Huntkey finally got something right...

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

So i was on hardwaresecrets right now and noticed this: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/artic...-Review/1362/1

When i saw the title i immediately though - ah, another explosion. Should be an entertaining read. Then when i clicked the page the "golden award" banner loaded. What the ... As opposed to jonnyguru, HWS starts the articles with the disassembly, which IMO is a really good idea. The soldering looked neat, the small heatsinks definitely hinted at high efficiency, and the parts were way overspec'd. Hmm.

So, i went to the end to find that not only did it deliver outstandingly low ripple and high efficiency, but they even managed to pull 400W out of it under the same very stable conditions, even though it is marketed as a 300W. But, an expensive 300W at that.

Next up, slapping a different label on it and calling it a 650W. Also those Fcon caps didn't sound all that good.

[mockingbird]

Re: Huntkey finally got something right...

You can get a 380w Seasonic S12-II for $60~ and still well stocked (Though I think they're out of production now though). Unlike the "SS" series Seasonics, which use garbage caps, the S12s all use United Chemicon...

$90 for a 300W.... It's steep.

[370forlife]

Re: Huntkey finally got something right...

Huntkey makes a few good ones:

http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/show...hlight=huntkey

(has an incredibly small transformer for a real 1200W)

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Huntkey finally got something right...

What caps are in a SS series? You made me curious. I have a SS-500HT in my main computer. And i've had it for almost 3 years IIRC, and bought used... Never had a problem, i didn't even bother to take apart and clean it.

[mockingbird]

Re: Huntkey finally got something right...

The secondary side filter capacitors were a disappointment. They turned out to be a combination of OST and Su'scon parts. Not what I like to see, I'm afraid.

Link

Not a standard ATX PSU, but just to give you an idea.

My EA-500D also has lousy caps... It's a well built PSU, and once I use it on something that actually takes more than 250W~ from it, I'll probably need to preemptively recap it.

If you don't have a mid to high end video card, I would just leave it as it is.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Huntkey finally got something right...

I have a card that was high end in its day, a Radeon HD3870. My system is also heavily overclocked and draws around 300W AFAIK. But, i bought this PSU from someone who ran a Q6600 @ 3.8GHz and a 9800GX2 on it... no problems. It's in its third year in my computer IIRC.

I'll take a look at it when i buy some new HDDs but so far so good. It also holds up nicely during brownouts.

[mockingbird]

Re: Huntkey finally got something right...

I'm still stuck with my Pentium D and an old GeForce 6600. In my gaming room I have an old 939 Athlon X2 and a 2900XT which still holds up reasonably well...

I might be getting a 1366 board soon. I'm going to have a heck of a time finding a cheap low-end 1366 CPU for it. The cheapest 1366 I can find is the dual-core Xeon, but they're relatively rare. The i7s still go for a fortune.

[Evil Lurker]

Re: Huntkey finally got something right...

I think I'm gonna hop on AMD's fusion platform. I don't game but I like streaming online content so a decent video card is a must... my old x1950pro just ain't cuttin the mustard anymore.

As far as I can tell its like buyin a propus quad core and getting a radeon 5570 free on die with all the 6000 series extensions. Prices are still a bit high but you get a lot of bang for your buck.

[mockingbird]

Re: Huntkey finally got something right...

Nonsense...

AMD's platform is old and antiquated. The new Ivy Bridge integrated video will be faster than Fusion IGP...

I usually support AMD, but their inability to:
1) Release decent drivers
2) Release DX 11 multithreaded drivers
3) Actually UPGRADE their southbridge
4) License SSE4 for their CPUs

makes them very uncompetitive with Intel ATM...

Remember, AMD's "new" southbridge is not new at all. The SB950 is basically an SB750 which is 5 years old. It doesn't support SSD nearly adequately, and the AHCI performance is significantly inferior than Intel's ICH10 / ICH11, not to mention not nearly as mature and consequently far less stable.

A Core i3 has been known to surpass a Phenom II X6 in certain benchmarks.

[370forlife]

Re: Huntkey finally got something right...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...o,2975-10.html

Yeah, it's a sandy bridge I3, but it was outperformed by the llano no problem in graphics, but you can see how the sacrificing of die space for graphics effects cpu performance, as the Phenom II X4 965 outperformed it (and the sandy bridge). Like the article said, Intel is currently in it's second generation of gpu's integrated into the cpu, this is AMD's first try and it pretty well outperforms it 2 fold. So either Ivy Bridge is going to be a big, hot platform in order to retain the cpu and increase gpu speed, or they are going to sacrifice some cpu performance for gpu performance.

[mockingbird]

Re: Huntkey finally got something right...

Even with a Sandy Bridge i3, the inferior graphics performance is vastly outweighed by the advantage of having a far more powerful processor in terms of newer FPU instruction sets, and like I mentioned, the far superior I/O subsystem.

Llano can't be justified when you can easily slip a really cheap low profile graphics card with the i3 and it will completely blow the Llano away...

Yes, judging by the rumors, Ivy Bridge GPU will be faster than Llano... Interesting speculation 370 on how they're going to accomplish it...

Not to mention those new Fusion 6755G "Crossfire" graphics subsystems in the higher end laptops. People don't realize that this is really a hybrid crossfire with a really low-end discrete GPU which often performs slower in hybrid crossfire mode, not to mention the glitches and buggy implementation.

I really like those nVidia Optimus GPUs and would recommend them over the Fusion laptops in a heartbeat.