Who's Who In Power Supplies: Brands, Labels, And OEMs

[demonhorde665]

wow never knew corsair uses seasonic tech, got my first corsiar off enwegg it was a 420 watt psu witha 12 v rail rated at 33 amps was great and powered every thing awsomly , when the psu in my mothers alienware died form old age , i replaced it with that 420 model and grabed myself a 650 watt corsair model. one note though i do get occasioanl oddities on pc power up becasue i got teh psu running to a power strip, higher quality components tend to do this when put on a power strip , i also had an old seasonic on amuch older comp that would get these same anomilies, but it's no probelm i jsut got a better powerstrip and they went away. that said Corsair so far is definitelya company that you can trust , , msot thier models come witha single high power high quality 12 votl rail, which is better for your graphics card(s) that having split up smaller 12 v rails because when they are split the power of all rails counted does not total up to what you'd think it does (ie three 12 v rails at 20 amps each wil not net you total of 60 amps). that said i wont ever buy any thing other than a corsaiur , a pc power and cooling , or a seasonic psu.

 

[jsc]

[citation][nom]photon123[/nom]I bought Corsair HX520 based on the recommendations. It died after a year with no apparent cause(no lightning and no indication of a power surge). Fortunately it was fixed under a warranty and no other components were damaged. Before that I always had cheap power supplies, and they always lasted longer.[/citation]
Anything, no matter how good, is subject to random component failures.

 

[LATTEH]

a recommended list for PSU would really set this site apart from the rest

 

[Guest]

I like the comparison to the V8 engine. Many people like the thought of all that power when in reality they would be better served by a V6 due to lower fuel costs. I have a Corsair 520 watt which is in its 2nd machine build. It is currently running a q6600 @3.0ghz O.C. with 4 sticks of ram, tv and audio cards,3 HDDs, an ATI 5830 GPU and countless USB items. Its around 5 years old and counting. As a side note I blow the PSU out with compressed air around every 6 months, you would'nt believe how much dust comes out!

 

[sonofliberty08]

haha...not only the PSU are OEM , even some of the American brand UPS was OEM by Taiwanese manufacture , and u know your iphone was OEM too

 

[d0gr0ck]

I guess I'm just unlucky then, I've seen a Corsair TX750 and a HX750 kick the bucket. The HX750 actually had a capacitor blow...

I just seem to see an abnormal amount of component failures around me.

 

[Guest]

Please list PSUs manufactured by and branded as fsp. Their PSUs are good and the saga II series is great vfm.

 

[jimslaid2]

I've had a apevia short out and toast my cpu one time.

 

[jimishtar]

great article.

 

[DiscoDuck]

I have a lanparty room in my basement with 6 gaming machines. I have bought 4 or 5 thermaltake 430 watt psu's for moderate gaming machines over the years without a single issue. If the power draw at the outlet is idling under 100 watts and load draw around 150, then its a waste of electricity to buy a bigger psu unless you need 2 pcie connectors for your rig. You want the wattage draw to be in the sweet spot. Get yourself a kill-a-watt meter from newegg and test your own rig if you dont believe it. Its a misconception that more is better.

 

[kureme]

Excellent article.

 

[scook9]

Very good article and useful to uninformed buyers. They should post this on the wall at microcenter where I worked....

Your corsair stuff is sorely lacking....they have mnay different OEMs across many more products than you have listed right now. For example, Flextronics makes the AX1200 - a true beauty of a PSU

 

[compton]

This is a great article, but it should be just the beginning. Just the first part of a larger series on PSUs. I understand why specific brand /manufacturer recommendations are not included, but I think a series of follow up articles are needed. Surely enough information exists to develop hard and fast rules on which PSUs are the worst offenders. I'd like to see this information available for the benefit of all. After all, just a fraction of the available power supplies ever get a thorough review.

 

[wolfram23]

Well this is a good start but I'd like to see more.

 

[shovenose]

some rules for choosing a psu:
1. look at the price. it there are three 500w psus for $70 and one 750w for $30, isnt that suspicious
2. weight. usually a hevier psu is better. of course, some companies of crap power supplies caught on and stuck small weights inside the casing. not kidding
3. included power cord. if a 750w watt psu comes with a super skinny cheapo cord as thin as a lamp cord, and you actually try to load that cord up at 750w, it could melt or catch fire!

 

[saint19]

Interesting article, I will check my "crap" Thermaltake PSU tonight and see the results. Why have this psu? Only find good PSU below 450W in my country.

 

[dstln]

Very nice article, quite informative. But yes, I'd also like to see summaries on manufacturer quality, once you have testing data available. It seemed from the intro implied as much.

