What Gives With Tom's Using a Tier 4 PSU in a Top Gamer??

I read that in their mid-priced gaming machine, Toms used a Tier 4 PSU, an AeroCool Zerodba 620W.

Wouldn't a Corsair 620W have been a better choice?

Appears the 620W has the same rating on the 12v rail as the 500W. Why would anyone buy the 620W?

While some reviewers have evaluated power supplys based upon specific performance parameters and those evaluations are included in the Tier #'s, in reality the Tier #'s are basically an opinion as to the durability of a particular brand or model.

In a manner of speaking it is a bit like saying my copper wire is better than your copper wire and my copper wire will last longer than your wire.

Much of the durability ratings come from consumer compliants from vendor sites, such as NewEgg, as well as comments from various forums. While representative of consumer experiences, these comments are not accurate of the entire market (remember, happy customers tend to be quiet customers, while unhappy customers tend to scream and holler). More importantly, judging reliabiltiy based upon consumer experiences is very inaccurate as nobody knows the actual ratio of failure to success.

People are more likely to complain without knowledge of why a product failed, if it failed at all, or possibly failure was caused by external sources the customer was unaware of.

Taking PSU's as an example:

Not many complaints (maybe 3/1000/yr ) would be able to list what failed, i.e. a voltage rail, such as the +/- 3.3v.

Maybe they were drawing to much power, or a small short was pulling more power then expected. Maybe brownouts were to blame.


It is hard to say that mass complaints of a product equate to a ratio of functioning to manufacture defected purchases.

10,000 units sold, 100 failure complaints
1,000 units sold 20 failure complaints. This product double the failure ratio.

Anyway, back to your thread.

true true-= also as far as PSU's go----they are engineered to have a very specific MTBF-mean time between failure- that is how the business model used to put them into production justifies the cost and lobor ect to make them and borrow or justify spending the money to get in the business. Sad thing is some companies release this info and some don't and some that do do not make it necessarily easy to find. Name means little- big companies like to make money too- long time makers is one key (longevity), quality of components is of the utmost impotance and of course efficiency these days. Any 2yr electronics engy can design a decent PSU- the trick is to make it work well efficiently with cost effective parts.

cheers

Power, stability, efficiency, quality of materials/build, price, and availability are the characteristics that make up the tiers.

I did not see any Aerocool listed in any of the other tiers other than tier 4. wonder why? maybe this one will eventually be listed somewhere else. If you are a member there, just post your question. I am sure they will answer you.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forum [...] p?t=108088

or you can go here and ask Jonny why Aerocool did not make the gaming list

http://www.jonnyguru.net/forums/showthread.php?t=103

or why no Aerocool is recommended by him

http://www.jonnyguru.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1460

Looks like a great unit for $100 to me, but I did not make the list.

That was a great observation.

Same rating on the 12v rail as the 500W. Why would anyone buy the 620W?