Yet another victim of Antec! Q about cap replacement or RMA

[gonzo0815]

Re: Yet another victim of Antec! Q about cap replacement or RMA

No one, thus stay away from anything SOHO like, Antec if you get into seriouse systems (shure, most budgets don`t stand this solution ;-) )
When too mutch money is lost at the marketing dep., you can be shure, the money is saved at the hardware.
But tell me one pro who was not burnt buy the cap plague? there is absolut no way to get around bad hardware.
I know too mutch pro`s in this field wich do hail to a speciall brand e.g. Asus, but they absolutely missed the fact, that there is no foolproof brand in this busines.

You have to do your job right every time you have to spec a new system.
Most important therefore is IMHO to stay informed from many independent sources as possible (as IMHO most big hardware sites are driven by advertising money....e.g. Antec and this will always build up some loyality...), or if the budget allows ist, examine the hardware, b4 install it in quantities.

At the end, say a prayer and hope it will last ;-)

I add to this the habit, to scratch any brand from the list, wich does not deal adequat and honest, if problems occure (as long as there are better alternatives....).

[willawake]

Re: Yet another victim of Antec! Q about cap replacement or RMA

I know too mutch pro`s in this field wich do hail to a speciall brand e.g. Asus, but they absolutely missed the fact, that there is no foolproof brand in this busines.

yes i am like that. pros are more selective. if a brand is doing well for them then they choose only that. and then a while later switch after bad experience. in the end though it is best to mix and match. who wants a whole bunch of machines going down the same time, especially in the same office......glad i dont sell computers anyway there is not much money in that on a small scale......

[AntecRep]

Re: Yet another victim of Antec! Q about cap replacement or RMA

While one might assume after reading some of these posts that Antec has a 100% failure rate, if it were really that bad, we would be out of business. We understand that units do fail, and in those cases we are sorry and encourage those that have problems to get in contact with customer support.
We would also like to put things into a bit more perspective. Please keep in mind that Antec has been the #1 case & power supply manufacturer in North America for many years. This means that there's a lot more of our products out in use than our competitors. From what we know we estimate that we sell at least 4 times more power supply units than our closest name brand competitor.

With that having been said, every company has a given failure rate and the more units out there will mean that there's more failed units - but this is because of the total population, not that there's a larger defective population. For (a very simplistic) example, let's imagine that every power supply manufacturer had a defective percentage of 2%. Manufacturer A has 100,000 units in the field, which means the defective population is 2,000 units - and let's further suppose that only 50% of people are willing & able to complain about their problems with the product on message boards. Manufacturer B has 10,000 units in the field, giving it a defective population of just 200 units. 50% griping means that only 100 complaints are being aired vs Manufacturer A's 1,000. That would give the impression that Manufacturer A's products are complete crap versus B, wouldn't it? I mean, one thousand people have had problems with Manufacturer A's products!

So the bottom line is, over the years we have put millions of units out in the field, and the overwhelming majority of our customers have come away satisfied.

[kc8adu]

Re: Yet another victim of Antec! Q about cap replacement or RMA

While one might assume after reading some of these posts that Antec has a 100% failure rate, if it were really that bad, we would be out of business. We understand that units do fail, and in those cases we are sorry and encourage those that have problems to get in contact with customer support.
We would also like to put things into a bit more perspective. Please keep in mind that Antec has been the #1 case & power supply manufacturer in North America for many years. This means that there's a lot more of our products out in use than our competitors. From what we know we estimate that we sell at least 4 times more power supply units than our closest name brand competitor.

With that having been said, every company has a given failure rate and the more units out there will mean that there's more failed units - but this is because of the total population, not that there's a larger defective population. For (a very simplistic) example, let's imagine that every power supply manufacturer had a defective percentage of 2%. Manufacturer A has 100,000 units in the field, which means the defective population is 2,000 units - and let's further suppose that only 50% of people are willing & able to complain about their problems with the product on message boards. Manufacturer B has 10,000 units in the field, giving it a defective population of just 200 units. 50% griping means that only 100 complaints are being aired vs Manufacturer A's 1,000. That would give the impression that Manufacturer A's products are complete crap versus B, wouldn't it? I mean, one thousand people have had problems with Manufacturer A's products!

