The Greatest PSU in the World...

[castleking]

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2707943&CatId=106

Is this.

 

[SEALBoy]

Well its not the greatest in terms of power or quality, but look at the price... That's 250W/dollar. Beat that.

 

[castleking]

The only problem is that there aren't any cool lights, modular cables or reflective surfaces.

 

[SEALBoy]

True, but let the OP have his fun.

 

[sirheck]

i would rather use the one that came with my 6 year old dell.


it still works.

 

[yipsl]

The Cooler Master Real Power 450 watt is what I have in my Northwood system.

I just ordered an MSI barebones with a stock 400 watt power supply from Newegg, and bought an Athlon X2 3800+ and 2 gigs Corsair XMS at Fry's yesterday. The X2 3800+ came with another K9N6SGM-V board, so I can replace the Northwood in a month or so.

Hope the board works with an MSI X1650 XT. The chipset does not support the X800, X700, X550 or X300, but the X1xxx series should be okay. The biggest question I have is the PSU, from the picture's model identification number, it appears to be a APEX SolyTech SL-400TF.

If it's not enough, I'll replace it with a Cooler Master in the 500watt range that has PCIe connectors. The one in my Northwood does not.. The Apex doesn't have active PFC though, which I think is a good feature.

Edited that I misread the amps on the 12 volt rails on my Cooler Master. It has 18 on the first 12 volt and 16 on the second. Too bad it doesn't have a PCIe connector.
.

 

[waylander]

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2707943&CatId=106

Is this.

actually, i've seen a few that were free after rebate...

personally, you couldn't pay me to use that psu (or any coolmax, apevia... etc product).

 

[rodr]

Coolmax 500W vs Ultra 500W as well, they have pretty much the same specs, but the Coolmax costs 10 more bucks.

which one would u buy?

 

[enewmen]

That is one of the last PSUs to be considered the greatest PSU in the world. If you want to look at contenders for that title you have to look at these.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?N=2010320058&Submit=ENE&Subcategory=58&Description=PC+Power+%26+Cooling&Ntk=all

What do you think of the OCZ 700w? Enough for 6 SATA drives, quad core, (1) 8800 GTX, etc ?
At least one of the better PSUs ?

 

[enewmen]

i would rather use the one that came with my 6 year old dell.


it still works.

A DELL PSU? hahaha. Happy it still works, but if it's 300w, don't expect to upgrade the video card much. Usually I find the Dells to have the lowest power possible PSUs except for the highest model XPS.

 

[Valtiel]

Coolmax 500W vs Ultra 500W as well, they have pretty much the same specs, but the Coolmax costs 10 more bucks.

which one would u buy?

Neither. I wouldn't (let my computer) touch them with a ten foot pole. :lol: (well that's not true some Ultra's are halfway decent)

Side note: Are coolmax and powmax related? they both make horrible PSUs and they have similar names.

 

[Valtiel]

Well its not the greatest in terms of power or quality, but look at the price... That's 250W/dollar. Beat that.

InfinityW/dollar

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817163044

Disclaimer: DO NOT buy this PSU even if you have a gun to your head.

 

[yipsl]

Coolmax 500W vs Ultra 500W as well, they have pretty much the same specs, but the Coolmax costs 10 more bucks.

which one would u buy?

Neither. I wouldn't (let my computer) touch them with a ten foot pole. :lol: (well that's not true some Ultra's are halfway decent)

Side note: Are coolmax and powmax related? they both make horrible PSUs and they have similar names.

Are the APEX PSU's just as bad as the Coolmax? That's what's in the MSI barebones I ordered. I figure it would work without frying my system, otherwise MSI wouldn't have included it. The barebones was actually cheaper than ordering the board and a new case separately from Newegg, let alone ordering a new PSU at this time. Probably because the PCIe only runs at 8x, otherwise it looks to be a good budget board.

A friend has a Powmax 350 in a Soyo barebones socket 478 and it's running okay. He's replacing it with an Ultra 400 watt from Fry's because he's upgrading his motherboard, processor and graphics card. It looks like it can handle a 7600GT.

Still, they aren't Cooler Masters. I've even heard on these boards that Antec has had some problems, and they're a good company. I guess the failure rates of no name power supplies are higher, but I've been building with barebones since the Williamette days and the only reason I replaced the one that came in my RAIDMAX case was because I wanted to go to 450 watts instead of 350. I had no stability issues either way.