I've personally learned not to understate the performance of power supplies, as I've had several issues in the past, with the latest melting the power connector to a motherboard, essentially killing the major part of the system. I thought I had a better power supply at that time but really didn't know the details and certainly ended up wrong. A good power supply shouldn't be skimped on, as they last through several generations of computers and directly impact your electricity bill and safety/reliability of all the other components in your computer...

 

[dstln]

Also I'd like to add that you may want to note that carelessly opening up and looking at power supplies can be dangerous. I'm pretty sure all power supplies would have a warning on them anyway, but I didn't see such a disclaimer in this article (unless I just missed it).

 

[thechief73]

Awesome job Tom's, it was usally hard to find if not nearly impossible to find a up-to-date or such a detailed and complete list as you have here. Thanks for putting this all together, even if I did just pick up a Corsair HX850 a few weeks ago

But I have one problem, you sort of suggest directly or indirectly, for readers in the begining to open up thier PSU, but this will undoubtably void any warranty and could be dangerous for the less tech savy people out their. It would best best to advise them to search the web for the information they seek, as many good sites exist that will dissect the components and test PSU's for you, and such articles as what you have provided here.

And one question are all Corsairs really slightly older designs of Seasonic? Even ones that are produced by CWT?

 

[gsacks]

I only buy PSUs manufactured by Seasonic now. Been doing that for a few years, and I'm very happy them. I have an Antec, and Corsair, and a Seasonic PSU, all made by Seasonic. Only buy PSUs reviews by at least one of the reputable tech sites. My go to site for power supplies is SilectPCReview.com

Nothing against Tom's or the other sites, but I likes me a quiet computer.

 

[thorimmortal]

Well interesting to say the least, the UL listing E307858 indicates seasonic under Corsair, the 1200AX has the same UL listing???? it may share some similarities with a seasonic design but the components quality and craftsmanship from Flextronics are far exceeding the industry standard, I would not select a psu solely on a UL label or even trust that that is even a justifiable starting point. What happened to the way you used to review PSU's, like the way Johnny Guru does it?

 

[ZappCatt]

I would love to see a more advanced PSU roundup like the cases with a bunch of 800W(or whatever) and see which is best and price/performance leader.

Another area which would be great to see would be one based on a gaming rig with SLI(with MultiMonitors even). When gaming, you need a huge PSU(Fermi/5850)SLI, but what about for 90% of the time when just surfing the web?

 

[wikiwikiwhat]

Never had one die but the fan in one went to crap. Still, I have to replace one once in a while to keep up with certain power requirements.

 

[bujuki]

Greatly informative article, and nice comment by chaz_music.

I'd really like THG to write down the simplest but accurate way to determine our system workload in both idle and peak involving as few tool as possible. That way we can choose the most suitable PSU. It's also a good idea to have tips to approximate newly build system.

I was quite surprised chaz_music's 12 HDDs server only used 290 W peak and 115 W nominal. If it was me to decide, I would definitely choose at least 500 W PSU (for "just to be safe" reason).

How about chaz_music collaborate with THG writing review? ^^

My testimony on PSU brand. From the list I only used 2 brands before:
1. Codegen; I had about 50 of its 300 W PSU (built-in its casing) years ago. As I remember very few failed in the first year and after that most problems were output-voltage dropping. I say the built quality is quite good considering they were built-in.
2. ACBell; I bought some to be used in pretty unfriendly environment (blackout and voltage-spiking weren't rare) and I was satisfied with them. Very few have failed yet good warranty.

The table explained these 2 brand-quality.

 

[pinkfloydminnesota]

Very informative, but to say you simply can't get a 750 watt power supply for $50 or that a 400 watt for $20 is a fire hazard ignores the amazing market Americans can access.

I bought my PC Power & Cooling 750 watter for $75 after a $40 rebate about a year ago. I imagine it was on sale because it was a discontinued model from a pre-OCZ acquisition line that was colored an annoying fire engine red, with an unpopular 80mm fan. This single rail beast hasn't failed me yet and was very well reviewed by several sites.

That was a lucky grab from the egg.

That replaced a 6 month old 500 water OCZ that cost $25 after a $20 rebate. The egg is constantly selling this OCZ model and it's 600 watt brother for $25 - $40 after rebate and they are solid power supplies.

Obviously most cheap power supplies are just that, it is very common to see very good power supplies selling for below the "minimum" if you shop carefully. As a power supply is the least frequently replaced computer part, I would encourage people to keep an eye out for these bargains and a chance to buy a top shelf power supply at below market prices.