So the bottom line is, over the years we have put millions of units out in the field, and the overwhelming majority of our customers have come away satisfied.

we see near 100%failure rate on ANYTHING using fuhjjyu caps after 1 year.
that includes antec psu's
failure to me is unacceptable ripple and poor regulation found when i test.
not just the ones so bad they wont even start a pc anymore.
and many folks fight a unstable system for quite a while finally buying new mobo/cpu/ram then cursing the old brand of stuff only to find the system is no better.
they bite the bullet and bring it to me.i pull the side and see what psu is in there.
if its a "gutless wonder" i pull it and tell the customer its a good doorstop,bookend,wheel chock,ect
and if its an antec i open it up and show them the mess of leaking caps and recommend recapping.
yes nearly every antec i see is in some way responsible for trouble and most of the time is worth recapping.
bad psu issues at my shop stack up as
gutless wonders 50%
antecs 40%
others about 10%

[Per Hansson]

Re: Yet another victim of Antec! Q about cap replacement or RMA

Not to come off sounding unfriendly in any way AntecRep but this is a forum run buy and read by people "in the know"

We don't need to be told that you are the no #1 brand in your mind, the #1 brand is Zippy period

And it does not help very much to defend your position in the way you did. The "build it yourself" PC scene is not very large, and the percentage of people among those that know how to identify a faulty PSU is much less.

Add to that that almost no one in the public knows about the bad caps issue and how widespread it is (percentage wise) it's no wonder you don't see many RMA's

Most people will just think their "old xxx powersupply" is not up to powering their new rig, no matter it said 500w on the sticker but their new computer does not draw close to 200w during peak load.

This "progress" is soley to blame for poorly built powersupplies (not Antec in this regard!) However the Antec powersupplies join this rank after a year or so when their capacitors have degraded so much that if you load them 100-150w (which is typical for a highend desktop PC) they will produce so much ripple current that the motherboards own VRM can in the end not kope with it, and thus the PC will bluescreen because the CPU voltage is fluctuating too much

AntecRep, you have made 2 posts thus far, both have been pulling the truth to the limit, while I and I am sure the rest of us love having people from Antec visiting these boards it does no good to down play the issue this whole site is dedicated too. That holds even more true when the company in question is trying to defend using the worst capacitor brand that has ever existed!

[Spacedye69]

Re: Yet another victim of Antec! Q about cap replacement or RMA

I agree Per. While Antec has done the right thing by going with a better builder of their power supplies, trying to understate the severity of the issues with their previous products is not the way to go. Take a note from Jet Blue, Antec, admit you screwed up, fix the mistakes, and do all you can to never let it happen again. Comparing your defect rate to manufacturers who sell $10 power supplies does not impress anyone. Remember, its geeks like us who replace and recommend replacement components.

BTW, I still buy Antec stuff. I just bought a new 250w power supply off Ebay for $7. Thats including shipping. You can bet I recap it before I use it.

Giving stuff to people like Top Cat to use is the best way to regain some credit. If he uses them and they last, people tend to listen. We trust who we trust for a reason.

[gonzo0815]

Re: Yet another victim of Antec! Q about cap replacement or RMA

Great response, i hesitated to comment the AtecRep statement fore some reason, but i tempted to say exactly the same.
I know fore shure, that the majority of people have no clue about PSU`s, badcaps ect. Thus they never RMA it. Even most pro`s don`t rma a bad psu, as they always have spares and usually don`t have the time to handle it.
I am shure, that if someone collects abouth 100 or 1000pcs of the affected Antec PSU`s aged 6 monts or older, probably all of them would have the badcaps & high ripple issue.
But this would probably never happen, thus anyone can make sutch claims we have seen.

