What's the worst brand of PSU?

[c_hegge]

There seem to be a few PSUs that are dreaded among the members of these forums. Deer, Sun Pro, the Worstecs with the killer 5vsb, Fuhjyyu'd antecs (before a re-cap), Powmax, etc. Which one do you think is the worst? I'd have to say the Fuhjyyu'd CWT made Antecs as I've seen more of them take boards out than any other brand

[toastygoodness]

Re: What's the worst brand of PSU?

i'm pretty sure nothing gets worse than Deer and its brethren

[ratdude747]

Re: What's the worst brand of PSU?

sun pro. some sun pro units had only 1/2 a pcb, and an echo star made by sun pro had weights inside to make it seem more like good quality (it had a half board.

a-power, leadman, and powmax are tied for a close second as they at least use a full or near full circuit board in all units,

all units up to here are non-fixable junk. past here is repair hope.

deer 3rd. at least deer can be recapped/ fixed 1/2 the time.

the rest are great after a recap/ minor solder mods.

[370forlife]

Re: What's the worst brand of PSU?

I said powmax. Deer/solytech/L&C has stepped up their game and actually make good units with teapo caps now. Leadman/powmax is still down there.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/666

This unit could deliver its labeled 600 W at 52º C, which is wonderful, plus we could pull up to 746 W from it, and it survived!

The article number is 666!

[cheese007]

Re: What's the worst brand of PSU?

Anyone ever seen a Linkworld psu?
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php...tory3&reid=123
Yeah.

[toastygoodness]

Re: What's the worst brand of PSU?

ahh i forgot about leadman....

[everell]

Re: What's the worst brand of PSU?

For Antec and Bestec, if you recap AND modify the 5vsb circuit with a pwm chip, they are great power supplies.

I vote for Powmax as worst - I don't think there is much you can do to improve it ... short of a sledge hammer!

[kc8adu]

Re: What's the worst brand of PSU?

worst i have seen was an okia with the half board.
looked like a 150w itx power supply guts.rated at 500w.
gutless as it gets.

[momaka]

Re: What's the worst brand of PSU?

Would have said PowMax, but some of the older ones are actually not that bad. The newer ones are crap, though. But I doubt anyone will beat Sun Pro.
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...2&postcount=36
I have a 380 watt Raidmax PSU made by Sun Pro and it's very similar to the one in the above link. Same PCB burn, too. Obviously they weren't designed properly. 1mm thick heatsinks don't help much either. Not to mention that PCB spacing on the primary side is non-existent between traces.

I must say, however, that I do believe that Sun Pro and PowMax are related. Some of their designs are way too similar, not to mention the identical "7700" transformer markings on certain models.

[Topcat]

Re: What's the worst brand of PSU?

ahh i forgot about leadman....

Leadman and powmax are one in the same. seen many of them incinerate themselves. also seen way too many bestecs roast boards. Bestec would get my vote as the worst. As crappy as deer, powmax, and the others may be, I've never seen any of those cook motherboards as frequently as bestec.

[370forlife]

Re: What's the worst brand of PSU?

I'm actually buying a solytech sl-9600 from a guy who gets them from the 80plus organization. It's solytech's most efficient model and is 80plus silver certified. Even reaches 89% efficiency at 50% load, 87% at full (600W)

Voltage regulation from the 80plus's report is even very good, 5v and 3.3v, even -12v don't budge and the 12v stays at 12.3 until full load where it is 12.2.

[washu]

Re: What's the worst brand of PSU?

I'm torn between Bestec or pre-recap Antecs.

I've seen lots of Bestecs kill MBs but usually that's all they kill. The CPU and other parts usually survive.

Not so when Antecs kill. Despite my warnings, my co-worker was building a new PC and fried the following with his SP-500 that he insisted on keeping: i7 860, MB, RAM, 3 HDs, and an Nvidia 7900. The only part that survived was his DVD drive. The CPU then killed 5 more MBs at the shop.

[larrymoencurly]

Re: What's the worst brand of PSU?

sun pro. some sun pro units had only 1/2 a pcb, and an echo star made by sun pro had weights inside to make it seem more like good quality (it had a half board).

Wow. I have some Logitech mice with weights inside them, but they're to make the mouse movement feel better.

[ratdude747]

Re: What's the worst brand of PSU?

Wow. I have some Logitech mice with weights inside them, but they're to make the mouse movement feel better.

see: https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=6341

[acstech]

Re: What's the worst brand of PSU?

Leadman and powmax are one in the same. seen many of them incinerate themselves. also seen way too many bestecs roast boards. Bestec would get my vote as the worst. As crappy as deer, powmax, and the others may be, I've never seen any of those cook motherboards as frequently as bestec.

Hey, somebody actually agrees with me!

Bestec =

[stj]

Re: What's the worst brand of PSU?

the worst are Antec - no contest.

the reason is simple,
a 15€ shit supply looks like shit, and feels like shit.

Antec are different, they feel good, look good, are expensive and marketed as high-end.
this fools people into trusting them.

i'v even seen people "upgrade" FSP stuff with them!

[370forlife]

Re: What's the worst brand of PSU?

Well, new antec's are delta and seasonic, both are a upgrade from FSP (for the most part,) but antec has a nasty habit of slowly decreasing the quality of caps in their units.

[seanc]

Re: What's the worst brand of PSU?

Back in 2007 I had 4 Antec EarthWatts 380w in a batch of PCs I was building either not work or blow up.
I had one of the few working PSUs of that batch fail a couple of weeks ago and opened it up, it looks pretty anemic, compared to what I was expecting and it's full of OST caps, which I need to remove, test and possibly replace. All visibly fine.

I've not had any fail since that bad run so I'm guessing they changed OEM or sorted their previous issue out. If one of the more recent PSUs fails, I'll update you.

[goodpsusearch]

Re: What's the worst brand of PSU?

I voted antec.

My first 2 psus were Antec true power 380W and Linkworld LPQ300W .

The difference is obvious:

The linkworld and every other same category psu doesn't cost more than 15 euros (usually comes free with pc case) and you always know it is not a quality supply.

On the other hand, antec costed me 107euros back then in 2003, and I bought it concerned about my hardware's safety and chose antec after having read reviews all over the internet (tomshardwre etc) that recommended it.

It died 2 years later and so did a hard driver and an ati all in wonder 9700pro. It was sent back through rma and I recieved a true power version 2.0 psu that had also Fuhjyyu caps that also bulged and maybe killed my all in wonder 9800 at August 2009 (can't be sure about that thought).

The funniest thing is that the cheap linkworld still works, has no bulging caps and is powering a pentium 3 pc.

[kaniki]

Re: What's the worst brand of PSU?

The funniest thing is that the cheap linkworld still works, has no bulging caps and is powering a pentium 3 pc.

I have a hercules 400 or 450 watt power supply in a computer that i built for my mom about 5 years ago. That was a cheap power supply too and still going strong.. Just checked voltages (all fine) and even opened and all caps looked fine (did not check with meter, just eyed). not too bad for a cheapie.. on a bad note, it is a albatron (if i remember right) board and guess what, 3 3300uf caps, all bad and leaking, and 5 6.3v 1000uf (4 are starting to round out) caps. got some samxon for the 3300's and ruby's but 10v for the others on the way. this is what i got for upgrading her computer.. she had a 5200 vid card and upgraded it too a 6600 overclocked series.

but back to the power supplies, my question is, how has the hercules power supplies been? have they been known to blow after so many years? The only problem i have found with mine so far is I had to grease the fan once (got it before it stopped, but was getting noisy).