 

[yipsl]

Apex is amoung the worste PSUs availible. Just because it comes in a barebones system dosn't mean it good. Most berebones are low quality to beguin with.

Then I'll replace the PSU next week. Barebones might include budget boards, but I always check out the boards before I buy. The only budget boards I've seen as total losers were ECS and PC Chips. MSI, Asrock, Soyo have all been good choices in the past, though when I built the Northwood system from scratch, I went Intel all the way. Nowadays, I need to upgrade or replace two PCs, not one, so it affects the budget.

I'd always considered barebones to be the way a company gets rid of overstock or soon to be discontinued boards, not that the boards are bad. The cases with power supplies seem to be about the same quality as the ones sold by companies like Raidmax, though it's best to order a case without a psu and buy the psu separately.

 

[Valtiel]

Coolmax 500W vs Ultra 500W as well, they have pretty much the same specs, but the Coolmax costs 10 more bucks.

which one would u buy?

Neither. I wouldn't (let my computer) touch them with a ten foot pole. :lol: (well that's not true some Ultra's are halfway decent)

Side note: Are coolmax and powmax related? they both make horrible PSUs and they have similar names.

Are the APEX PSU's just as bad as the Coolmax? That's what's in the MSI barebones I ordered. I figure it would work without frying my system, otherwise MSI wouldn't have included it. The barebones was actually cheaper than ordering the board and a new case separately from Newegg, let alone ordering a new PSU at this time. Probably because the PCIe only runs at 8x, otherwise it looks to be a good budget board.

A friend has a Powmax 350 in a Soyo barebones socket 478 and it's running okay. He's replacing it with an Ultra 400 watt from Fry's because he's upgrading his motherboard, processor and graphics card. It looks like it can handle a 7600GT.

Still, they aren't Cooler Masters. I've even heard on these boards that Antec has had some problems, and they're a good company. I guess the failure rates of no name power supplies are higher, but I've been building with barebones since the Williamette days and the only reason I replaced the one that came in my RAIDMAX case was because I wanted to go to 450 watts instead of 350. I had no stability issues either way.

Here is a pretty good list of some quality PSUs (only tiers 1-3 for overclocking tier 4 ok for stock systems tier 5 don't botherTiered PSU list):

 

[yipsl]

[

Here is a pretty good list of some quality PSUs (only tiers 1-3 for overclocking tier 4 ok for stock systems tier 5 don't botherTiered PSU list):

It seems strange to me that they put Coolmax and Cooler Master in the same "not recommended" category. I bought my Cooler Master real power based on reviews on hardware sites like Tom's, Anandtech and Xbit. It was listed in a round up of psus.

I have noticed the Silverstones getting decent reviews recently in late 2006 Xbit lab reviews. Perhaps I'll consider one of them to replace the Apex, but could I use an adapter to provide one PCIe power connector with the Cooler Master Realpower 450watt once I upgrade that box to the MSI board?

 

[Valtiel]

most of that data is compiled for people that are building (oddly enough) "extreme systems" if you are at stock you probably won't be putting a huge load on your PSU if all you run is Excel/word. other more "power hungry programs" (in a roundabout way) require more rail stability, total amperages, higher grade components etc,

 

[Crashman]

You jest, but that isn't exactly the worst 500W power supply on the market. I've seen a few, they're better than those produced by PowMax under various labels.

They're probably clearencing these because these have no PCI-E power connector.

 

[yipsl]

most of that data is compiled for people that are building (oddly enough) "extreme systems" if you are at stock you probably won't be putting a huge load on your PSU if all you run is Excel/word. other more "power hungry programs" (in a roundabout way) require more rail stability, total amperages, higher grade components etc,

Actually, we run Oblivion, Morrowind, HOMM 5 (hot seat only) we don't play online. We also use Paint Shop Pro 7 and 9, Irfanview and other modder oriented programs. We have Azureus running during each new Japanese TV season for unlicensed fansubs. Power DVD gets run alot and we listen to music when not playing games. That's why we wanted a dual core this time around.

The only reason we aren't "power users" is we don't have $500 GPUs or very high end processors. We will have two SATA drives in our new system and one Lightscribe DVD RW. We're basically midrange computer users at our house.

As for Word and Excel, don't use them at home. I agree that stock barebones power supplies aren't that great, but they ideally are matched to the capabilities of the boxes at stock. I don't plan to use the 400 watt APEX for long, but a good $99 power supply would go overbudget for this build. I just hoped it wasn't as bad as the Coolmax reviews at Newegg. The Apex power supply in the MSI barebones doesn't get slammed the way the Coolmax that was bundled last week with an Athlon X2 3800+ did. That had numerous negative reviews.