Anyway, from my point of view, Antec has never dealt with the capacitor problem on a seriouse level.
With the new (retail) PSU series, there absolutely was the changse to end the cap issue by using quality Jap., caps like some competitors do now.
But again, the new products do featuring OSt caps and similar, wich are in some older Seasonic PSu`s proofen to fail prematured.
I think anyone can make his own picture, certainely this is not the way to convince the people who are knowing the facts.

But ok, there are enough people out there, who never mind buying $150 PSU`s with badcaps or recomending them on the basis of shorttime testing. So there is probably no need to to realy change something....

[shadow]

Re: Yet another victim of Antec! Q about cap replacement or RMA

No one, thus stay away from anything SOHO like, Antec if you get into seriouse systems (shure, most budgets don`t stand this solution ;-) )
When too mutch money is lost at the marketing dep., you can be shure, the money is saved at the hardware.
But tell me one pro who was not burnt buy the cap plague? there is absolut no way to get around bad hardware.
I know too mutch pro`s in this field wich do hail to a speciall brand e.g. Asus, but they absolutely missed the fact, that there is no foolproof brand in this busines.

You have to do your job right every time you have to spec a new system.
Most important therefore is IMHO to stay informed from many independent sources as possible (as IMHO most big hardware sites are driven by advertising money....e.g. Antec and this will always build up some loyality...), or if the budget allows ist, examine the hardware, b4 install it in quantities.

At the end, say a prayer and hope it will last ;-)

I add to this the habit, to scratch any brand from the list, wich does not deal adequat and honest, if problems occure (as long as there are better alternatives....).

Oh man, what you said (the bolded part) is so true. I have a friend who only recommends and buys (if possible) certain products from certain brands. Why? I would not have a clue. He looks for:

* Asus motherboard (even thou many are troubled with problems at the moment)
* VIA chipset on motherboard (even thou they have not been great lately)
* AMD processor (can't stand Intel)
* NVIDIA graphics (can't stand ATI)
* Seagate hard drive (does not particularly like other brands, however he is not as picky with hard drives)
* Kingston memory (does not like other reputable brands for some reason, I think he has been burnt before with cheap no name RAM)
* Cheapie no name case (no idea why)
* Cheapie no name power supply (no idea why, at least he stays away from Hairong power supplies)

In summary, he is a very stubborn person and I am sure there are many more people like him. At least he is no pro like the ones you have met....well yet. Just peeves me off sometimes.
Just can't get it in his head that there is no single good manufacturer all the time in this industry now (not sure if it has been in the past).

[MixMasta]

Re: Yet another victim of Antec! Q about cap replacement or RMA

AntecRep, I would testify in front of a grand jury that every single Antec Truepower power supply that I have opened and examined has had leaking Fuhjjyu capacitors. All of these units I have inspected have been in use for at least 1 and sometimes up to 4+ years. These units belong to various friends, family and businesses throughout the Metro Detroit area. They are not all the same batch, they vary in capacity (330, 380, 430, 480), and obviously as I wrote in age. They were purchased from various retail marketplaces (Newegg, CompUSA, etc.). I am not exaggerating. I have witnesses, photographs, and the capacitors I have replaced in the units to prove it.

Why am I experiencing (first hand) this high failure rate? What are the real figures on your failure rate for the Antec Truepower series?

No one here posts on these message boards to bash Antec. We post here to make each other aware of a serious problem. This problem is so serious that when I speak with someone who describes strange crashing behavior with their computer, one of the questions I ask is if they have an Antec power supply. I do not want to ask people these questions and it is quite frankly sad that I have to!

I would venture that most people with an Antec power supply bought them because they are perceived to be a reputable and reliable brand. I apologize if this post along with the hundreds of others on this message board hurts Antec's reputation. Most of the people who post to this message board are highly educated, thoroughly trained and experienced, and very motivated to write of their findings. They DO know what the hell they are talking about.

I do appreciate that you are trying to help. However in my own opinion, posting nonsensical example failure data reeks of bad public relations. We aren't sorry that our messages show up on Google and are linked to by other websites. We can also Google “Six Sigma.”

