Upgrade

[AOpen]

i posted a thread monday about how my lights started flashing and i thought the psu was going out, i had the crappiest brand L&C, so i decided i would just buy a new psu and not power up my computer untill it came in. Well today my psu ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817153023 ) came in along with my 44.00 cooler master case, the case was very sturdy, very pleased and the power supply is quiet and according to bios the rails are stable, and yes it was the psu that was making the blinking lights, but both were a very good upgrade, and i would recommend that psu to anyone who is looking for a cheap psu

 

[ckj]

You could do better than thermaltake, much better. And probably for the price as well, I think there are some sparkle psu's at that price.

 

[darksparkz]

Yeah, either some cheap Fortons or Sparkles are nicer.

 

[R4z0r4mu5 Pr|m3]

it's not like Thermaltakes are crap, they are solid PSUs, there are many better PSUs for the price but for the people that already have it, they are fine

 

[ckj]

Yes, as long as you're not running near or at full load, the thermaltake is fine.

 

[Know Nuttin]

The TR2 line is HEC made iirc, which is good quality. Better than the Sirtec's that were being made before. Not Fortron or OCZ quality but still very good.

 

[Oklahoma Wolf]

The TR2 line is HEC made iirc

Yep

Some newer ones are even Channel Well - I'm starting to wonder if the powers that be at Thermaltake have a big wheel of OEM's they spin whenever they have a new PSU to be built

 

[larva]

It's like selling to a school, whatever is cheapest goes. This just goes to show you Channel Well is not inherently expensive, something that allows you to guage the markup in something like an Antec. Not that I wouldn't pay it at times (I have a TPII-480 in my sig rig now), but I'm not going to ignore the financial operatives at work.

If one could find a way to purchase the CW stuff straight from CW and cut out the middleman prices would fall to Fortron levels, and allow equal value. Fortron sells you their best for their least, something that difficult to achieve if you split the profit. Take the TPII-480 and 550, fit a Yate Loon fan with a gasket on it, and sell it direct for the AX-500a's ~$80 shipped price and you've got an awesome product for the 12V-oriented loads that prevail these days. Something CW ought consider implementing if they really want to make money.

 

[Oklahoma Wolf]

If one could find a way to purchase the CW stuff straight from CW and cut out the middleman prices would fall to Fortron levels, and allow equal value.

Indeed... when I bought my Channel Well 420w it was top of the line for them - $105 Canadian. At that price it was pretty competitive with Fortron IIRC, compared to what Antec wanted for the pp412x version of it.

 

[Know Nuttin]

If one could find a way to purchase the CW stuff straight from CW and cut out the middleman prices would fall to Fortron levels, and allow equal value. Fortron sells you their best for their least, something that difficult to achieve if you split the profit. Take the TPII-480 and 550, fit a Yate Loon fan with a gasket on it, and sell it direct for the AX-500a's ~$80 shipped price and you've got an awesome product for the 12V-oriented loads that prevail these days. Something CW ought consider implementing if they really want to make money.

I remember going for a Channel Well when the Antec TruePower line came out. Was cheaper than the TruePower but from what I can recall, identical internally. Too bad I can't find Channel Well directly anymore.

Doesn't HEC also make the Orion HP585D? I'm not a huge fan of Orion PSU's, all the ones I've had experience with have failed miserably.

 

[Flip-Mode]

Actually I can get Channel Well in Israel and they are CHEAP, a CW KMG-4000SC 400W goes for 290NIS (63$) while a TT TR2 460W goes for 555NIS (120$).
I'm building my GF a new office app system and this seems a MUCH better buy they the 430W new HEC that I was going to buy.

 

[Oklahoma Wolf]

Orion is HEC - probably a more cost conscious line from them.

The only issues I still have with CWT are the continuing lousy caps they put in them - other than that I can't fault the design or the build quality of them. My 420w is a brick

 

[larva]

I'm not so sure the caps are the real problem. I tend to think it is a ventilation issue, perhaps exaserbated by the slightly smaller than standard cap barrel sizes CW favors. CW is really chincy with the fan speed because they want to publish low noise figures, but I'm not so sure that the caps don't boil far too often as a result. That is why I tend to somewhat unforgiving when they muff significant design details in the ventilation provision as they did with my TPII. They are on the razor's edge of running the fans too slowly anyway, so if you decrease the fan's effective efficiency by poor selection or mounting you set yourself up for boiled caps a year down the road.

That being said, after fitment of a Yate Loon fan from a ($40) Sparkle along with sealing its mounting, my TPII is great. It struggled a bit under the 5V load generated by my old FX5900, but after the switch to PCI Express and the resultant essentially purely 12V load, the supply is excellent. And ventilation is always much less of a concern when the supply isn't struggling to meet output demand. The ease with which the (optimized) TPII-480 drives my 4GHz prescott, OC'ed 7800GT, and 3 hard drives is a strong endorsement of the capacity and design excellence that are obvious from an inspection of the internals.

 

[Know Nuttin]

Very nice Larva.

I'm still curious to know how it would have fared with your new rig if you hadn't swapped the fans.

 

[larva]

How well the stock fan works is dependant primarily on the backpressure it faces in operation. And even in high-backpressure environments, it works at least acceptably if you seal the mounting surface of the fan. I think in general you must have more intake fan capacity than exhaust for the supply to ventilate postively as delivered. Sealing the fan mounting gap eliminates this requirement, and fitting of a proper (high backpressure) fan design truly fixes the situation and makes the supply capable of operating should you happen to install the case lid before you use your computer.

 

[3DFlyer]

After what I saw with TT PSU's, I won't be trusting them again. I had a 430. It ran burning hot, was unstable on the voltages, and was causing a loss of 300MHz on my OC.

It ran so hot, that i had to shut my system off when I wasn't at home, for fear it would catch on fire and take out my rig and my house. Shutting my system down is something I don't do. Repeated cycling causes damaged to transistors. I now have the unit tucked away deep in my closet. It won't even make a good doorstop...it's too light.

Unless one has a sytem that costs less than 200 dollars, and it's totally unclocked I would not get one of those things near a system, and I sure as heck wouldn't leave one running unattended with one.

I've since learned that TT protection circuitry rarely works, and the unit will generally take out hardware when it fails.

TT? Not around my system, and not plugged in in my house. No way. That's like spinning the wheel of death with a Deer, Codegen, or PowMax unit...not quite as bad, but pretty close.

 

[K15]

I don't hear Antec PSUs mentioned much around here. I'm using one, seems nice. I like the 120mm fan. Not sure what kind of power it does for OCing, but at the moment it seems fine.

 

[AOpen]

basically the case has sleeving which i really wanted, its quiet, and on newegg it has over 100 5 star customer reviews. the rails are dead on and im happy with it. You also have to consider im upgrading from L&C, with them any psu is going to look like it came from zeus.