The worst PSU manufacturer?

[Valtiel]

What is, in your opinion, the worst Power supply manufacturer out there?

 

[michaelahess]

Powmax, only company I ever ordered a case of PS's from and had ALL of them "pop" on first power up. Last time I ever bought $10 PS's!

 

[michaelahess]

Trust me, I know, I just wanted to see how bad they were since they were only $10 each. It was worth it to see them smoke and spark

Cheap thermaltakes are great, got a couple for builds and they cost $30, work perfectly. Personally I never spend less than $70 on PS's for my computers. I have silverstone 600's in my game rig and my primary media center pc. Enermax in most everything else at home.

I've also had a couple topower's shoot flames, they'd be my second worst in the list.

I've probably replaced more no name PS's in my various jobs and personal business than all other components combined.

Some day people may learn that cheap is never good with computers. Amptron's anyone? :twisted:

 

[michaelahess]

I have to disagre with that list. I've had many Deer, Cooler Master, Atehna Power (in servers), Rosewill, and Allied (in servers), that have performed very well.

The list also makes it sound like you need the most expensive ps's for anything more than an office machine.

I've built many light duty gaming rigs with 300-400 watt PS's that have lasted years, even current systems will run fine with low wattage Rosewill's for example. That list needs to specify quality by model, not manufacturer and/or product line.

 

[technology-sponge]

PowMax - god.... ther power supplies cant even deliver a tenth of their rated capacities.... theyd do a lot better spending money on r n d teams, rather than hiring graphic artists with no technical qualifications to bling up their products

(the brand i saw at a pc market) - lol absolute bullsh1t

it had no brand name, and 10 bux aud cud get u:
800W ATX 2 compliant
56A 12V
20A3.3 and all rails at 1%
45A 5V
14cm fan

lol
the psu dimensions itself wer abt 5x5x 10

 

[apt403]

Wow, just looked googled powmax to get an idea of what kind of crap you guys where talking about. They look like cheap ripoff versions of already cheap ripoffs of psu's that where designed by retarded sea urchins. In China, in a tunnel, under a fireworks factory.

 

[sprite]

Q-Tec without a doubt

Som of the "Trust" PSUs are a bit shi aswell, and their name is so ironic!

 

[technology-sponge]

I agree witht the cooler master bit. Most of their power supplies perform well. They aren't like the PC&C power supplies whihc are underated (ie, there 600Ws can actually deliuver abt 651W continuous) but the CM's meet their ratings with very good voltages and ripple. Cheap too.

 

[Valtiel]

I hate rosewill I know that

 

[technology-sponge]

I know this is adrresed to mpilch, but:

What is everyone's opinion of AOPEN power supplies? I have a 250W thats still gattling on after 4 years run 24/7

on a P4 1.6, 2 sticks ram, 1 hdd, fx5500, 2x optical, 3 fans, mobo, 2 pci cards 1 floppy

Its never shut down or overheated considering i used to run seti at home 24/4 for 4 years

 

[dragonsprayer]

lol nice thread!

i would not know since i research my stuff and buy the right products! lol

so i will have to guess ????


apevia or what ever its called - i never owned one!

 

[celewign]

Nice??? Are you going to marry the thread?? ARE YOU GOING TO MARRY THE THREAD?!??!?!? HUH!?!?
-cm

 

[michaelahess]

Rosewell, they have some very nice models and some very bad models, I've seen both. If it has some heft to it, it's almost certainly going to be one of the "good" models, on par with some of the good cooler master and thermaltake units.

 

[nukemaster]

Ultra(there new stuff seems ok.....are they all just rebranded?)/Turbogamer/No Name PC shop ones.....

You know the 500 watt psu's with less heatsink and smaller components than a 200 watt AT

Also the PSU that dims all the lights on a case when you plug in a 120mm fan yes i've seen it....

 

[sailer]

Apevia used to be called Aspire. I've owned two of them in the past and they did the job well enough. I've since seen them listed as backballed by virtually all lists of power supplies, so either I was very lucky with them or I never drew on their full power potential, which might have been non-existent.

 

[dragonsprayer]

roswell is the bottom of the barrel


<--- see those red fans on top of $6k in parts (my avatar) they are Roswell - omg! they were they only red fans could find.


i got my kid a rosewell 19" monitor it kicks azz - but i did have to mod it to get the dvi plug to fit - they told me they send one - never did!

aspire fans rock! psu's?

ultra sux's i did return the psu to tiger - the connectors were so long did not fit the cases on the first

 

[dragonsprayer]

I GOT ONE -- I REMEMBER!!!\

A REALLY BAD PSU!! these psu's suck azz i had problems 2-3 year ago with these COOLMAX

this was in 2004 -05 these psu's have very slow moving 12cm fans and run very hot.

i shipped systems out west in AZ and CA and they would shut down after 30-60mins. I was using 550 watt coolmax with 6800 ultra and 6800 GT's.

