- Joined
- Aug 30, 2004
- Location
- Santa Barbara, CA
Mate, I will not place OCZ and FSP on my list of best of the best PSU's. There are several other contenders for the top spots. There are units like the Silverstone Zeus, PCP&C Turbocool, Supermicro-Ablecom, Zippy/Emacs.
You might want to add Lite-ON to your OEM list.
Here is a little something I wrote up regarding PSU's:-
You might want to add Lite-ON to your OEM list.
Here is a little something I wrote up regarding PSU's:-
Super Nade said:After seeing many people asking for opinions on PSU's I've decided to write up a list of units I would feel comfortable using. I'll keep this terse and short, so if you have any questions, please feel free to ask.
I did a lot of research about this, so I'd like to share my experience with you guys. I learnt a lot from Okhlahoma Wolf about PSU's so its best if I start off with what is on his list. My Edits are in Red.
- Okhlahoma Wolf's List of recommended OEM's in order of reliability
I would characterize a poor design as follows (or things one should look for, in no particular order):-
- Zippy (Superb regulation, good efficiency and exceptional built quality!)
- Etasis (Silverstone fanless, ST56ZF, ST75ZF, ST85ZF)
- Win-Tact (PC P&C Turbocool)
- Lite-On (Supermicro/Ablecom) This is my current unit. You can find a small review of it HERE (link).
- Delta (some Chieftec units)
- Seasonic (PC P&C Silencer, Corsair, Antec Neo HE).[ The silencer series brings PCP&C's superb QC at a budget price, to the table. The customer service makes it well worth the price! Starts at $140]
- AcBel Polytech (some Coolermaster)
- Enhance (Akasa, Silverstone except fanless, ST56ZF, ST75ZF, ST85ZF)
- Seventeam (some Thermaltake and MGE units)
- Jou Jye (AMS)
- Wintech (Ultra except X-Connect)
- Andyson (Hiper, AC Ryan, Aerocool - these get overrated sometimes)
- Topower (Tagan, BeQuiet, Mushkin, Epower, A+GBP) [The Mushkin 550W is just crap.]
- Heroichi/HEC/Compucase (some Thermaltake)
- CWT (Antec except Neo HE)
- Enermax
- Superflower/TTGI
- Inwin/Powerman
These are the points I think are pertinent.
- Quality of Caps. Cheap caps imply shorter life span. Higher the ESR, more likely the impact on regulation.
- Size of the Caps. Most complaints with regulation and ripple are due to undersized primary or secondary caps.
- Insufficient cooling. This is a biggie. You would want to keep the unit cool for obvious reasons (i.e keep components within their working temps).
- Poor quality Voltage regulators. Although this issue is almost a non-issue these days, you still find the occasional burn out.
- Poor quality inductive elements i.e chokes and transformers. Imporoper winding or using smaller guage wires as the winding. Rare.
- Poor soldering. This is very very common.
- Bad circuit design. Really, there is not much you can do here, unless you are willing to do a complete rebuild.
- Poor PCB's being used as the logic board. This is not critical, but worth a mention.
- Under sized rectifier diodes. I don't understand why didoes are still being used instead of composite bridge rectifiers. Diodes also need to be cooled.
Points to note before you buy a PSU:
- Figure out what you intend to power. This is very important if you are on a tight budget.
- Do NOT skimp on quality. Poor PSU's would just hose your entire rig.
- Look for a beefy single 12V rail (> 30 A) if you plan on running SLI or CF
- Try to identify the OEM of the unit. You cannot go wrong if you pick a good OEM.
S-N