I'll try to explain to my boss that we have to shut down the company for a few weeks while we RMA the Antec Truepower power supplies.

[Galvanized]

Re: Yet another victim of Antec! Q about cap replacement or RMA

Over the last 18 months, fully 85+% of PSU problems over at AnandTech have been Antec SP, TP & TPII units. Each morning and night I scan the General Hardware, Cases & Cooling and Technical Support Forums for capacitor related problems. One of the first things I say is,"If you're running an Antec PSU and it's out of warranty, open it up for inspection." Sometimes a flashlight/torch can be used to get a peek at the secondaries if the unit has warranty left. Motherboards are posted with cap issues, so OK! What PSU were you running? Opps! An Antec? Did it's dirty current drive the board caps into early failure? Then I link https://www.badcaps.net/faq/ Then they check the PSU and end up buying...not another Antec.

Dave, we appreciate the support David F. has given this site, we really do.

Andrew (Antec) Lee should park that Ferrari he drives around Taipei and get busy taking the $queeze off CWT and Seasonic. CWT builds to Antec's price point, lighten up Mr. Lee! The TPII is a very good unit once it has been repopulated with good electrolytics according to those I know & trust. The SP & TP units need better caps and increased cfm of their cooling fans. The Seasonic based units should not be produced on the old Seasonic platform but on the S12 platform with a population of Nipponese caps.

Antec power units were decent stuff 5 years ago but times have changed. Resting on one's laurels for that long will cause some spoilage.

My best to you and the crew up at Fremont, CA.

[bgavin]

Re: Yet another victim of Antec! Q about cap replacement or RMA

AntecRep, I would testify in front of a grand jury that every single Antec Truepower power supply that I have opened and examined has had leaking Fuhjjyu capacitors.

All my dead ones do also.

After 25 years at IBM, I've heard all the corporate spin, including the Six Sigma stuff...

The problem is you have myopic accountants making engineering decisions. For example, if you pay 10 cents for a premium cap instead of 5 cents for shit, the accountant sees this as "doubling his costs." The product engineer sees this as the price required for a competent product. The marketing guy sees this as an opportunity to add 20 cents per cap while blowing the premium quality horn.

As pointed out above, the guy driving the Ferrari just doesn't get it.

Pity.

[JEDIYoda]

Re: Yet another victim of Antec! Q about cap replacement or RMA

While one might assume after reading some of these posts that Antec has a 100% failure rate, if it were really that bad, we would be out of business. We understand that units do fail, and in those cases we are sorry and encourage those that have problems to get in contact with customer support.
We would also like to put things into a bit more perspective. Please keep in mind that Antec has been the #1 case & power supply manufacturer in North America for many years. This means that there's a lot more of our products out in use than our competitors. From what we know we estimate that we sell at least 4 times more power supply units than our closest name brand competitor.

With that having been said, every company has a given failure rate and the more units out there will mean that there's more failed units - but this is because of the total population, not that there's a larger defective population. For (a very simplistic) example, let's imagine that every power supply manufacturer had a defective percentage of 2%. Manufacturer A has 100,000 units in the field, which means the defective population is 2,000 units - and let's further suppose that only 50% of people are willing & able to complain about their problems with the product on message boards. Manufacturer B has 10,000 units in the field, giving it a defective population of just 200 units. 50% griping means that only 100 complaints are being aired vs Manufacturer A's 1,000. That would give the impression that Manufacturer A's products are complete crap versus B, wouldn't it? I mean, one thousand people have had problems with Manufacturer A's products!

So the bottom line is, over the years we have put millions of units out in the field, and the overwhelming majority of our customers have come away satisfied.

That argument is not even defendable....in fact it`s not even an argument...
As the supposed #1 case and Power Supply manufacturer you would think that the opposite should be true.

As such Antec should have the money to build a quality PSU that doesn`t give out in a year. Warranty be damned nobody wants to purchase a PSU with a 3 or 5 year warranty thats going to need to be replaced.
Of course every company will have some PSU`s fail. Thats a fact!
But when you claim to be the # 1 Manufacturer of a given product then you are also claiming to have a top quality well built reliable product!
Instead it would appear that in this case being #1 is tantamount to flooding the marketplace with substandard PSU`s...

