Tom's Hardware Compares Power Supplies 317
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.
sparkle power supplies (Score:5, Informative)
i buy them at newegg [newegg.com]. highly recommended.
Good and QUIET! (Score:5, Informative)
I highly recomend checking these folks out. [quietpc.com]
Useful Related Link... (Score:5, Informative)
Antec Power Supply (Score:5, Informative)
On the plus side, my system is more stable, runs cooler, and is quieter than it was before. I greatly favor my premium power supply over the one that came with my case, and I strongly recommend anyone with a downed PSU to pay the extra dollar.
Re:sparkle power supplies (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, they're cheap, BUT you'd better buy two for every machine you use them in (one for backup) just to save you the trip to your local Fry's (or whatever your local computer hardware reseller is) for a replacement WHEN it fails.
And to top it all off, most Chinese power supply companies (like Sparkle) feel that 10-20% failure rates are ACCEPTABLE! This is in an industry where a 1% failure rate usually sends the engineers back to the drawing boards. Sparkle Power is a huge joke in our industry...
Re:sparkle power supplies (Score:2, Informative)
often overlooked... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Non-custom built power supplies poor? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Fireworks (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Tom's Recommended/NOT-Recommended Power Supplie (Score:2, Informative)
I don't know if this is the case with these power supplies or not, but some transformers are loaded to go "bang!" when they exceed tolerances so that they don't melt and fuse shut and start a fire.
Re:No PC Power and Cooling? (Score:2, Informative)
The most useful part of the Tom's Hardware writeup is the breakdown of estimated power consumption for a "high end" machine. Based on that, I figure the 450W part I have is just a bit over the necessary capacity. Maybe 15% or so, assuming the rating is accurate.
Anyhow, like you, I was disappointed to see Tom skip PCP&C in a rare PSU test. Sometimes I wonder a lot about Tom's. The AMD bias is obvious to me. OTOH, it's possible PCP&C wouldn't play ball and submit units for testing. Not unheard of. It's an American company, possibly with enough lawyers employed to govern a State.
Re:No PC Power and Cooling? (Score:2, Informative)
I was wary of even using it in the first place, and there're two things I didn't like. There was no switch, and there was no vent on the bottom. I know a switch isn't technically necessary, but I really like the idea of switching off my PSU and leaving it plugged in while I tinker (grounding...). And the vent is kind of important, since the proc sits right under it...
And yes, I took all due precaution, and no, there is no obvious indicator that it is for a Dell (which are wired differently). Try a Google groups search for more experiences. No link, no time. Sorry.
Re:Antec Power Supply (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, I was curious, if you're using a lot of Antec supplies could you tell me what the practical difference, if any, is between Antec's True power supply line and their Sl line? Is it just that the tolerances on the voltages are a little tighter?
Re:Fireworks (Score:5, Informative)
Luckly my surprise with the new ATX stuff wasn't as bad, I just had a machine power up when inserting a video card. No damage done.
To keep this a bit more on topic too, most good power supplies have a hard switch (as opposed to the soft one that the ATX power button triggers) on the back that will keep all current out of the motherboard.
Re:Antec Power Supply (Score:3, Informative)
The TruePower series also have "bling-bling gold grills" as my co-worker put it.
Re:sparkle power supplies (Score:4, Informative)
+5, Informative?!?! (Mod the parent DOWN!) (Score:3, Informative)
That's very informative information. I always wanted to know that you were looking for a solid Power Supply review.
Geez, that's incredibly dishonest and disrespectful thing to do. Sure, you made sure that we knew it was from the article, but did you ever notice the copyright disclaimer at the bottom of their pages? They aren't making money if we read the article from another source.
I can almost understand this when a site is slashdotted, but that rarely happens to THG.
Any person that read the parent post and decided not to go to Tom's Hardware web site as a result, please do so anyways. They're surviving on advertising revenue.
More information from all manufacturers (Score:5, Informative)
I'm currently planning my second own-built PC, and I must echo the article's request for more (precise) electrical information from manufacturers. It is outrageous that the peak current at 12V drawn by a HDD, or the maximum current at 12V provided by a PSU, is missing from documents that call themselves 'technical specifications'.