COOL MAX SUCKS -they cost me quite a bit of money!

 

[technology-sponge]

AOPEN's been making them for a while, but not for retail. Mainly oem for their cases and other buyers. They seem to be alirte from my experience, but i wanted comments from others. As i said, my system actaully drew about 270W (its rated at 250) and i ran it 24/7 straight for 4 years. With only about 1 full power off every 6 months.

 

[technology-sponge]

Viewscope. They wen tout of bisunees quite a while back, for obvious reasosn

You can't go to say newegg or whatever stores you guys have in the states, but you can still find em floating around. ie

-maybe smaller niche pc stores
-2nd hand
-ebay auction places


NEVER BUY THEM!!!
not only are they about 30% overrated, but they run very hot and the voltage rails are out of spec. Normally, ther within 5%, but ejecting the cd tray is enough to cause the rails to fluctuate by abt 0.6V.

vnoisy too

strnage thing is though, therer psus have the best protection circutry iv seen. I had one in an old system:

Pentium 1 200mhz, 32mb ram, 3 hdds, sound card, network card, dvdromd rive. on a 120W psu.

the system wud boot, but wud overload and shiutdown. then 10 minutes later, iut would power up, then cut, then power up.

i only discovered that after about 16 hrs later, when the thing had gon throuhgt like 65 overload/reset cycles.

 

[technology-sponge]

1 full power off is about 2 too many. You ricks major damage to your system like that.

I'm not sure what tyou think i meant but i reckon you got me wrong

Full power off - shutting down the pc and unplugging just for maintenance


----------------------------------

hehe, i traded in an crapass 430Wer psu for a nice TT 750W toughpowe for $120. PC store guy mustnt have had much experience with that brand. That brand (name of whihc i cant memba) did abt 210W in tests before shutting down from thermal. Didnt't help that they used cruddy low grad 8cm fans.

 

[merc14]

I gave up on trying to save money on PSUs and I just buy PC P&C. The things never fail and work exactly as advertised. Worth the extra $40 or $50 in my book. I have a 510 that i really beat the hell out of and the thing never sags at all. Watercooling, 67% overclock on the CPU, two 6800GTs in SLI overclocked, 3 hard drives (2 in RAID 0) etc. and the 510 just motors along. Might drop .01v when stressed but that's it. I'm planning a dual loop watercooling setup so I relented and bought a used PC P&C 750 Silencer.

Stick with the stuff that works and you won't be sorry. A couple of hundred bucks for the one thing that touches everything in your case is a good investment when you have several thousand dollars riding on it. Plus solid voltage is a necessity for a really high end O/C.

No flames please. :lol: I know I am a fanboy so don't bother hammering me. It won't work.

In answer to the question, I have to say the PSU company I hate the most is Antec. I admin on an Asus site and Antecs have been the cause of more hardware problems than anything I have ever seen. The older units are fine but the units from the last two years are a nightmare. Why they are the worst is that they have/had a trusted name and charge a moderate amount of money for one of their PSU's. Builders trust them and then have all kinds of problems until finally their system stops booting. Antecs fail like nothing I have ever seen for what is supposed to be a quality product.

Spend $35 on a 600 watt PSU and you deserve what you get. Spend $100 on a 600 watt unit and should at least expect that it runs well for a time. Maybe it sags and heats up but Antecs cause all kinds of problems and then die catastrophically, in some cases, taking other gear with them. I'm surprised the very comprehensive list here hasn't registered that. I'd be more than willing to document it at the Asus site if it would help spread the word

 

[celewign]

I threw one of those in an old computer at word, some Gateway garbage I think. Anyway, the EXACT SAME THING happened to me. Nice to know that they screwed someone else sortov...
-cm

 

[technology-sponge]

(dw, im not gonna flame you)

Just out of curiosity, would you know what the problem with Antec's were? Poor voltage rails, crap tolerance, ripple, overrating etc?

When i bought a new pc, i considered Antecs, but got very put off after reading all the crap about their exploding capacitor fiasco.

 

[merc14]

exploding capacitors was an issue with two models as far as I know. The other problems are garbage parts and terrible quality control. HF has some more info on it and has a list of the do and do not buy Antecs but I think he problem is a lot worse than even they know. Plus, If I have to pick and choose by build date and model number i'd rather avoid the problem altogether.

What we are seeing is the rails seem stable but have very hard drops. Of course the system gets all screwy. After a couple of weeks of that behavior the PSU dies completely or dies half way. In other words the the mobo LED stays lighted but the PC won't boot at all or and this one is worse, will boot intermittently.

The intermittent boot is the worst and we have had at least 6 people lose other high end components when the thing finally died. We're only a small site (4k members or so) that deals with Asus mobos so it is fairly easy to see a trend occurring there.

 

[technology-sponge]

Sorry, i prob sound lyk a noob asking this, but what is HF?