Tom's Hardware Compares Power Supplies

Some guy wrote in to say "Tom's Hardware Guide takes a hard look at power supplies to find out if we are getting what we paid for. The results of the testing were very surprising." Very useful to anyone who has built their own machine from scratch or burned out a cheap power supply.

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dead toms.

[lamp77]

Wow, we killed tomshardware, maybe his power supply went!

Marketing lessons from audio amps?

[Rob Parkhill]

It sounds as if power supply makers are taking a marketing lesson from audio amplifier companies... bigger is better, and no-one ever actually verifies those numbers.

My favorite was a $25 amp car audio amp I bought about 10 years ago. I kid you not, this thing is about 2x the size of a deck of cards, and is rated at 500W per channel. Ha ha ha ha! No, I didn't buy it for it's amazing power, I bought it because it was $25 and I needed a cheap amp for some tinkering!

Re:sparkle power supplies

[Anonymous Coward]

That's MR. Sparkle to you. He's disrespectful to dirt! Can you see I am serious?

Power error?

[mikers]

Inadequate and Deceptive Product Labeling:
Comparison of 21 Power Supplies

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Full Load and Overload - Power Supply Units Pushed to the Limits

Hehe...

Re:Fireworks

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you're thinking novice... But he's a software engineer


You learned the wrong lesson.

Lesson to be learned:
Never, Never, Never let a software engineer touch the hardware.

Re:sparkle power supplies

[Stephen Maturin]

Whatever you say, fishbulb....

Re:Tom's Recommended/NOT-Recommended Power Supplie

[MagPulse]

Thanks Tom! To show my appreciation, I'll post your copyrighted work on Slashdot so people don't give you any page views.

Copyright of all documents and scripts belonging to this site by Tom's Guides Publishing LLC 1996 - 2002. Most of the information contained on this site is copyrighted material. It is illegal to copy or redistribute this information in any way without the expressed written consent of Tom's Guides Publishing. This site is NOT responsible for any damage that the information on this site may cause to your system.

Re:Fireworks

[ngoy]

Since I am from the old school of computing technology (where off is actually off, none of this soft-on/off crap) it surprised me when I was putting in some dimms into a friend's HP that the RAM slots were powered for some reason (no, it was not in sleep mode). I pushed on the dimm and suddenly saw a bright point of light and little puff of smoke. I yanked the dimm out, only to find that one of the gold traces on the dim got so hot it melted the epoxy (or whatever holds it onto the pcb) that held it on and soldered itself to the dimm slot on the pc. So I ended up using a twice as large dimm in the other slot.

Moral of the story is unplug the power cable (we all do that don't we). Nothing gets your heart going like electricity! Like the time I was putting in a gable fan in my attic and cut a live wire with my T-Cutter's. THAT was a bigger spark, and burnt a nice big hole in the cutters. At least I got to exchange them at Home Depot

ngoy
(I'm still alive! Darwin ain't got nothin' on me!)

I think....

[crumbz]

....Tom's Hardware is on fire...slashdotted already :)

Re:Fireworks

[ewhac]

Lesson to be learned:
Never, Never, Never let a software engineer touch the hardware.

The software guys at NTG -- myself included -- had this habit of wandering into the hardware lab and taking up space just to kill time and/or clear their thoughts, sometimes idly frobbing tools. Drove the HW guys mad.

Actual overheard statement, delivered to wandering SW guy from head HW lab tech in police officer-voice: "DROP THE SCREWDRIVER! PUT DOWN THE SCREWDRIVER AND WALK AWAY!"

Schwab

Re:Tom's Recommended/NOT-Recommended Power Supplie

[Tackhead]

> Since they're already quite sufficiently Slashdotted, I'd say we've given them more than enough page views.

And besides,

maybe if

Tom put more than

two or three lines

of text

on each page

and 25K of

banner ad HTML

his server

wouldn't get

slashdotted

so easily.

Re:Fireworks

[Subcarrier]

But he's a software engineer, and has worked with a computer since the transitor moving days.

Well, that explains it. Some of the dust bunnies must've been shaken loose from his pullover.

And I bet you forgot to warn him that these days you're not supposed to pre-warm the vacuum tubes with a cigarette lighter, before cranking the big power lever.

Re:ATX + AT power supply

[Hydro-X]

Somehow I can't be tempted to follow instructions on modifying electrical components with the potency to electrocute me using instructions that refer to me as "u".

Re:Fireworks

[dildatron]

You are correct. I like to either lick the chassis and keep my tongue touching, or keep my nipple pressed against the chassis while I am installing/removing cards.

Re:Fireworks

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats nothing. One time I was hanging a shelf and had to drill a pilot hole for the bracket. Unfortunatly, I had forgotten that the breaker box was on the other side of the wall in the storage closet. Long story short I melted the the tip off a hardened drill bit and knocked out the power to my entire apartment complex.

Re: Sparkle Power Supplies

[person-0.9a]

Kind of a bummer name they picked. The top three things things I do not want my Power Supply to do:

- Flame
- Smoke
- Sparkle

earthing cables get you women

[inputsprocket]

I have an earthing cable that attaches to my wrist and plugs into the electrical socket....

live and neutral are of course plastic, but the earth is a regular pin

That sinlge earthing cable landed me my wife, since she thought I was such a crazy ass to wire myself to the electrics to fix her computer.

Lesson be learned - save hardware, get a woman.