What brand of Power Supply is the best?

[supersabre]

In your opinion,what brand of power supply is the best?

[Per Hansson]

Re: What brand of Power Supply is the best?

Zippy
PC Power & Cooling
Seasonic

In that order...

[tiresias]

Re: What brand of Power Supply is the best?

In your opinion,what brand of power supply is the best?

Hi Supersabre,

It's a simple question with no simple answer, I'm afraid! No different to "Which is the best brand of car?", or "Which ethnicity are the most beautiful women?" - it's an entirely (check PS) subjective matter.

In my opinion, however, there are a few points that are worth keeping in mind:

1. The brand that actually makes the PSU is generally what counts as far as quality is concerned, not the brand that markets it.

2. A list of the very best brands of PSU-manufacturers would likely include (just a few that come to mind):

Etasis
Delta
Liteon
Enhance
Zippy
3Y

One would also want to mention some often more economical, but also generally very good brands:

Fortron/Source
Seasonic
Channel Well
Enermax
Topower
Seventeam

...

PS. Subjective in the sense that opinions differ, and that many brands are difficult to rate as 'better' than another - there is, on the other hand, certainly a huge gulf in quality and capability separating the best from the worst PSUs...

[Rainbow]

Re: What brand of Power Supply is the best?

Macron Power also appear to be good, they're often sold as DTK and I've also seen one with Frontier label (although many other Frontier PSUs are crap).

[willawake]

Re: What brand of Power Supply is the best?

i have a macron power, looks ok but full of pce-tur

i vote seasonic, fortron, tagan

[Rainbow]

Re: What brand of Power Supply is the best?

PCE-TUR in Macron, Fuhjyyu in Fortron - don't know which is better
I've heard that there are some "compatibility" problems with some new Seasonic PSUs and some boards.

[willawake]

Re: What brand of Power Supply is the best?

i did not see fuhjyyu in recent fortron psus here. i am waiting for the stock filled with ost to hit us. i still think it is a good solution whatever you need. i keep recommending bluestorm because the price is ok and the bling pleases people.

I've heard that there are some "compatibility" problems with some new Seasonic PSUs and some boards.

what is that? is that a dual rail thing causing problems? manufacturers really need to pump up the amps on those rails. forget about total wattage but give 30 amps on both 12v

[Oklahoma Wolf]

Re: What brand of Power Supply is the best?

My votes are for the following brands:

Zippy/Emacs
Etasis
Lite-On
Delta
Win-Tact (makes PC Power and Cooling's high end units, seems to use lots of Teapo caps)
Fortron-Source
Seasonic
Enhance

My votes for good economical units include Channel Well, Topower, Enermax, and Seventeam. Don't really care for Macron myself, but they seem to have improved since the day one blew up in a Tom's Hardware load test.

In any case, I definitely vote Zippy for world's best

[Emacs]

Re: What brand of Power Supply is the best?

My vote for the world's best would probably have to be I-Star closely followed by Zippy, Delta, Liteon, 3Y, Enhance and Etasis in no particular order.

[linuxguru]

Re: What brand of Power Supply is the best?

Delta (OEM)
Sparkle
Enhance

I opened up a few HP-supplied Deltas (around 8-10 years old) for fun, and found them packed with Nichicon PJ, Rubycon YXG and Chemicon LXZ. It couldn't have got much better than that when they were built, and not surprisingly, they're still chugging away without problems.

Enhance uses Teapos, but I haven't encountered problems yet them.


Among the El-cheapo brands:

Pan-Star
Power Efficiency (now defunct?)

The Power Efficiency is now 20 years old, from a 1986 '286 AT clone. Conservatively rated at 135W, and packed with oversize Taicons and some obscure caps marked CEHTR. But it was still working fine with no bulging caps when I decided to recap it pre-emptively.

[PeteS in CA]

Re: What brand of Power Supply is the best?

When I was at Delta, most of their business was semi-custom to OEMs like HP, Compaq, and Dell. They also had several standard models that they sold to lower volume, 2nd-tier OEMs. Delta's mfrg business model required really high volume for the various models, so the combined volume from several 2nd-tier OEMs made it worth producing the standard models.

The big OEMs tended to dictate brands or technologies (e.g. ball-bearing fans) for critical components such as lytics, fans, and connectors. I think Delta would have chosen good components anyway, though.

