are "good".
or
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.

Last time I visited this thread, one recommendation was to expect a power supply to last ONLY as long as its warranty. The longer, the "good"er. Is that a valid measure? Or does a "bad" manufacturer offering a 10-year warranty on a specific model still make THAT model a "bad" choice?

What exactly are we trying to protect against by buying a "good" power supply?

This thread (the top Sticky Thread in the Power Supply Forum) is now over 50 pages long. I understand the effort needed to present an updated version of the Original Post, but maybe it is time to start a new thread. I do NOT possess the expertise and years of experience with dozens of power supplies to provide a definitive post of recommendations, but maybe it wouldn't be too time-consuming to provide a post that would address #2 and the warranty question.
 

Juular

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What country are you in?
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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One, simple?, question:

Really? One? Looks more like five or ten to me.

The original post is 2-years old so are all of those "recommendations" now invalid?

I think you are referring to MY recommendations page, which has literally nothing at all to do with this list or it's conversation, nor am I involved in this project. They are entirely separate endeavors.
 

santan686

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Just wanted to say. Thank You to all who worked on the PSU tier list. It really helped me out a lot. I have learned the hard way about unreliable PSUs. More than once. Lol.
Incidentally, I saw a PSU tier list on Linustechtips and it looks suspiciously identical to this one? Its really good that you have it in more than one place if so.
Probably nothing wrong, but I just thought to mention it. Thanks again for all the hard work.
 

santinicouleau

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The only stock that I found worth considering from where I live (Argentina) is the Cooler Master MWE V2 650w 80+ bronze, is it good enough for a ryzen 5 1600 af, gtx 1660 super, 1tb hdd, 512gb ssd? I will play AAA games at high settings 1080p and some esports but i don't plan to OC. Thanks in advance
 
It's "good enough", but that doesn't mean it's "good". And, that unit is known to have highly irritating problems, so if you're easily bothered by such things, then it's probably not the unit for you. Not really "problems", more like "characteristics" of the topography.

 

santinicouleau

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It's "good enough", but that doesn't mean it's "good". And, that unit is known to have highly irritating problems, so if you're easily bothered by such things, then it's probably not the unit for you. Not really "problems", more like "characteristics" of the topography.

When i turn on my current crappy PC the noise it makes it´s like the engine of a plane, it stops after a few minutes, and then it just makes a noticeable humming noise. So i´m used to a PC making noises, besides that noise seems to happen at low loads and since i´m gonna be playing a lot of games while I use headphones and i berely browse the Internet on my PC, i don´t think a ticking noise will bother me. Thanks for the warning though, appreciated :)
 

Karadjgne

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The ticking is normal for that unit. It's due to the design and part of the circuitry used. It's not a failure, there nothing wrong or dangerous, it ain't broke. The Corsair RM does the exact same thing, a slight difference in design from the RMx/RMi versions. Afaik, it has to do with EU power/safety standards that have not been adopted by the US (yet, or never)

The only 'failure' is in its difference. It's not the usual 'quiet' as such psu, it has a tick, and thats something most ppl freak out about.

There's a good chance that more and more upcoming units will also contain the 'tick' as manufacturers won't want to create multiple platforms to seperate EU and US markets.
 
The ticking is normal for that unit. It's due to the design and part of the circuitry used. It's not a failure, there nothing wrong or dangerous, it ain't broke. The Corsair RM does the exact same thing, a slight difference in design from the RMx/RMi versions. Afaik, it has to do with EU power/safety standards that have not been adopted by the US (yet, or never)

The only 'failure' is in its difference. It's not the usual 'quiet' as such psu, it has a tick, and thats something most ppl freak out about.

There's a good chance that more and more upcoming units will also contain the 'tick' as manufacturers won't want to create multiple platforms to seperate EU and US markets.
That's not exactly true.

Another side effect of burst mode is not just the ticking noise, but also high ripple while in burst mode. We see it with the RM units as well.

Hard to recommend any unit that has a known issue with high ripple, of ANY kind, for me. Especially when we know that continued periodic pounding from high ripple tends to result in killing or damaging capacitors on motherboards and graphics cards.
 
That's not exactly true.



Hard to recommend any unit that has a known issue with high ripple, of ANY kind, for me. Especially when we know that continued periodic pounding from high ripple tends to result in killing or damaging capacitors on motherboards and graphics cards.

Except for the high ripple only occurs < 10% load. If you have a 850W PSU because you're using a 3080 FE, at what point is your PC ever going to be using only 85W?

In the lab, the only way I could get a 750W to stay in burst mode on a real PC (as opposed to a static load on a load tester) is to use an ITX board with IGP sitting idle at Windows desktop.
 
I understand, however, are we saying then that the entire time one of these is sitting idle on the desktop we are in burst mode and a high ripple situation? Something still seems either lacking in that if it's true or off somehow. Not sure, but seems to me like a lot of systems are going to be actually in that exact scenario or in and out of it frequently to be honest. To me that says that when browsing, every time you stop to read a page or even potentially WHILE browsing since that is such low impact, we'd be talking about being in that envelope the entire time. Am I missing something?
 
I understand, however, are we saying then that the entire time one of these is sitting idle on the desktop we are in burst mode and a high ripple situation? Something still seems either lacking in that if it's true or off somehow. Not sure, but seems to me like a lot of systems are going to be actually in that exact scenario or in and out of it frequently to be honest. To me that says that when browsing, every time you stop to read a page or even potentially WHILE browsing since that is such low impact, we'd be talking about being in that envelope the entire time. Am I missing something?

No graphics card. 750W in a PC with no graphics card. As soon as you install a graphics card, the PSU is above that threshold even at idle.

Also keep in mind that almost any PSU made after the end of this year is going to have to implement burst mode if they're not ATX12VO because CEC and Intel are asking for 70%+ efficiency at 2% and lower load.
 

Karadjgne

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Almost all of them? Or pretty much just the Bronze and lower efficiency units. You'd figure a Gold or higher would probably still get above 70%, even at 2%. Or is the downslope that great under @ 10% loads?

And not to sound rude, but if you've stuck a 650w+ psu in a pc that's not running a discrete gpu (I'm not talking about NAS or server type pc's) then you pretty much never did your homework to begin with and deserve whatever you get. Imho.
 
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