I prescribe reading many PSU reviews. Being the vain type I'm linking mine.
We'll start with a very good unit, the
Rosewill TACHYON 1000w review
I recommend reading through the whole thing, failing that at least read the final section.
Then move on to a decent unit, the
Cooler Master Silent Pro Platinum 1000w review
Not as good, but still recommendable
if the price is good.
Finally, we move on to a unit that got the FAIL stamp, the
Thermaltake Smart-M 1000w
They all have good (looking) build quality, they all have excellent efficiency ratings (and efficiency), one of them has a few minor issues and one of them has a major issue. None of the issues can be seen any way but actually testing them.
As for reading PSU reviews, you'll generally learn more about PSUs from
bad reviews than good reviews.
In many cases certain brands are regarded as only making good PSUs. A couple shining examples of this are Antec and Seasonic.
Antec doesn't actually make the PSUs with their name on them, few companies do. Antec does however
care about the PSUs (now, anyway) and ensure that they all work. Are all Antec PSUs good to excellent? No way! Not long ago (a few years) they had entire lines that had capacitors with an average life expectancy of six months.
NOW their current lines are all good or better, but you can't trust name alone.
Our second example is Seasonic, they make their own units, you'd think that would guarantee that they made sure they were all at least good. You'd be wrong (Hi HEC/Compucase!). Some of their units are fantastic, most are at least good if not excellent to fantastic. A few are... less so. The last TFX unit of theirs I read a review on had some meh level capacitors in it. Not terrible caps, but not exactly great either. Does that make it a bad unit? Hard to say, you have to compare it to other TFX units, really.
That's why that list is specific units.
Now we get to the really fun part!
Thermaltake's entry level (but not crap) SMART series units. I first touched one at Funkykit:
http://www.funkykit.com/component/c...rmaltake-smart-430w-power-supply.html?start=5
Teapo output caps. Not bad, not fantastic, but generally good caps.
I then touched the same model unit here at OCF a few months later:
http://www.overclockers.com/thermaltake-smart-series-430w-review
Some Teapo, some Su'scon. Su'scon are a step below Teapos generally speaking.
Quality went downhill during that time. Same exact model. Still a functional PSU though.
In any case, the bottom line is, you know whether a unit is good or not by reading the reviews.
To qualify as a review the reviewer needs to have a real load tester, if you see a "review" where the reviewer uses PC hardware as a load, close it and move on.
If more than one good site has reviewed a given PSU, read all of them. That gives you a better idea on the PSU. Some that fail are isolated flukes, others less so.
EDIT:
Here's another good read. Thread through this one and keep track of what horrifies / angers OW:
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=324
If it causes anger in the reviewer, it's bad.
