My Allied PS's failed me :(

[Fatal0E]

Opened up my pc's today for regular dusting and inspection. One had a 400W allied power supply, other had a 350w allied, look identical in every way on inside. Cant see what brand the caps are without dismantling them.
But they both have vented caps, seem to work fine, but noticed they were blowing some real hot air. I looked at my local options for replacement, Antec Truecontrol 550 $114, Enermax Noisetaker 420 $85, Thermaltake Purepower 420 $45, A-Tech 400w $14 (Ya right ). After looking at review pics of the units and thinking about the possibility of moving to BTX form factor in not to distant future, I decided to go cheap with the thermaltake, bought 2 of them. First thing when I get home I take one apart, Teapo caps :cry: . Installed them anyway, great output so far, Allieds lasted 2 years, these should too. Decided to look up PC power and Cooling and see what they had, always heard excellent things about these. I really had a good laugh when viewing their promotional material at , Teapo Caps on a $189 power supply, thats just sick.

[willawake]

We have been through this before here and i am still opening new psu after new psu to find teapos or other unacceptable crap. This is to do with all manufacturers commissioning the manufacture of their psu in china mostly, also taiwan and thailand. Few companies producing for many oem manufacturers. Whether it says antec, thermaltake, zalman it is all the same crap, slap a fancy name on the front and sell it for up to $200. I got so many time bombs installed in the office it is crazy. Still havent found a good manufacturer of psu.

Personally it seems like an opening for a new product. The china designs are proven, just needs some good caps to be specified and marketed that way. 4 year guarantee. Special edition 550w with papst fan and rubycon caps $200 would be worth it. 1 year guarantee really shows the confidence in their product. Wanna see 4 year guarantee with collect and replace by courier like plextor. (although with current plextor models 1 year guarantee with replace by courier really bites.)

It is never gonna happen though, just get a good heavy one with a big heatsink and have it immediately recapped and the fan replaced with a papst. Should last for at least 4+ years at least.

[Topcat]

Sadly, I have a hard time recommending PSU's anymore.... All the ones I used to swear by have become total crap... powmax used to make a good supply, but they turned cheapskate using 'Rulycon' caps (those are Rubycon imposters), which fail all the time. When a Powmax fails, it fails!! I've had them literally incinerate in front of me and burn the PC's case...

Antec PSU's are yet another tragic story of a good company gone to crap... To save money, they buy Teapo and Teyah caps now, when they used to use Nichicon's. No more Antec referrals from me!

The only PSU I recommend for a standard PC is Enermax. I'm yet to see one fail from bad caps.... I have seen them blow switching regs though, but that can happen to anything... I also strongly recommend 'Zippy' PSU's. They use Rubycon and Nichicon caps. However, they're designed around servers, and are rather expensive. Although, they do come with a 3 year warranty... For a $250.00 PSU, I thought that was pretty good. I have 2 sets of double-redundant 800W Zippy's in my web servers. They have been running 24/7 for almost 2 years now, never a single hiccup. Since they're redundant, once a month or so I pull one and open it just to check the caps... No bloated Rubies!!

[kc8adu]

i have 2 allieds here that have excessive ripple/noise on the +3.3 and +5
no bulging or leaking yet but not gonna let them go that far.
otoh the spi sparkle power in the overclocked bp6 has been good for 5 years of 24/7.
opened it up while doing general maintainence and found it has nichicons.
sanyo fan too.
whats funny the case it came in had 2 xinrulian fans that were moaning and rattling in 2 months.
yep the imfamous emachines suicide fans.
shame on you enlight!

[Fatal0E]

Re: My Allied PS's failed me

Opened up the PC's today for dusting, been going 24/7 for almost 2 years since my previous power supply post, just been shut down for a few hours for upgrades. Opened up the Thermaltake Power supplies in my 2 larger machines, still look great, all the teapo caps are flat topped, no leaks out the bottom, no brown spots on the PCB. Feel like I have gotten my $45 worth.

[toastygoodness]

Re: My Allied PS's failed me

Zippy's are made in taiwan (i believe, or otherwise thailand) and they're fine (rubycons and nichicons, great circuit system). I also think Lite-On has a major factory in China, as the one that came in my lemon Dell (customer service was full of indians, after 3 months a RMA or something was impossible) still works fine as salvage and i think has chemicon.

[Chris1992]

Re: My Allied PS's failed me

My Dell/LiteOn has OST everywhere.

[UraBahn]

Re: My Allied PS's failed me

My Dell/LiteOn has OST everywhere.

All the LiteOns I've seen have Chemi-cons in them, even the ones that went bad (there are only a select few I've seen that went bad, likely due to age or heat because they were upwards of 6 years old.)

The ones I personally recommend are Astec (not Antec), LiteOn (not so sure anymore after hearing about the OST in Chris1992's), Delta and Zippy. Everything else (Antec, Fortron, Zalman, A-Power, Hercules, etc.) can go to Fuhjyyu hell as far as I'm concerned.

Just today I picked up a Compaq-branded 250W Delta. Rubycon YXG and Chemi-Con caps everywhere inside, with not a single OST, Fuhjyyu or Teapo to be found.

[Chris1992]

Re: My Allied PS's failed me

Hey, at least OST are ‘good' badcaps and not absolute shit like Tayeh or YEC! Not one in my PSU bulging after 2 years 24x7.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: My Allied PS's failed me

Hey, at least OST are ‘good' badcaps and not absolute shit Not one in my PSU bulging after 2 years 24x7.

I agree. The Ost caps on my Asus A7V8X-X motherboard still aren't bulging despite overclocking alot. I purchased that motherboard back in November, 2003. It was used a lot.

[Oklahoma Wolf]

Re: My Allied PS's failed me

The OEM's I know of using good or mostly good caps are Zippy, Etasis, Delta, Lite-On, and Acbel Polytech. Maybe I-Star too, but I don't know a lot about them yet. I'd say Seasonic too if they hadn't been turning up with OST's.