Anything wrong with $30 AMD Certfied PSU's?

Looks can be deceiving. QTec power supplies I've come across- they are finished in an anodised gold finish, have a proper fan grill, a huge fan for 'better' cooling and a 'proper' iron cored transformer for the standby PSU. Unfortunately they're utter crap. I've had cheapo PSUs of ostensibly poor external construction last years, and ones that look solid fail in no time. I don't trust ones with cheap, pressed aluminium heatsinks, I much prefer proper bulky heatsinks with proper cooling fins. That's my benchmark and it seems to work pretty well. Some PSUs have really ropey quality capacitors as well, and others seem to go for far too small uF ratings.

The most worrying thing IMO is PSUs which don't 'fail safe'. I can forgive a short lifespan as long as it doesn't take out the rest of my PC. I even had one PC which had one of the disc connectors with the 12v/5v pins reversed, which destroyed a hard drive. I check them now!

Dave

On Thu, 8 Jun 2006 14:18:40 -0400, "Michael Kennedy" put finger to keyboard and composed:

The power consumption, measured at the mains input, of a typical PC will probably not exceed 150W, even at full CPU load. I certainly don't see more than that from my Athlon XP 2500+.

Having said that, I have a fake 400W PSU that is really only capable of 175W at best, according to the specs of the diodes on the secondary side.

- Franc Zabkar

--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

I buy them, too Franc. Doesn't matter. They cost me $10 and last 4-5 years. They fail gracefully and I come out a bit ahead over a $40 PSU that fails in the same amount of time.

You won't be saying that the first time the PS fails ungracefully and wipes out your entire system.

It might happen less than once in thirty power supplies, but it's not a risk I'd take. (While underemployed in '02, I worked at a small computer shop and have seen systems where nearly everything got nailed. Worst cases involved loss of the hard drive as well)

A quality PS still costs

My first power supply failure happened like that. I guess it was in

1993. Took the motherboard and the hard drive so I know what you mean. Still, I do what I do for a reason. I have spent way too much and sen bad things happen, too. Price is not the telling factor.

out

When you're talking about $10 power supplies, I assume you talking about the ones that come free with a $25 case and weigh about 1/5th as much as a quality supply. I wouldn't use one of those crap supplies if you paid me $200.

out

No, no. I know what you mean, though. The ones I buy are replacements for those.

On Sun, 11 Jun 2006 00:11:30 GMT, Vey put finger to keyboard and composed:

I replaced the fake PSU with an Antec 350W unit, not because the original failed, but because the voltage readings were a bit erratic. There were no system instability issues. I only became aware that the PSU was fake when my curiosity got the better of me and I peeked inside. Otherwise I have no problem with cheap PSUs if they are correctly rated. IME, that old adage, "you get what you pay for", hasn't held true for quite a while now.

- Franc Zabkar

--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

AMD certification is such a lax standard it's almost worthless.

That rule is worthless if the supply is marketed for bling-bling appeal at all, as most in the retail market are, and I believe two of the best manufacturers, Delta and Zippy, don't use wire grills.

A better indicator of quality is how the circuit board is attached to the case. The cheapest supplies have ramps stamped on bottom, as shown in the supply on the right, while better ones, like the one on the left, have studs pressed into the case (some quality supplies instead have slotted ramps stamped into the sides where the circuit board slides in):

But realizethis is only a slightly more reliable indicator of quality than AMD certification.

It's not a fluke because few computers consume over 100-200W, and even a Geo Metro is good enough for short trips to the market.

Ask yourself: why would manufacturers of high quality power supplies sold primarily to the strictest customers, the OEMs, even bother with better build and internal design and if those factors were irrelevant?

out

There's no reason to buy crap when high-quality Fortron-Source/Sparkle/Hi-Q/PowerQ costs only slightly more or when Antecs are frequently on sale with big rebates, such as the Fry's 350W SmartPower + case deal for $25 last Thursday. A month earlier almost the same thing was $15, or you could get a 500W SmartPower alone for that.