Yet in your defense it would appear that possibly with the earthWatts PSU Antec as a company might have finally gotten it right!!

Only time will tell!!

[Fizzycapola]

Re: Yet another victim of Antec! Q about cap replacement or RMA

It's ashame theres no one who sells pre-tweaked PSU, all seem to have flaws, but if somebody could take the perfect PSU albeit rubbish caps it's only weakness, replace all the crap caps, twist, gold plate and rubber sheath the connectors, bulster internal PSU safety with more heatshrink around the bare cabling particularly the 110v/240v cables I see in PSU bare and nearly touching the casing sometimes only 1-5mm clearance (I see alot of bare cabling in PSU a good shake and you have a hot casing). It's ashame makers don't seem to care too much, I wonder what PSU the makers use in their home PC's. "No little johnny that ones from work don't touch it!!!"

[stretch0069]

Re: Yet another victim of Antec! Q about cap replacement or RMA

Hey Jedi....the argument makes sense to me. It seems you've had problems and are a tad bitter. Understandable, but don't let the bitterness get out of control.

I have a Trupower 430. Its been working 24/7 on a VP6 since about late 2000. it was doing duty as a video editing machine up until about two years ago. during that time, i've had to replace my CPU fans twice (Cooler-Master). Maybe I should not trust Cooler-Master???? nope.....i like them, considering the environment my boxes run in.
i have two Antec boxes w/Antec PSs and the aforementioned 430 in a Supermicro case. If they die and its because of poor parts, you can bet i'll say something. but i would do that for any manufacturer.

[willawake]

Re: Yet another victim of Antec! Q about cap replacement or RMA

Hey Jedi....the argument makes sense to me.

no it sucks. i hate marketing bs.

nice to have ost on secondary in the earthWatts...........

[larrymoencurly]

Re: Yet another victim of Antec! Q about cap replacement or RMA

While one might assume after reading some of these posts that Antec has a 100% failure rate, if it were really that bad, we would be out of business.

That doesn't explain why a much higher percentage of my Channel Well made Antecs have developed bad caps than have any other brand of PSU has. Why does your company accept crappy Fuhjyyu caps from Channel Well? You should tell them to instead use Japanese brand caps or at least Teapos because I've never had any of those caps fail in a PC PSU.

One of my year-old 300W SmartPower developed bulging caps after just a year, while my 7-year-old Powmax with HEC or HEE caps has never had problems (and I did measure its cap's ESRs).

I no longer recommend Antecs to people who ask me, except for the Neo HE series, because of the continuing capacitor problems with the SmartPowers and TruePowers.

[Sparky]

Re: Yet another victim of Antec! Q about cap replacement or RMA

Wow been awhile since I've been here and I see this thread got rather big.

AntecRep, the problem apparently was NOT fixed with the truepower II line. When I looked through the grills of the PSU I could see Fuhjyyu caps populating the unit, and the one was all leaky. Doesn't seem fixed to me. And the unit was only 9 months old! Never had a problem with the original smartpower or truepower line however, I think those might have been built better.

At any rate, I RMA'ed the bad Antec to newegg, and since they didn't have any more to replace it with they just gave me a full refund minus shipping costs. Gotta love the egg! I'd imagine that Newegg has tossed the PSU on to Antec to take care of it.

[Muskiehunter]

Re: Yet another victim of Antec! Q about cap replacement or RMA

I am sending a board in for new caps. I opened the power supply and found this.

[PeteS in CA]

Re: Yet another victim of Antec! Q about cap replacement or RMA

What "lovely" F'yous

[Spacedye69]

Re: Yet another victim of Antec! Q about cap replacement or RMA

The Smart Power 250W I mentioned above that I got of Ebay did not have a spec of dust or use in it, yet showed up with 3 bulged caps, one leaking!