This information is vital: it only takes a high-end PC with 3 modern HDDs (what you might use for RAID or for other multi-disk performance tricks [tldp.org] to overload a 400W PSU. Not because it draws 400W during normal operation, but because on startup the disks draw too much current at 12V.
Re:sparkle power supplies (Score:4, Informative)
We briefly switched to Deer, mostly because we got a really good deal on some cheap generic cases that came with the Deer supplies. No kidding the failure rate was over ten percent, but we only sold about 120 of these, so it's maybe not a great sample. But friends at another, larger store across town said that at least half of the supplies in the first batch of cases they ordered died within four months. Needless to say that was also the last batch of those cases.
Another thing - one customer who lived in an upstairs apartment in an older house had problems from day one - crashes, freezes, you name it. Every time he brought it in for service, though, it worked great. Right away we suspected PSU, and so we swapped in a Sparkle on his second visit - I talked to him a couple of months later and he hadn't had a single problem since. Similar things happened to a lot of rural users as well.
Why trust Sparkle? If I remember correctly, they make power supplies that are used in hospital equipment such as Dialysis machines and "Iron Lungs." These, obviously, have to be reliable, so the company definitely has the know-how, even though the PC PSU's are undoubtedly held to lower standards. They aren't cheap, but they aren't the most expensive on the market, either.
In the end, we settled on Antec equipment, not for any problems with Sparkle, but because it was difficult to get a decent case sans-PSU to put the Sparkle's into. We've yet to see one of these come back dead, either - since we started using them, we've sold over three hundred. That's a pretty good record for both companies, if you ask me.
EMI is a problem too (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Tomshardware (Score:2, Informative)
While I generally think that Tom's is biased in some respects, this example isn't the best one. (Not that I'm trying to create havoc or anything, or disagree totally with the Anonymous Coward's opinion, I'll just present my own opinion.) Realistically, most people still use a floppy drive. Although you can burn a bootable CD, CD's are still rather impractical for transferring small files to another computer. You say, why not transfer it over the network, well, if you're trying to get the newest NIC drivers to a computer that you just put the NIC into, then well you have a problem.
Next problem, the reason that 2 power connecters was suggested, was for the Radeon 9700. If you take a look at the card, you'll see that it requires an external power source, as the AGP bus isn't quite powerful enough to give it ample power. This external power connector is a Floppy Power connector. You'll probably start seeing more graphics cards like this in the coming years, unless they drastically increase the voltage supplied to the AGP slot.
Re:Marketing lessons from audio amps? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:PS Diagonistics? (Score:4, Informative)
My PSU is currently outputting 1.71 V to Core 0, 2.46 V to Core 1, 3.28 V to +3.3 V,
I can tell this all either in my BIOs or with some software I have called Motherboard Monitor or MBM for short.
Tim
Re:Fireworks (Score:2, Informative)
Then I dropped a screw onto the motherboard and the computer came to life! Scared the hell out of me I tell ya.
Rather than reaching for the screw and causing a short-circuit or fire destroying my brand new mb, i unplugged the machine and thanked God that my system was fine afterwards. whew...
I guess that experience is closest to working on a dead person in a morgue and have them move/come to life. hehe...
Re:Tomshardware (Score:3, Informative)
For instance, the head unit for my Creative SBLive 5.1 Platinum and various casemod toys like temperature monitors, fan speed indicators, etc.
eMachines Power Supplies... (Score:3, Informative)
EMachines are not necessarily bad machines. They just have cheap-ass power supplies and also cheap-ass hard drives. Replacing both when the machine is brand-new is a must if you want one to last for more than a few months.
Re:Weight indicative of power output? (Score:2, Informative)
Very simple. A larger transformer can handle more current.
A large heatsink can mean ONLY ONE THING: the powersupply needs to dissappate large amounts of power lost to inefficiency. But this can have two causes - either the PS is efficient, but truely capable of high power, or the PS is inefficient, and they're trying to palm it off to you.