In fact, that was the power supply found at Tiger Direct for $1.99 at rebate, so I guess everyone's trying to unload their stock!

Coolermaster makes decent PSUs. Most of there units offer low amperage for the size PSU it is. For example there Realpower 450W PSU only offers a total of 22A on the combined +12v rails. Where a better PSU maker like FSP's AX450 450W PSU offers 29A on the combined +12v rails. Quality pays the bigest factor in all of this. Though Coolermaster's i-Green line of PSUs are a big improvment over there other offerings.

You know, when I opened my case yesterday to install a new CPU fan, I looked at the Real power 450 and thought I was misreading the amps on the 12 volt rails. Online, that model number (identified by my order history at Newegg) has more amps listed than is actually given on the power supply, so could Newegg have wrong data? Or did they improve the model number in the last year or so?

I ordered mine on 2-4-2005. Here's what the specs in the link say about the amps:

+3.3V@30A, +5V@35A, +12V1@18A, +12V2@16A, -12V@1.0A, +5VSB@2.5A

That looks like 18 amps plus 16 amps equals 34. I could swear the model in my Northwood only has 22 amps total on two rails. I'd have to open it again, but I think it's 10 amps plus 12 amps. So, what gives? Did Newegg send me the wrong psu or do they have an updated model with newer specs that invoice history links to?

Either way, I don't feel too happy to discover this. At the time, I was thinking of a 7800GS AGP and needed 20 amps and I thought I had room to spare. I decide to wait and upgrade instead of getting anything newer than a Radeon 9800 Pro for the AGP box.

 

[Valtiel]

Be aware that the numbers on the label are only as good as the company who print them. For example you could have 500W PSU with Dual +12v Rails. One the +12v1 rail you have 14A and on the +12v2 rail you have 12A. But the max output is only 180W on the +12V rails. Using our formula from above we find the actual total current output is only 15A. At the same time you could have a PSU with the same amount of amps on the +12v rails but gives you 264w of max output. This gives you a total of 22A on the +12v rails. Be aware of what you are getting when buying a PSU. Always check the label and check the numbers. Don’t choose a PSU because it has a lot of power and the price is almost too good to be true. You will also want to stick with a good name brand PSU

From PSU 101

 

[cronjob]

That is not the greatest PSU in the world, no.
That is just a tribute.

 

[ShadowdogKGB]

Uh...well now it's not so excellent. 12 bucks for shipping brings it to 14 bucks. Total would be 42.04 at check out. Haha screw that. I wouldn't give Tigerdirect one penny either.

 

[cozwin]

Coolmax 500W vs Ultra 500W as well, they have pretty much the same specs, but the Coolmax costs 10 more bucks.

which one would u buy?

Neither. I wouldn't (let my computer) touch them with a ten foot pole. :lol: (well that's not true some Ultra's are halfway decent)

Side note: Are coolmax and powmax related? they both make horrible PSUs and they have similar names.

lol i can imagine a competition where dell "upgrades" your pc hehe strips it of everything slaps in a very old pentium 4 with crap motherboard sd memory and then slaps a 300 watt psu in heh.

 

[yipsl]

Thanks for the explanation. I'd been building my own PCs, with occasional help, since the 386SX days, but I never paid much attention to power supplies until I felt the need to get that Cooler Master 450 watt.

The last AMD processor I installed was a K62-450 and the last Intel a P4 Northwood 2.8, so I guess I'm a bit rusty. I have upgraded memory, hard drives and graphics cards a bit more often than that, not that a Radeon 9800 Pro is all that recent either!

I'll check out PSU 101 and look for a psu on that list without SLI or Crossfire and that works for a good midrange system.

Are there molex to PCIe adaptors that work like molex to SATA? Could I use an adapter with the Cooler Master to provide PCIe power, or do I have to upgrade that one too when I upgrade the motherboard?

 

[sirheck]

i would rather use the one that came with my 6 year old dell.


it still works.

A DELL PSU? hahaha. Happy it still works, but if it's 300w, don't expect to upgrade the video card much. Usually I find the Dells to have the lowest power possible PSUs except for the highest model XPS.


not sure how many watts they are? but both came with onboard video
and i added video cards to both.

one is almost 7 years and the other is around 4 years old.

on the 4 year old one i even added a 120mm variable t.t. fan.

not sure about the newer dells though.