Power Supplies

[Cprossu]

Re: Power Supplies

i will pick up a silverstone some time to check that out.

Regarding silverstone, make VERY SURE you don't get one of the silverstones with the modular cables-
they suck something horrible (at least mine did)

I dumped $179 on a 600watt silverstone which I had nothing but trouble with-
it was the one with the modular cables, and it seemed no matter how much tweaking to the molex's you did, you still ended up with shorts.
after getting the ATX connector functioning properly, my computer randomly crashed, and had horrible tolerances on both 12v rails, and the 5v rail.
The insides were sort of like seasonics, with one large cap at the center- I saw JEC caps inside of mine before I brought it back and damn near threw it at one of the folks in the return section of Fry's electronics... yes, it was very heavy!

ontop of that the molex's in the PSU are designed so badly that you can even flip the 12v and 5v rails to the drives and such without even noticing.

but the most annoying part of that power supply, not counting the system instability) was that whenever someone would breathe upon it, the modular cable to the hard drive would short out and all of a sudden...whrrrrrr rr r r (hard d rive spinning down) CRASH.

I am sure plenty of people had better luck, but I returned that puppy after struggling with it for a week and put a 535watt enermax in it's place.

so if you do silverstone, don't do modular.


Btw thanks for the power supply forums! you guys are great!

[willawake]

Re: Power Supplies

they suck something horrible

hey thanks for that info. certainly not the consumer experience i was hoping for.

[Newbie2]

Re: Power Supplies

Right now I'm mostly a part time church secretary and novel writer. I've been in electronics repair however since I was 14 - ran my own business for a while. Never was really successful at it though... too many people around here would rather throw stuff away than get it fixed

I track down the OEM's of these things mostly by searching the UL database at www.ul.com using the file number from a PSU label, but sometimes that number isn't there so I have to go by other identifying marks on the PCB or other components. Usually I can figure them out but sometimes there's nothing to go on.

My own favorite is Zippy, but I don't own one. There's pics of a few of them at the Terasan site. I get by with Fortron-Source these days.

Here's a review of one of the Silverstone/Etasis units I mentioned: http://www.overclockersonline.com/in...num=337&pnum=0

Looks to be better quality than the 330W unit I linked above. Three main filter caps on this one - never saw that before on a PC PSU. Since this is an active PFC unit, they too may be connected series - now I want one so I can dissect it

Maybe PeteS can shed some light on the issue - he seems better at the engineering side of it than I am

I agree with you Oklahoma Wolf. I really hate seeing repairable items being tossed out, especially motherboards that only have bad caps as the problem.

[Newbie2]

Re: Power Supplies

Thanks, after the week I had I needed that

Zippy is hard to find here too, but this new Silverstone is proving impossible. Nobody in Canada carries them that I know of. Too bad... I want one now

Zippy power supplies are hard to find here in Canada, but I know TigerDirect.ca (online computer store, has an outlet store in Markham, Ontario) sells SilverStone power supplies because their warehouse is in the United States, but only 4 kinds of SilverStone power supplies though.

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...1814&CatId=106

[Newbie2]

Re: Power Supplies

Regarding silverstone, make VERY SURE you don't get one of the silverstones with the modular cables-
they suck something horrible (at least mine did)

I dumped $179 on a 600watt silverstone which I had nothing but trouble with-
it was the one with the modular cables, and it seemed no matter how much tweaking to the molex's you did, you still ended up with shorts.
after getting the ATX connector functioning properly, my computer randomly crashed, and had horrible tolerances on both 12v rails, and the 5v rail.
The insides were sort of like seasonics, with one large cap at the center- I saw JEC caps inside of mine before I brought it back and damn near threw it at one of the folks in the return section of Fry's electronics... yes, it was very heavy!

ontop of that the molex's in the PSU are designed so badly that you can even flip the 12v and 5v rails to the drives and such without even noticing.

but the most annoying part of that power supply, not counting the system instability) was that whenever someone would breathe upon it, the modular cable to the hard drive would short out and all of a sudden...whrrrrrr rr r r (hard d rive spinning down) CRASH.

I am sure plenty of people had better luck, but I returned that puppy after struggling with it for a week and put a 535watt enermax in it's place.

so if you do silverstone, don't do modular.


Btw thanks for the power supply forums! you guys are great!

Enermax power supplies have PCE-TUR caps, a bad brand of caps, as you already know. You may have seen this, but Neo2_000 here a long time ago reported failed PCE-TUR caps, but provided no pictures. Here is the link to that thread: https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=387

[Oklahoma Wolf]

Re: Power Supplies

Zippy power supplies are hard to find here in Canada, but I know TigerDirect.ca (online computer store, has an outlet store in Markham, Ontario) sells SilverStone power supplies because their warehouse is in the United States, but only 4 kinds of SilverStone power supplies though.

I emailed Canada Computers looking for the 560W earlier today - still waiting on a response. They have about the best selection of the Silverstone units in Canada. Man I want one of these 560's now...

Zippy is easiest to find in Canada direct from Zippy Canada, but the prices are still up there. IIRC he quoted me $320 Cdn. for the 700W PSL-6701P. Not that I need that kind of power.