Astec and Lite On were two of our major competitors, and they have good quality too. I don't know whether Astec still makes PC P/Ss. I also saw Bestec, AcBel, and Yokogawa P/Ss on visits to HP and Apple.

[Spacedye69]

Re: What brand of Power Supply is the best?

I have an Astec 200w, but it is a few years old. The Enhance 350w I have also as some "fine quality" Jamicons.

[Emacs]

Re: What brand of Power Supply is the best?

When I was at Delta, most of their business was semi-custom to OEMs like HP, Compaq, and Dell. They also had several standard models that they sold to lower volume, 2nd-tier OEMs. Delta's mfrg business model required really high volume for the various models, so the combined volume from several 2nd-tier OEMs made it worth producing the standard models.

The big OEMs tended to dictate brands or technologies (e.g. ball-bearing fans) for critical components such as lytics, fans, and connectors. I think Delta would have chosen good components anyway, though.

Astec and Lite On were two of our major competitors, and they have good quality too. I don't know whether Astec still makes PC P/Ss. I also saw Bestec, AcBel, and Yokogawa P/Ss on visits to HP and Apple.

Yokogawa made power supplys for HP and Apple odd, I know they made some of the power adapters for HP printers and multimeters ect but never heard of them making and actual PC power supply.

[japlytic]

Re: What brand of Power Supply is the best?

For mid to high-end workstations and all servers, I would choose PC Power & Cooling (provided that they use only Japanese electrolytics)

For PCs primarily for consumers, I would use supplies in the following order:
Delta (also in consumer AV products - every Delta unit I have seen only has Japanese electrolytics)
Astec (apparently no longer makes PC power supplies)
Seasonic (provided that they use only Japanese electrolytics)
LiteOn (they apparently mainly use Japanese electrolytics, but can they make units for customers who want all of the electrolytics to be Japanese units?)
Seventeam (Again, can they make units for customers who want all of the electrolytics to be Japanese units? This brand was chosen by Ipex for AT power supplies, but I don't know what brands they use for their ATX supplies)

[jonnyGURU]

Re: What brand of Power Supply is the best?

Seventeam (Again, can they make units for customers who want all of the electrolytics to be Japanese units? This brand was chosen by Ipex for AT power supplies, but I don't know what brands they use for their ATX supplies)

Seventeam does build to order... That said, most of the PSU's out there today that use Seventeam (Cooler Master, MGE/XG, Sytrin) are not built to order. They're off the shelf Seventeam builds with slight mods.

[JEDIYoda]

Re: What brand of Power Supply is the best?

As tiresias has stated-- In my opinion, however, there are a few points that are worth keeping in mind:

1. The brand that actually makes the PSU is generally what counts as far as quality is concerned, not the brand that markets it.

I would tend to agree with the above.

Yet in the case of the PC Power & Cooling PSU`s I would have to say --
I have heard this expressed in many different way in various forums so I will use someone elses response to my questions concerning PC Power & Cooling and I quote--

As far as PCP&C cooling goes I don't consider them rebadged. They have their own engineers and the designs are different enough to set them apart from anything else out there. And I think their reputation speaks for itself as far as quality is concerned.

As I have stated in other forums and other threads there is something that sets PC Power & Cooling apart from other PSU manufacturers that use TEAPO CAPs....

Anyways just my 2 cents worth as others would say a wasted 2 cents...
But hey there are others in this particular fotum who have had no trouble with TEAPO Caps...go figure!!

[hkivan]

Re: What brand of Power Supply is the best?

When I was at Delta, most of their business was semi-custom to OEMs like HP, Compaq, and Dell. They also had several standard models that they sold to lower volume, 2nd-tier OEMs. Delta's mfrg business model required really high volume for the various models, so the combined volume from several 2nd-tier OEMs made it worth producing the standard models.

The big OEMs tended to dictate brands or technologies (e.g. ball-bearing fans) for critical components such as lytics, fans, and connectors. I think Delta would have chosen good components anyway, though.

Astec and Lite On were two of our major competitors, and they have good quality too. I don't know whether Astec still makes PC P/Ss. I also saw Bestec, AcBel, and Yokogawa P/Ss on visits to HP and Apple.

My Delta Active Power 420 comes with 2 bulk rubycon 680uF 200V ,
2 8cm dual ball bearing fans, all gold-coated connectors, japanese
caps, huge transformer & coils .

I vote for delta, FSP ( = Sparkle ), seventeam,
topower (.. 2theMax in HK), AcBel