Radeon 9700 (Score:4, Informative)
big note: the fsp power supplies ARE SPARKLE (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?submi
click 'see picture' on the 300w/$27 unit and you'll see the EXACT SAME model number as the winner.
source: reparations on the storagereview.com forums
Re:How About Using LESS POWER? (Score:2, Informative)
Remember, you have the equivalent of a several Cray supercomputers circa 1972 parked on your desk. A single Cray supercomputer of that vintage drew enough current that they had to use cryogenic cooling. Not so bad in that context, huh?
You want a system that draws less power? Ditch GUI's, stick to vi and precompiled kernels, and run it on an older system.
THE WINNER ACTUALLY IS A SPARKLE POWER SUPPLY (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?submi
click 'see picture' on the 300w/$27 unit and you'll see the EXACT SAME model number as the winner.
Dont forget to buy a quality UPS (Score:5, Informative)
If you have power that sags or has other problems, even a high quality power supply is not going to save you.
I still can't believe there was ever a time when I didn't use a UPS at home. You really will add time to the life of your computer with a good UPS. Your PC will still become outdated, but at least it will be less likely to fail.
Re:Fireworks (Score:2, Informative)
Most folks don't use ground straps, and hence may carry a potential with respect to devices they are handling. You need not see, or feel an arc for to destroy a component!
A good supply should have a rocker switch in the back that cuts the power, but leaves earth ground intact.
This way you can power off the system (for real), and it will remain grounded. Now all you need do is keep a hand on the case at all times.
--
Matt
Re:don't you think? (Score:3, Informative)
Well, unfortunately I can't find the original thread on arstechnica (their archive search is broken). However, here's basically what happened:
Back in September, THG posted this article [tomshardware.com] with the title "Hot Contraband: P4 With 3.6 GHz" and the description "For this exclusive report, THG tested CPUs of the future, bringing you benchmarks for P4s in the 3.6 GHz, 3.33 GHz and 3.06 GHz variations."
In my mind, at least, this text implies that they managed to snag some unreleased P4 chips from Intel by one way or another and benchmarked them.
However, people on several websites noticed that the shots of the BIOS screen and the photo of the chip in question looked suspicious. They were actually from much slower chips, but with the numbers arranged so that they appeared to be from 3GHz+ CPUs. The shot of the CPU on the first page, for example, that has "PC3.3G0K" in the serial number was analyzed to show that the 3s were identical, and therefore at least one of them was copied over the original number in Photoshop.
Also, suspiciously, there was no testing of the hyperthreading that will be present in released P4s that are that fast.
Eventually, THG posted an acknowledgment of the issue [tomshardware.com], but it seems kind of hollow. For one thing, the shots they show of their super-unlocked P4 are not the same chip as on the first page. For another, they admit they're using current P4 technology. So basically what the article is about is not "Here is what the 3.6GHz P4s will be like," but "Here is what *today's* P4s are like if they are overclocked to 3.6GHz." None of the benchmarks apply to the real world unless you are going to use a liquid nitrogen (or however they managed such high clockspeeds) cooling system on a current P4 instead of waiting for the real 3.6GHz models with hyperthreading.
They *could* have been honest about it and called the article "THG overclocks a P4 to 3.6GHz!" like they've done in the past, but apparently that wasn't sensationalistic enough for them. If that weren't bad enough, they waited until a ton of people called them on their deception to admit what they'd done.
Ironically, this happened only a few weeks after Tom himself wrote an editorial about some unethical former writers for his site.
Re:PSU Fans versus CPU Fans (Score:2, Informative)
Interesting miss (Score:2, Informative)
Check http://www.elanvital.com.tw/
Anyone knowing it would understand why I am surprised its not on test.
Rule of thumb: they lie by a factor of two! (Score:1, Informative)
This ratings-race makes it difficult to sell good quality power supplies. If they give it an honest rating, they can't compete with the $19.95 junkers that claim to have better performance. This article is a breath of fresh air, though I suspect it's not going to get the bean-counters attention, and we'll still be forced to accept power supplies from the sleaz..er, lowest bidder.
If the power supply wasn't made in the computer maker's own factory, then buyer beware! That is evidence it's cost (i.e. quality) cutting time in the accounting department.